1977.

 

I work in the family business, at family rates.

I have saved up my coin religiously.

A save, I do not spend.

 Not quite knowing why, but I appreciate how much work is involved to spend a $1 unwisely.

I have saved.

I am an 15-year years old.

 

I see Kiss on our local music video show (Countdown, Australia) and am besotted by their song"Rock n Roll All Night"

I save my pennies,

I save my pennies. 

For the very first time, I venture into a record store.

I search through their records, layer upon layer, in alphabetical order.

FINALLY, I find Kiss.

My heart sinks.

It is 'Kiss Alive'.

A DOUBLE live album, costing DOUBLE the price of a regular album.

 

My coin is hard-earned and under paid.

 I consider the process carefully.

I weigh the value of the double priced album on the basis of the one song on the album that I know I love.

 With worms squirming in my stomach, I purchase the albums.

 

The very first record I have ever purchased.

 

I hold it in my hands.

I guard it carefully on the way home.

 

I place it as carefully as a new born babe on the turntable.

I move delicately, so very delicately, I move the needle to the beginning of the album.

 

I listen to the crackle as the needle finds the groove.

Then begins the music.

 

I HATE EVERY SINGLE SONG except for the one song that drew me in.

 It is a peculiar experience.

 

To invest all your savings into something you hope will return multiple times in the investment, only to return the one thing you already had, and the rest of the investment is to be lost.

 

Or so initially thought.

 

But, because I had already invested, I re-listened and re-listened trying to seek out, and recoup, the value you have invested.

 Sometimes it is only half a song. A melody. A phrase.

Sometimes nothing at all.

 

I came to learn to love many aspects of the album, that I initial;y thought I had squandered my hard-earned coin on, but I have learned that by sticking to, and digging deeper than my first reaction, I was  able to grasp the deeper, more sublime, aspects of things that I first failed to appreciate on first listening/encountering.

 

And, although I try very hard to be otherwise, I find this pattern to repeats (albeit in ever smaller cycles) with everything new and unexplored.

 

We humans are strange creatures.

And that is kind of cool in itself.

 

 

 

 

 

July 15 2019

 

Of all the exciting things happening as our world hurtles along on the coat tails of technology, none is more terrifying, than the use of 'social media' to create and enforce the hive mind.

Ultimately a world hive mind would, theoretically, create a world of peace and billions of people working towards the same goal.

The wonders and progress that could create are mind-blowing.

The price for it, however, is so far beyond asking, as to be unbearable for any human being who values individuality and self-determination and autonomy of thought.

In other words, the very people who have risked all and taken a different path to the masses are usually the ones to change the world, are the exact ones that will be left without a voice in this hive mind world.

When everyone thinks the same, then everyone continues on the same track.

It is the dreamers and shakers of the world that create real progress.
The very enemies of a hive mind.