RUDIMENTS, pt. 823
(from zero to sixty in four seconds flat)
The subject was telephones;
frightening things even in
1967. The household wire
phone was a bad blemish,
yet nearly every house had
one or more, and those that
didn't, wanted to. People had
'gossip-benches' in their homes.
Sort of a portmanteau seat
(my father reupholstered any
number of them; I've seen,
and lugged, my share), but to
the right or the left was a sort
of desk-compartment shelf
thing, for the telephone, as
a table-top, and for storage
too. Phone books, etc. I
detested phones, from day
one, and could never abide
them and to this day, unless
for emergencies and the like,
I simply do not use one; do
not have one; will not report
to one. Besides that, I have
nothing to say. Back to the
Gossip Bench - we had one
in my home when I was a kid,
covered in some horrid green
fabric, almost plastic-like, but
not. It was, honestly, seldom
used but at the same time was
also not really part of the
house furnishings; it was
upstairs at a spare phone. I
had sisters, and the extension
phones, and Princess Phones
(incredibly, that was a pastel
colored, or pink, phone
marketed exclusively for
yappy girl teens). Nowadays,
I see men, or 'males' anyway,
with phones, yapping as much
as females. I always considered
the telephone something a man
would not use. Still do. It's a
feminine thing - its borders are
sentiment and emotion, or rank
babble. In the old days, my days,
a 'Man' didn't do that crap. Now
they do, and still insist on that
gender identification; wrongly.
I keep no place in my life for
either of those things : sentiment
or emotion. They went out with
the Nina, the Pinta, and
the Santa Maria.
-
The earpiece and mouthpiece in
one unit, did you know, is a
French design - development.
The 'French phone' has a single
unit mouthpiece and earpiece.
(Old land-line phones, of course).
It shows itself as a singular
indication of the French
connection of the senses that
English-speaking people mostly
keep separate. French, the
'language of love,' was called
that because it unites voice
and ear in a unique way; a close
way. So does the telephone. It
is quite natural to kiss by via
phone, but it's not easy to
visualize while phoning.
-
Once I came across a statement
that really stopped me dead : 'To
the blind, all things are unexpected.'
Like the telephone conversation,
so with the blind. There's nothing
visual about it. One may think
they are visualizing, perhaps, the
other person on the other end of
the call, but it's only imagined
that that is so. Pushing even the
prostitute aside, the phone gave
us the 'call girl!' The prostitute was
a specialist; the call girl is not.
She is someone who listens.
She may even be be a 'matron, at
home, making some extra bucks....
off your imagination. All that
stuff is the power of extension,
(no pun) and the comfort of
the 'Gossip Bench' gets then
superseded by other uses. I
wonder, did anyone expect
all this?
-
I just never had anything I
cared to talk about on the
phone. One time, a friend
of mine got in the habit of
calling with each new
record album or interview
of some rock and roll demon
he came across, and we'd,
or he'd, go on and on at great
length about the comments
or the cuts. Frankly I was
bored, and added little. Any
contribution I made to these
conversations was to simply
reiterate or agree with what
he'd just said. It dawned on
me that NOTHING was
getting done, no real
information was being
transferred, and all we were
doing was validifying some
dumb status quo. The phone
was proving itself useless.
I was that distanced. The
format of the phone just
really annoyed me. Later,
in the so-called 'business'
world, the phone was
everything. My God, I
could have died with
that one - placing orders,
for paper, ink, binding,
rags, whatever; or arranging
trucking and delivery, or
even the endless pricing
and bidding on print-jobs.
Hideous, nasty stuff - not
worth the language and
not worth ten cents of my
time. I often wished to be
deaf, and dumb. Figuring
I was, at the least, halfway
there, on the dumb.
-
One of those African
countries, right now I
forget which, let's say
Gabon, they went from
'nothing' in the last 30
years, to complete cell
phone coverage. OK?
Big deal? They skipped
ever having telephone poles
and wired lines! Think of
that. They were propelled,
en masse, into this era
without the tedious
compunction of land
connections, telephone
poles, wires and lines.
I guess 'infrastructure' for
the phone companies -
which we had years and
years of time to get used
to, sort of makes a grasp
or understanding of what's
going on a bit more stable.
A sense of craziness is less
pervasive? (In Pennsylvania,
we had a 'party line' of maybe
the next five or six gabbers
down the road - for the first
few years before they then
modernized. I'd never heard
such annoying stuff. What
was the most annoying part was
the way it rang : You had to
listen to all the ringings. I
think we were, as newest
entry, four rings, for our
party. So you'd have to
carefully listen for the
pattern and see if it
stopped and repeated
at 4-rings. Really pesky,
because you had to go
through the whole sequence,
and because of that you'd
get everyone else's rings
too, even if not for you. It
seemed like the darn phone
was always ringing).
-
Anyway, think of these
African people, going right
from a nomadic, bushman,
status, let's say, to cellphones,
as civilization settled in on
them. What magic was that!
It must have been incredible,
plus I bet it wreaked havoc
on all their old and tribal
beliefs in spirits and shamans
and tribal tokens and 'contact'
with other-worldly stuff. It
could have driven them all
to a proven insanity - it's no
wonder we see all those crazy
photos of them now, walking
about in all those cast-off
American tee-shirts and
clothes. Joe's Plumbing.
Teddie's Pizza. Ralph's
Army-Navy. They had no
longer any 'reference' to
the outer rim of all that old
and spirit-magic stuff which
had buttressed them and their
societies - or what there was
of them - for all those years.
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