The Digital and the Mystery

We are everyday living more and more in a digital world. A binary world that consists fundamentally of ones and zeros. We are more inclined now to text than to talk. Especially now, we see less of each other. We gather less. Life is coming to us via internet and I would argue that to our detriment we have great control over what we see and who we see and with whom we interact. We are masters of our little domains. But we are not binary beings and the more we compress ourselves into a digital format the more we deny an essential part of ourselves. But what is that part of ourselves? It's like asking what exactly is consciousness? It's a mystery. 

We have all probably heard it said that we communicate as much (or more) with our bodies as we do with language. The small expressions of our faces, the comportment of our arms, the inclination of our heads, are all communicating and we are amazingly aware of these little micro communications. Mostly we are unaware that we are aware. We have sensitivities that are so finely tuned that we feel the presence of people, their mood, their character. One example of this is sometimes watching a show with my wife beside me I can, without looking at her, feel her disappear into her phone. I don't know how that is but somehow the shared union of our attention to what we are watching is broken and I feel her presence leave even though she is right beside me.

As a musician and a performer I have witnessed many times this mystery. Sometimes there is an amazing energy that comes where you become one with your bandmates and you become one with the people listening. And I have also had the awful energy sucking feeling of having no connection with your band mates and no connection with the audience. Why it sometimes happens one way and not the other is beyond me. It's a compilation of subtlety upon subtlety. Millions of little micro communications between everyone pouring out or damming up. 

I had a marvelous experience once of this mystery. It was 2008 in Germany after being stranded in Hahn airport on my way to Ireland. I had bought a ticket with Ryanair (whom I had never heard of) from Frankfurt to Dublin for the amazing price of 1 euro. I couldn't believe it. I left for Frankfurt airport on the train and arrived with 3 hours to spare. Confused because I couldn't find Ryanair on any of the information screens I asked at the information desk and the guy, with many lovely little micro communications of sympathy in his face, told me that I was at the wrong airport and that I needed to go to Frankfurt/Hahn airport in Hahn that was 120 Kilometers away. So I spend 150 euros on a taxi and despite the taxi driver hitting 220 kilometers/hr on the autobahn we still arrived 5 minutes late due to a stretch of road construction. Hahn airport is very small and my plane was sitting not more than 40 feet outside the terminal. But the lady at the desk, with many cold and cruel micro communications in her face, cared nothing at all for my 150 euro taxi fare. I was 5 minutes passed the check-in time and even though I could walk to the plane in 45 seconds I would have to fly out tomorrow for an additional 90 euros. Furthermore there were a number of flights canceled due to bad weather and there was not a single hotel room (within my price range) available. 

Dejected, anxious, and depressed that I had just spent 240 euros for nothing I looked around at the grim prospect of spending the entire night in the airport. There were many others like me, doomed to spend the night sleeping on the floor or some plastic bench. Fortunately I had my guitar with me and given that I am not shy to do a bit of busking I thought I might as well pull it out and see if I could return a few coins to my pocket. I positioned myself between the three cafes there were in the airport and started to sing. 

Nobody paid any attention to me. I would finish a song and nothing. But then I became aware that one guy at the cafe just to the front and left of me was paying attention. I can't remember exactly how I became aware, whether it was his foot tapping or if he was glancing over at me or something else, but I could tell he was listening. And just that little connection felt good. I played a couple more songs and then suddenly to my surprise this guy is walking toward me. He places a beer in one of those lovely tall glasses in front of me, he throws a 5 euro note into my guitar case and he says in a thick german accent “you're really good”. He smiles and walks back to his table and sits down. Something imperceptible happened in that moment – a subtle shift. People started clapping and coming over to throw coins in my guitar case. The server at the cafe over to my right brings me another beer and a sandwich! Two policemen approach and I think “uh oh”. They stop in front of me and one of them digs in his pocket and tosses a few coins in my case and they walk on. I'm having a great time now. The server at the cafe to the left brings me another beer. Then a whole group of Russian students come over and sit around me. Then there is another American guy who also plays and sings. One of the students pulls out her sketch book and starts sketching the whole scene because the scene had something in it. Something unusual and something beautiful. We are all talking and singing, drinking beer and sharing food. How did this happen? When I finally laid down on the hard floor in the wee hours of the morning I had a smile on my face and over 100 euros in my guitar case and a great memory. Beautiful mystery.

I remember reading an article about travel in one of those airline magazines the gist of which has stuck with me over the years. The author was claiming that cell phones and internet were ruining the essence of travel especially if you were young. She claimed that a huge factor in travel was the complete disconnection from what you know and understand. To get lost was a good thing. To ask someone for directions in another language was a good thing. To happen across that little tucked away restaurant while you were lost is magical. Mystery is allowed to enter. Maybe it isn't always pleasant but we are left with something indelible. By launching into the unknown we were abandoning control and inviting mystery and this is healthy. It somehow teaches us to be less afraid. 

But the digital world has changed and is changing that dynamic. Not that mystery can't be present in the digital world but do we ourselves allow for it? We are ever increasingly capable of controlling what happens in our own little bubbles. The pandemic has served to rapidly exacerbate this phenomena. And all those beautiful, and sometimes not so beautiful, micro communications that pass between us are being dammed up. The masks, the social distancing, the lockdowns have cut off the flow between each other. This flow seems vitally important to me like the flow of the tides are important to our world. This flow cleans us, raises and sinks us, grows us, compels us, challenges us and without it I fear we may become stuck in our own digital mud and less inclined and evermore afraid to leave it.

I think we all need to get out there and do some non-digital connecting.