Thursday, July 30, 2009

Mar 09

I’m a reluctant participant of the 'latest', 'greatest', 'trendy', 'bendy' sites like facebook/myspace/twitter/youtube/and any other new fangled 'must be seen' place!

Give me a landline, a letter with a stamp, and yup... the good old fashioned .com email! :))))) (can you tell I just spent 30 minutes attending to all the other sites except JIGHEADS.COM??? eeeeesh.)

I understand the current culture, I really do. I’m not trying to become a tottering elder who doesn’t like change. Although I remember my outright refusal, hands firmly placed on hips, with regard to our first computer! Why of course I’d rather do bookings with a phone (insert a curly cord that is always tangled) clenched between my ear and my shoulder. And of course it’s better to sit with an open atlas, a calendar, a calculator, and a spiral notebook, to conduct business. And who wouldn’t want to have dozens of spiral notebooks and three ring binders (one per state) at hand to have to look for contact information? I was proud of the balancing act, the instant problem solving, and the clenching of the gut at every phone call and calculation.

Yessiree… things have certainly changed for the better over the many years I’ve been working the business end of this music world! But the ‘black hole’ of gizmos, and the ‘abyss’ of time attached to said gizmos seem to gulp precious life.

Technology is a tool that makes me jitterier than a chainsaw. I know, it’s my generation; the young ones feel just the opposite. More visibility, more buzz, more communication super highways, more ‘inboxes’, more ‘friends’ and more ‘friends of friends’. For me it is simply more options for time suck-age. How much more can I be connected? How much more do I need to know, or think I need to know? If data is in the world and I’m not connected, is there still data in the world? What am I missing if I turn off the cell phone? How does the world go on, if I’m not on line every day? If I’m on line, but forget to check one of the sites will I miss a fan? A friend? A booking? How will they find me amid the cyber masses?

Technology even tries to creep into our physical traveling, there are those who have told us we need a GPS. “You’ll never get lost”. Well, we’ve never been lost! And I love maps… the colors, the searching of interesting town names, and places of interest while we are finding road numbers. There is something so very magical about maps. I certainly don’t want a robotic voice telling me where to go, I have enough voices in my head as it is! Let me navigate and take my chances… let me have one piece of my world that is NOT digital… It’s not always about going from point A to point B without side trips or unforeseen detours. That’s what makes life… well, LIFE! (see my poem below).

And yet…
Here I sit, writing this blog on computer number five (since the refusal of computer number one)! Everything I ever knew, everyone I ever knew and everything I need to know is in this little black box. Maybe YOU are reading this blog of words; maybe no one is reading it… so here are MY things to ponder:
Am I more satisfied with my work time? At times…
More savvy? Somewhat…
Am I more marketable? Nope…
More famous? Definitely nope…
More grounded in my relationships? Only time will tell…




The Atlas

The atlas lies lifeless on my lap
My fingers run over the smooth page
But paper is not what I feel
Its colorful lines are brail to my soul

My memory sees the roads I’ve traveled
My imagination sees the ones I have not
The dots with names of towns
Become the faces of the people who live there

The implied landscape
From barren, to lush
From flat, to lofty
Rivers, lakes, mountains
Leap into my heart

And the most important of all…

Those gaps of white
With no ink
Where the map
And the un-initiated
Assume there is nothing

To that empty fullness
The heart of a traveler
Is drawn

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