People used to sit around fires and tell stories. Not a thousand years ago, although they did it then, too. I mean people within the last 100 years would sit together around fires, or stoves, or around kitchen tables smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee, watching the clock from the corners of their eyes, and they would tell stories about the people they knew, or the neighborhoods they walked, or the cities they lived in.
Being together wasn't a chore, it was something we anticipated. We relished a visit from friends passing through town. It gave us a chance to brew up a hot drink, or pour a cold one, and catch up. And not everyone appreciates family, but it didn't always have to be such a hassle to get together.
What the hell's happened since then?
I drink coffee and work on my projects at a local coffee house called Smokey Row on 19th and Cottage Grove in Des Moines. There are five booths along the east wall where you can sit comfortably and plug in your laptop. I'm always scouting them out, waiting for people to leave. Today, there were six people in the five booths, four of whom had laptops, and all of which had their noses planted into the cell phones. I wondered why you would have your laptop on when you were only going to sit with your phone in your face. But then I guess I'm a dumbass. I also wondered why the couple in the last booth had their cell phones in their faces instead of talking. Was it so bad talking to each other? Maybe. There are more disparaging adages about marriage than syphilis, I think.
When I looked around the room, it was mostly filled with people on some kind of electronic device reading silently. A couple kids ran wild through the tables, picking up salt shakers and pouring the salt into their hands, then running a moist, broad tongue over their palms like deer. Their parents were staring at their tablets, eyes vacant, mouths closed, arms and legs perfectly still; two biomechanical automatons plugged into the future.
Fuck, look at me - where do you think I'm typing this up? I'm at the same coffee house with earphones in, staring at my laptop like some goon. And believe me, I would just as soon NOT talk to anyone. I know - I'm the hypocrite here; I'm the asshole with his finger pointed with a hundred fingers pointed back.
Dear reader, let me be the first to admit: I don't have friends. I don't pretend to have friends. I don't have a Facebook page with cool pictures of me puking and shitting my pants. I don't have a Twitter feed tied to an Instagram feed where everyone can watch the food I eat and give me thumbs up. There are about two people who still suffer my company one Tuesday out of the month. Including my wife, that's three people not already related to me. Outside of that celebrity, I'm a shut-in, a curmudgeon, a complete rude dick. If I could find a six foot deep dirt hole with a tarp over it, an extension cord for my laptop, and free refills on decent coffee, I'd go there.
But Cheese 'N' Rice (aka Jay-Juice Chrysler, HeySuess Charimba, and Tri-Headed God Beast), if someone wants to sit down and talk, bring it on. Want to see some creepy ass part of town? And want to walk two miles of abandoned-ass tracks? And want to creep through an old building ready to cave? And want to do something more than just talk through text, like 4 realz tho? Want to go somewhere that DOESN'T have free WiFi? Want to get down in a spot without a plug to charge your phone-bone? Want to hear the way my voice sounds, and let me hear yours?
I foresee conversations turning into such rare interactions, that they almost border sexual. I don't mean the everyday humdrum, like telling your wife to shut your kids up so you can hear the porn on your Android, I mean like sitting around a table in a kitchen with cigarettes and hearing what someone has to say until their hoarse. I guess except for the cigarettes part - because all the factory-farmed food full of pesticides and chemical engineering won't kill you, and the burnt fossil fuels in the air won't do it, and the shit they put in the water won't do it, and the handful of pills you take every morning won't do it - but burning tobacco is going to put your ass in a grave. So forget I keep mentioning cigarettes. Tri-headed God beast believes them's the devil.
No, we Americans have been ripped away from our roots, ripped away from our heritage, ripped away from the land we cultivated, and culture we shared and the lives we built. We're idiots now. We NEED phones so we can Google our past, or else we're just faceless, drooling, simpering robots waiting for input. Our conversations are about YouTube videos of animals with big eyes taking shits. Our music doesn't even have human voices in it anymore, it's just a series of produced production with a hint of humanity. Our only interests revolve around something a slick marketing firm developed - because they've spent a goddamn fortune figuring out what makes us tick. The companies we start all include electronics - it's the future, goddamnit, don't unplug me. The work we do relies on it. The money we make, what little there is, must be spent to catch up, or find ourselves falling behind, wiping our asses with corncobs in a wooden shithouse.
But don't take my word for it. Keep telling yourself Facebook DOES connect you. Sure, you never see 86% of the people in your "Friends" list, but fuck it, right? And your phone DOES keep you in touch with everyone - especially Amazon, and Netflix, and Hulu, and eBay, and all of those other super social sites where you spend your money. And digital print is WAY better than books at a library, because that place is only filled with dirty homeless people looking up porno. And whatever you do, just forget about the past, forget about all that boring old shit that shaped you, your family and your ancestors. Forget about the struggles your people have endured to get here, and forget about the sacrifices they made.
It's ok. We made it. Life is awesome now. That was the whole point - to get here, where we are. And NOTHING can go wrong now.
So let's stop talking. Let's stop telling stories. Let's have stories written for us by clever guys that smoke weed. And let's pretend we're just getting cooler, and cooler. This country is badass.