That haunting snippet of music you kept hearing on NPR, between stories on “All Things Considered”? Thanks to npr.org and the internet generally, you were able to track it down within minutes and listen to the whole song for free, because someone had thoughtfully uploaded it to YouTube. But alas, aside from that snippet, the song had nothing to offer, and it kept offering it for more than five minutes over progressively more synthetic beats. You try listening to a couple other pieces by the same band, and they’re so horrible you can’t get past the first minute. You’re reminded of a woman you glimpsed once in a side-street for several seconds, and how she haunted your imagination for years thereafter. What does the imagination know? Just enough to be dangerous. But the internet — the internet knows too much.
I live in an Appalachian hollow in the Juniata watershed of central Pennsylvania, and spend a great deal of time walking in the woods. Here’s a bio. All of my writing here is available for reuse and creative remix under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. For attribution in printed material, my name (Dave Bonta) will suffice, but for web use, please link back to the original. Contact me for permission to waive the “share alike” provision (e.g. for use in a conventionally copyrighted work).
Knowledge without application is Congress…
And, furthermore, when will all that knowledge evolve in a moment of Big Bangness into some kind of either Super Cyberborg, or Hip Super Wisdom, one?
Either way, those of us with ordinary imaginations are outclassed. Even God may be threatened. Wow.
you can still track it down on the web site. Click the link at the bottom of each story called “listen + playlist”.
ok, I missed the point.
this is true
Die?
Dave! Dave?
I’m afraid. I’m afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going.
I enjoyed very much stalking you just now.
Oh yes. Yes yes yes! The-woman-glimpsed-on-the-sidestreet-syndrome. Been there many times, except for me of course it was usually a man. It’s the old trick about only a fragment of knowledge being the necessary seed around which the imagination can grow the pearl. That’s why everyone looks so damned sexy in a domino mask. We onlookers give benefit of doubt and transform the ordinary into something utterly beguiling. Carnival time, when everyone is rendered beautiful by being only partially seen. Ho hum.
Now where was I?