Gregorian Memory

There are plenty of people walking around who worked in the art studios of advertising agencies and magazines. Layouts were cut out by scissors. Glue pots. Brushes. Ink. Water colors. Big tables, art directors considering, moving paper around, finding the balance, the taste, locking in the idea, sending it to be proofed, the proofs coming back, the scent of the print, holding the proof in your hands.

The chain of people in this process was long. The process supported hundreds. Each day in the city was a buzz of bike messengers, the city was alive, lines out the door at lunchtime, you were part of something, you felt it, you lived it, you loved the belonging, the making, the being.

Bittersweet memory. All of that gone now. Skills fading. We retreat to our towers. We work in silence. Talk to a machine. The machine talks back. Some of us celebrate this substitution, this progress. But most of us surrender. It’s inevitable. There’s no stopping progress. Keep up. You’re being left behind. Like falling off a ship in the middle of the ocean. You watch it sail away. You are alone. That’s the fear, isn’t it?

We have these debates. Three years ago it was the metaverse. Now it’s artificial intelligence. The debates are fierce. We are good at doom. So we trudge into our socials and seethe. The pot boils. Our fingers pound the keys. How dare you!

Yesterday, I went into the garden. There’s this invasive vine. It climbs through the trees. It chokes the flower beds. The only way to deal with it is cut it out. Get your hands in the soil. Rip. Hack. Sweat. Satisfying. Like glue pots on a big pine table. Tactile. Good word. You can taste it.

The challenge is to find the real in the unreal. It’s there. The challenge is to understand where digital reality ends and human reality begins.

We live in this flat-digital earth. I think the most disturbing thing is the compromise. The dismissal. Ethics are quaint, left behind. Resistance is trite. Get with the program but the program is infinitely expanding, changing, folding in on itself, consuming itself. Reflection better be fast. Decisions without deciding.

Every day I try to sit at my piano and play. I put a guitar in my hands. I feel the vibration in my gut. It’s like a balm. It’s healing. It’s actual, real, it’s a moment. Singular. I believe it changes the world. I believe the chords float into the air, leave the planet, join the stars.

Chase the real. That’s all I’m trying to say. Savor it. Nurture it. We only have so many breaths to take. Touch your lover. Sit in a coffee house with a friend. Sit by the lake and feel the wind.

There are people walking around who used to live in a different world. It’s always like that. Generations. Worlds lost. New worlds created. What we seek is a continuation, a link, a chain, an evolution, a consideration, a moment, a reflection. We live in the reflection as much as we live in the future, but neither as important as the breath we take.

There’s a church I go to. It’s cool. It’s silence. I love to hear the silence. Listen. The echoes never fade in this place. Gregorian memory. It takes you through.