Harry Martinsson must be rolling in his grave

Dear Mago,
I can still remember one evening in the sixties when I drove you home. I had a teenage peer along to keep me company, as though you didn’t count. You sat in the back seat, and since you were hard of hearing, we spoke as though ... weren’t there. To this day it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that you could in fact hear most everything we said, but chose to tune out.

In the year 2007, we may no longer skip ropes but do still play games. Many, especially boys and young men, use joy sticks to maneuver through virtual reality, up to eight hours a day I hear. It’s new biology. We “zap” through TV channels, surf internet sites, and slide around with soap operas. Everyone seems to pick up speed on new themes, new subjects, new thoughts that quickly displace one another at random, like scattered showers of meteorites. No question of making conscious connections, but of protection. Ultimately, a fragment of a thought latches onto some “blog” to fill a void, and avoid the inevitable. It's new technology.

Harry Martinsson is surely rolling in his grave. I’m relieved for the time being to believe that I can still return to the Earth and the island where I was born after the atom bomb. But what about collective memories, conscience and culture, the muse and the mime?

Literally half deaf myself these days, I find myself struggling to hear what is going on around me, often turning off and tuning out interference. Will I never again hear a chorus, just chaos? Fortunately, you offer me another a perspective, the crow’s nest, center balcony, from where I can read lips and discern some sort of a carrier mooring in the bay. I hear a song and a celebration, of you and me. Dad has climbed up to the center balcony just to tell me how much you and your sister loved to sing too. Känner hur det värmer att bli sedd av pappa i samma andemening som farmor.