A Modern Fable

Our hero, such as he is, was born in another era. A time of paper and pencils, of TV’s with three main channels, of letters written and received in the mail. There were phones that took a some 10 to 15 seconds to dial and if you wanted to talk to someone far away, be prepared to pay a lot of money. Most of the time there was something called real conversation, live and in the moment, with eye contact and two people who could actually follow a common thread of thought. Along with the words came the posture, the facial expressions, the tone of voice, all of which enlarged the actual communication. 

 

So it was with trepidation mixed with a measure of kicking and screaming that our hero was dragged into our present hyper-speed and media-saturated culture. He organized Turn Off TV weeks at his school as early as the 1980’s, wrote on a typewriter until 1990 when he got his first Mac SE Computer for free, as payment for doing an Orff workshop with a group of Apple Systems Managers. He wrote five books on that old machine before reluctantly switching some 11 years later to that big-hooded Macintosh—and 11 years later to his laptop. He actually was one of the first on his block to get an i-Pod, a welcome change from packing tapes and CD’s in his suitcase for his various workshops. He was one of the last to get an i-Phone, holding out until 2018 and finally getting one to make spontaneous videos in his music classes. 

 

Being a product of his time and having that time roaring by like an unstoppable river, he could only swim upstream for so long. Following his motto of “whatever it takes” to get to pursue his passions of teaching and music and teaching music, there was no choice but to follow the “latest, greatest” way to conduct business. But not always happily so. 

 

And to set the record straight, in his workshops, it’s still the ancient time-honored practice of creating vibrant music and dance with the most essential tools— our bodies, voices, imagination, simple percussion instruments and Orff xylophones and occasional recorders. Still he mostly uses a white board if he needs a text or rhythm written (which he rarely does) and occasionally shows videos of the kids that he took with that i-phone or some relevant rare clips from Youtube. It’s the way that the people inviting him conduct business that has changed so drastically. And that brings us to our tale.

 

Preparing to be a guest teacher at a University next month, he received an e-mail with a link to all the paperwork that must be filled out. By now, standard procedure. First obstacle was not being able to write directly on the document. So an e-mail back asking for help and the advice to press “Continue.” Done and now it was working. Name, address, identifying numbers, the usual. Then came the invitation to upload a copy of his Driver’s License. Thought he had such a thing on my computer, but of course, he didn’t. 

 

Here's where things get complicated. That old laptop from 2012 finally crashed and the only way to rescue it was to take out the hard drive, restore it and re-install. But of course, it wasn’t that simple. A friend had given him her laptop from 2014 and he tried to get everything migrated over to that, but no dice. That story is way too complicated, but the upshot is that he’s now using two computers. The new one is not yet connected to the printer or able to scan from the printer. So he scanned his driver’s license into the old computer and planned to e-mail it to the new computer. But the document he was working on was one he got to through his e-mail and he was worried that he couldn’t sign on to his e-mail with one computer when it was open with the other and didn’t want to close out the other for fear of losing the document. Following?

 

So in a moment of inspiration, he realized he could take a photo of his driver’s license and air drop it to the new computer. Brilliant! It worked! But… the form said it was too many megabytes to send by e-mail. And then, because survival is the name of the game and human beings are infinitely adaptable and he was a human being, he took a screenshot of the photo and lo and behold, it was sent!!! He reflected how lucky he was to use these labor-saving devices that save so much time.

 

Consider. In the old days, someone would have mailed him a contract with a copy in an envelope , sometimes with an SASE inside. (All you LOL texters probably don’t know what an SASE is. Go to the library and look it up! :-)) He would have signed both copies and sent it back. Done. No photo id’s needed and no sexual harassment videos to watch or DEI statements to sign or 55 page handbooks to read through. If they invite you, it means they’ve seen your work or read your books and trust that you’ll do your work. If you say something edgy at the workshop, it’s the grounds for something called conversation. One that might potentially enlarge both parties understanding. Live conversation with eye contact, body language, voice tones, facial expressions. 

 

Review the layered steps of electronic forms/ scans/ photos/ screenshots/ etc. and compare to signing a piece of paper, putting it an envelope and dropping it in the mailbox. Compare the old-fashioned communication options of live conversation, phone and letter with group e-mail/ personal e-mail/ text/ Facebook message/ Twitter/ Instagram/ leave a message on the phone because no one picks up to actually talk anymore and you see that our devices have not simplified our lives the way it promised.

 

Yes, our reluctant modern man agrees, he appreciates writing this Blog, getting his dopamine rush when 300 people like his Facebook post, sending a workshop announcement with a group e-mail list instead of designing a flyer, pasting some images on it, getting it copied at Kinko’s, folding three hundred by hand (later paying Kinko’s to do it), printing out address labels (earlier all by hand!), sticking them on plus a stamp plus stamping a return address. That was a lot of work! 

And yet, our hero recalls almost nostalgically, there was a ritual pleasure in the process, a slowed-down way to remember each person on the mailing list and imagining them attending the workshop, a way to draw the family together and get them to help with some promises of ice cream. And a grand satisfaction taking them all to the mailbox and watching them drop in and then receiving in the mail the little clip-off part of the flyer with name, address and phone number with something called a check inside and watching the list of attendees grow. There was a sense of full presence in the process that he doesn’t necessarily miss, but maybe just a little.

 

And now, he sends this whisking off into the ether so you, dear reader, can nod your head with agreement or in sleepiness reading about this boring subject. Perhaps you’re rolling your eyes or shaking your head in disbelief thinking how you could have solved his form-filling problem. But our hero will never know because you and he are missing the real live conversation. So call him up and ask him out for a beer. I promise he’ll answer his phone.