The Hour of Two Songs
I got back late last night after driving back slowly through snow the plows had inconsistently hit. This morning I tried to use the quiet to stave off waking as long as possible. Still, my thoughts were struggling to unjumble.
My first thoughts from there flew to the kabuki theater of the TikTok “ban.” With all due respect to the community there, it seems that “y’all have been played.” I’m sorry. As I wrote in my last post, I’m choosing to stay off Meta platforms, and I feel that loss of community.
I thought of a particular lyric from a song, “Billy From the Hills,” by the singer songwriter Greg Brown. It was a tribute to his father‘s rural upbringing, a play on “hillbilly,” long before the Vice President–elect wrote his book.
It's a drifting time, people are fascinated by screens
No idea what's on the other side
We stare at doom like an uptight groom
And live our lives like a drunken bride
There’s a paradox of the impact of the Internet on society. The sociologist Barry Wellman, over two decades ago, showed that people connected online were better connected off-line, in contrast to the popular image that the Internet takes us away from real life. It connects us to events, opportunities, and communities. We saw it operate this way during the pandemic, for work and social connection. On the other hand, as we saw with the Cambridge Analytical scandal, owners of platforms, and their algorithms powerfully shape what we experience. Our personal data has become currency, and in the era of “surveillance capitalism,” we are the product to be consumed.
The second thing that entered my craw was the fractious finger–pointing as people confront their inaugural eve jitters. (I can’t even begin to engage the quietist withdrawal I’m also seeing.) I thought of the collaboration that included Terry Hall from the interracial, “2-Tone” band The Specials and Fun Boy Three. The haunting, driving, “Stand Together,” from an album recorded in response to the Iraq war, is a clarion call to the moment.
Leaders high above their stations
The state of every nation
Leading us into temptation
Check it out the skin is pale
Check yourself from head to tail
Stand alone and you will fail
We’ve got to stand together
This is what I found at the People’s March Portland (Maine, the OG) on Saturday.
I want to write more about this march today once I can get dug out and find a low cost Internet connection, given that all the libraries are closed. In keeping with the entreaty of Bernice A. King, daughter of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I would not tune out the inauguration, and would contrast it with the work her father would have had us engage.
Ideally, I would listen to the speech on FM radio and comment live on it here.
Not to finger–point, but turnout was low for Democrats this time. We didn’t mind our people, and now, as I said on Instagram, we’re going to have to mind our people.
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