When I was in my mid 20’s
and the internet was a new thing, and the tubes were all still shiny, I thought, what a wondrous and great thing the Internet will be. it will allow people all over the world to communicate with one another, to have an interchange of ideas and make the world a better place. I remember logging in to Usenet singing IGY.
And I started to meet people. I started to talk. I started to interact. I began to get to know people from all over the world. And I realized I was wrong. And now I know:
You used to have to go out and meet new people to hate them. Now you can hate people a thousand miles away that you have never met, from the comfort of your couch.
Glad someone else knows of Donald Fagan’s album–thought I was the only one.
Not hardly. Not by a long shot.
One of my favorites even now.
Someone said, “I have a little box in my pocket. I carry it with me everywhere I go. It gives me access to the sum total of human knowledge – everything that man knows and has ever known. I use it to look at pictures of cats and argue with people I don’t know”.
In my life, I really have tried not to hate anybody. I’ve made a conscious, concerted effort not to hate people.
They make it damned difficult.
Indeed! Same here. It is often nearly impossible.
Well, I just avoid them when at all possible.
Not a comment on the post but one on the album: best cover art, ever. The Nightfly, so it’s 4:08 a.m. and he’s playing, judging by the tiny box and sparse setup, at a local station hoping 10 people are listening. As far in his career as he’s going to go. After making a pop from the long draw on his cigarette, he launches into a raspy, nasal, Richard Belzer-voiced world weary description of the upcoming album he’s about to cue up. Same as last night, and the night before last. And yet he still shows up in a shirt and tie because even if no one else knows, he knows.
That still picture moves as much as any movie I’ve seen. Henri Cartier-Bresson’s decisive moment, the millisecond that separates the static from the dynamic.
yeah, I sat in front of a mike at oh-dark-thirty myself a time or two, I have those same feelings.