Dear Friends, Family, Neighbors, and Those of You I Don’t Yet Know —
Welcome to Odd Company, a small effort to spread the good word of compassion, patience, and kindness. Here we are at the end of January, the dead of winter in most places. John and I texted with friends in Detroit over the weekend, where they were shoveling heavy, wet snow. But here in Northern California, the citrus trees and avocados are loaded with fruit. It’s high time to order seeds for this year’s garden and get some of them started indoors. It was so warm today that I opened the patio doors and let in some fresh air, which is not quite normal for this time of year. We are about to get a series of warm, very wet storms coming up from the South Pacific, a phenomenon we used to call a “Pineapple Express,” since replaced by the less descriptive but more dramatic term “atmospheric river.” The practical effect is the same. We’re in for some wild weather — wind, flooding, and power outages. We are reasonably well prepared for this. At least I think we are. The roof and gutters are clean; the sump pump is working; our backup batteries are charged to the max. Time will tell.
In light of all this, we are particularly glad John’s no longer dependent on the oxygen machine that kept him alive for a year while we waited for his lung transplant. Power outages are no longer a life-and-death matter for him. At this point, almost all of us are dependent on an intricate web of technologies for our survival, but few of us are so acutely aware of that fact as my husband was at this time last year.
We humans are pretty thoroughly embedded in comforts that are only possible because of machinery so complex that nobody understands all of it anymore. The pandemic brought this home to us in ways we hadn’t seen before. When the people who raise the chickens and grow the vegetables; who package them; who pilot and repair the trucks and trains, the ships and planes that deliver them to us; who run the factories where the parts for repairs are made; who pump the oil that powers the factories; when all those people are sick, or scared, or not allowed to work, suddenly the supermarket shelves are bare. The Amazon packages stop coming. Things that were once commonplace become impossible to get, no matter how much we need them. Flour. Butter. Toilet paper, for goodness sake!
None of this even begins to address our reliance on high-tech gadgetry — the fiber-optic cables, the broadband service, the cell towers, the laptops, the mobile devices, the endless apps, the Zoom meetings, the social networking platforms. Heck. This very newsletter, which you’re probably reading on an iPad or your smartphone, and which could never have been delivered to you without Substack’s servers in the “Cloud.” Whoa. That’s a long way from the days when our car broke down and Dad got out his toolbox and fixed it. And Google Maps is a long, long way from folded paper. Things go wrong with all this stuff many times each day. Mostly, we push the “restart” button and pray. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, things are a mess. On some level, we understand we’re living in a fragile, brittle house of cards. No wonder we’re all so crabby!
So I’ve been thinking a lot about the difference between the analog world and the digital world. The analog world is the one we go to when we pack up our tent and our sleeping bag and head for the woods. The one we go to when we work in the garden or go shopping at the farmer’s market. It’s where we go when we make a meal from scratch, or light a candle. We go to the analog world when we turn off our phone and pick up a book or an old-fashioned local newspaper.
When it comes to music, the analog world is the one in which we sing without microphones and play instruments that aren’t plugged in. For tonight, I picked the purest piece of analog music I could find — “Snowden’s Jig,” by the Carolina Chocolate Drops. This piece is based on traditional string band music from the Piedmont region of North and South Carolina. This performance was recorded with very little special equipment, in an alleyway in Fresno, California in 2010. The performer on the far left is a guest, “Slapjazz” specialist Danny Barber. Rhiannon Giddens plays the violin. The performer on the far right is playing “bones,” which could be actual polished bones, or pieces of wood, spoons, whatever is handy. I have tried this myself, and am here to tell you it’s much, much harder than it looks.
For me, the analog world has become a kind of refuge. There are no bleats or pings or special ring tones interrupting my thoughts there. No interactive ads. No Xitter threads. No memes. I feel blessedly smaller, oddly less important but more competent, and generally less responsible for the enormously messy state of things once the cord that binds me to all things digital is cut. Less inclined to see the world as a giant puzzle that could be solved “if only everybody would just do X.” People will do what they do. Given a little peace and quiet, and a little time to hear one’s self think, a lot of things that are hard to see become clear. Like, for example, I don’t have to have an opinion about everything. There might be things I’m wrong about. Probably, in fact. I can do more for the people I know and care about than I can for strangers in distant places. It might be best to change myself before I try to change other people.
As I heard the Dalai Lama say at that lecture all those years ago, if we are kind, honest, trustworthy and brave to the best of our abilities; if we are grateful for what we have; if we set as good an example as we can; once we achieve these things in ourselves, others may look at us and wonder if they can do it, too. Being a better person in our everyday dealings with others is the most effective way to improve matters.
No poem this week. I made an exception, and spent Sunday morning grocery shopping so I could prepare our contribution to a dinner with friends. And it was well worth it! Till next time, be kind.
As usual a refreshing piece. I was especially taken with the musical selection, a sort of getting back to basics to illustrate the beneficent, salubrious and generous nature of the non-digital world which we forget so easily. Once I went to record a jug band that was playing somewhere in Greenwich Village for my college's radio station. The band was blowing into jugs, rasping on a washboard, banging spoons together and the like. In the midst of the folk song renaissance popular at the time, this was as basic as one could get. A more artful statement of the same idea was put forth in the play Bring in da Noise, bring in da Funk, which commented on the origin and legacy of music and dance that originated with slaves in the US. And also the total improvised percussion of Stomp. Thanks for the reminder!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bring_in_%27da_Noise,_Bring_in_%27da_Funk#Songs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1haurYykR0E&list=OLAK5uy_lK24UEdLGeKEr3QFr-eGS083UXbK_xMDs&index=5
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5z64xLXvLY&list=OLAK5uy_lK24UEdLGeKEr3QFr-eGS083UXbK_xMDs&index=25
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZWEcixg_HM