08 Feb The Bedsheets of Ed Sheeran

Ahh, the good old days, Gentle Reader(s). Does anybody out there remember the good old days? Like… I dunno… last week, or five years ago, or 20 years ago? Back when we were allegedly ‘GREAT,’ whatever the fuck that means. How about the pre-cell phone era? The pre-smart phone era? The pre-social media era? Or—cranking up the Way-Wayback Machine—the pre-intrawebs era? Kinda hard to believe that such innocent times actually existed, but indeed they did.

 

Well, for better or worse, I remember those hoary days of yore. I remember them pretty well, actually, considering all the drugs I did in the ‘70s. Or perhaps it was the ‘80s? Or maybe it was last week? Hell, I don’t know…

 

Anyway, Your Humble Narrator does not consider hisself a luddite, but neither am I a tech-head. I’m supposing I’m somewhere in between. I’m not short for devices: I’ve got an iPhone, a MacBook Pro, an iPad, an iPod, an AppleTV hockey-puck thingie, a pair of Apple Homepods via which I attempt (unsuccessfully) to flirt and argue with Siri, and a tech-heavy car that sees fit to render judgement on every aspect of my driving technique.

 

The conveniences and diversions offered by all these devices are undeniable, but the thing that bothers me, or, perhaps more accurately, the thing that worries me, is the degree of isolation from actual human intercourse that tech can engender. It’s all a concern, to one degree or another, but I’m afeared in particular of social media. The initial scourge descended upon us in the form of Facebook, of course, and just about everybody I know gladly jumped on board, freely surrendering their personal information into the bargain. Back in those days we were all pretty naive—blissfully unaware that the data about our selves, our lives, that we were handing over was to be monetized, weaponized, and sold back to us.

 

I can’t say for sure what it was, but something about the whole social media phenomenon gave me pause right off the bat. I don’t consider myself an un-trusting person, generally speaking, but something in my bullshit detector went off when the Book of Face first hove into view. I was wary. Skeptical. Of course, it turned out to be just the thin edge of the evil wedge.

 

So, Gentle Reader(s), just as I’m about to go completely off the rails with this, you might perhaps find Yourself bethinking unto Yourself ‘Self, what the hell is he blathering on about this time??’ I’m blathering on about this: The supposed connectedness that tech has bestowed upon us has, in fact, largely had the the opposite effect: We are more disconnected than ever. Yes, we can, in theory at least, FaceTime and Tweet from the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro, but is that really an adequate substitute for actual in-person intercourse? Will the pithiest and most heartfelt email or text (or Tweet, or Insta, or TikTok) ever be able to communicate with the same sincerity, intimacy, humanity as an actual hand-written letter? I would argue not. But then I was born in 1959.

 

I know—I’m old, and this is old Old OLD hat stuff, but I swear to you, I’m not even wearing my Old Hat today. I’m aiming at something a bit deeper than just the usual old-dude/hippie coffeehouse ranting: I’m speechifying about the actual debasement of human intercourse—the existential threat of humankind becoming disassociated from its humanity by way of technology. I know I’m far from the first, and almost certainly far from the last… though it could depend on what happens regarding that Chinese spy balloon what just got shot down.

 

Either way, the dismal genie is out of the bottle, and it doesn’t figure to be going back in anytime soon. I’m addicted to it, you’re addicted to it, and all we have to do is to experience that moment of reptile-brain panic that kicks in when the wifi goes down or the cell phone runs out of juice to confirm for ourselves that we’re all junkies. That, and running out of coffee.

 

Now, on to what brought this veritable fit of blatherment on in the first place. Well—many, many things, but in the most immediate sense I began ruminating along this line of rumination after I watched a film titled The Banshees of Inisherin. I’m sure you’ve heard of it, if not seen it. It’s an excellent film, in my estimation—the fourth cinematic effort by English/Irish director Martin McDonagh. It’s about two Irish fellas living on a small island off the west coast of Ireland in 1923. One Irish fella—Colm, portrayed by Brendan Gleeson—has a fiddle and a nice dog. The other Irish fella—Padraic, played by Colin Farrell—has a nice sister named Siobhan (Kerry Condon), a horse, and an adorable miniature donkey named Jenny. Padraic and Colm are besties with a regular routine of walking down to the pub of an afternoon and having a few pints. All is fine until, one afternoon, Colm starts ignoring Padraic. Padraic calls to Colm through the window of his cottage but Colm doesn’t even turn around. Padraic is confused, but continues on to the pub, takes a seat at the bar and buys a pint for Colm. Colm doesn’t appear.

 

Things go on from there in a droll/horrifying Hibernian tragicomic mode. Feelings are hurt. Digits, cottages and donkeys come to sad ends.

 

So, what’s going on in The Banshees of Inisherin is that Colm is ghosting Padraic. But seeing as how neither Colm nor Padraic possess cell phones or Instagram accounts, the ghosting takes place in the old-fashioned analog way. Back in 1923 if you wanted to ghost someone it required a bit more effort than tweaking a few settings on your devices. Of course, you could decide not to respond to someone’s letters or telegrams or carrier pigeons, but back then communication over distance was still a pretty iffy proposition. The telegram lines could get snipped by marauding Visigoths or the letter carrier might be eaten by a dinosaur—who knew? That kind of stuff happened all the time back then. If you didn’t hear back from someone and you wanted to find out what was going on you had to consult the Zeppelin schedule and head off to investigate for yourself.

 

Anyway, my point, so much as there is one, is that zeroing someone out of your life these days can be accomplished casually, almost thoughtlessly. It requires minimal effort to be cruel in the 21st century. Colm and Padraic might have taken things to an extreme, but at least they were engaged, in real time, in actual person-to-person discourse. There’s nothing casual about it. See the movie.

 

So there you have it. Now, perhaps you are wondering unto Yourself, ‘Self, why is this rumination titled The Bedsheets of Ed Sheeran?’ Fair enough. The answer is that I thought of the title whilst taking a shower one day and I figured it was good enough that I had to use it.

 

There is no ‘OFF’ position on the genius switch, Gentle Reader(s).