Hello Internet, my old friend. I’ve come to talk to you again. Because a vision softly creeping, left its
seeds while I was sleeping. The vision
that was planted in my brain still remains.
Within the sound of keystrokes.
In restless dreams I browsed alone.
A shallow screen of a darker tone.
Beneath the halo of a dim lamp, I turned my collar to the cold and
damp. When my eyes were stabbed by the
flash of a LCD light, that split the night, and touched the sound of keystrokes. In the naked light I saw Ten thousand people,
maybe more. People talking without
speaking. People hearing without
listening. People writing words that
voices never share, and no one dared disturb the sound of keystrokes. “Fools,” said I, “You do not know, silence like
a cancer grows.” Hear my words that I
might teach you. Take my arms that I
might reach you. My words like silent
raindrops fell and echoed in the posts of silence. People bowed and prayed, to the LCD God they
made. The screen flashed out it’s
warning, in the words that it was forming.
The screen said, “The words of the Prophets are written on the subway
halls and Facebook walls and whispered in the sound of silence…
That is a rendition of Paul Simon’s “Sound of Silence.” I decided to share this version with you,
because the original was written in 1963 - 1964 and it fit the scene then. So to fit in the world today a few things
needed to be changed. Especially when
dealing in the form of communication that we tend to default to today. Last night as I was lying in bed, I was
thinking about the stuff I saw online.
Of course I was listening to music.
The version of this song I heard was by Disturbed. I began to ponder on the song and how it
seemed to fit the mood on Facebook. Many
people post things on that website, that probably shouldn’t be shared worldwide. Yet we do so, and we do it more frequently
than we speak with our mouths. In
essence the sound of silence is replaced with the sound of keystrokes. The darker tones that people share online
cast a shadow over the enlightened words of encouragement. Stop and look at the screen while on Facebook
and you will see that most of the encouraging messages are written on pictures
or drawings that are shared. The same
could be said about the negative messages.
We went from a social society of meeting friends in places to talk about
the trials of life, to one that would rather copy and paste pictures and
drawings of short messages from behind a screen. When we use to talk to others face to face,
we could see the meaning as well as feel it.
Now we are left to interpret the meaning on our own. Sometimes that message is interpreted wrong,
and we get offended by the lack of attention we intended to receive.
I see people trying to spread good messages, but they are
shrouded by asking people to “Like, Share, and Reply with a certain word.” What is sort of funny about this is that a
bunch of us use a device that could be used to actually hear the other person’s
voice, but we’d rather post on Facebook or use the same device to send a text
message one after another to hold a conversation for several minutes. Don’t people miss the sound of a friend’s or
loved one’s voice? The personal
interaction has evolved from a physical one to a hidden one. Let me explain that a little more. We use to have to leave the comfort of our
home to go visit a sick friend or family member. Once there we could talk about our lives and
see the other person’s reactions as we spoke.
Now all we have to do is get online and write on their Facebook wall or
send them a text message. Our physical
reactions as we communicate this way are hidden, the other person never gets to
see it, unless they are right there next to us as we send the message (which I
have seen a group of people sitting at a table talk to each other without ever
speaking a word). I’ve seen this sort of
behavior seep into other aspects of life as well. I know several people that are old enough to
get a Driver’s license put off getting one.
I use to think it had to do with laziness, but now I see that it has
more to do with the way we interact with others. We don’t need to have a vehicle to visit
others. All we need is a device to send
messages, and we can do so while lying naked in bed or on the shitter and no
one would be the wiser.
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