THE DIGITAL BABA - chapter 2
BLAH BLAH BLAH…..
The passing urban wallpaper streetscape opened silent conversations between silent individuals. The opposite of a vibrant night captured within the train’s fluorescent steel husk. I sat alone and felt deprived, longing of something more than the nine to five chasing the Australian dream. I did not see humanity as a paragon of mammals, rather a penultimate existence of something more and something less until death. 2006 our year of fat profits, fat people and a time where the media supported this. The flashing screen fed images of unfortunate circumstances if you did not obey. I watched a thin guy remove his hair tie, which in a second reflected moment, a young brunette imitated the movements whilst staring deeply into a text message, she added a flick of hair to the initial transfer onto a middle-aged woman. She then drew her fingernails outstretched, straining fistful of jet black hair before the rustle of people exiting to the station dispelled her conveyance of this body language pantomime. Next was the Cough to Cough, call and response choir between the sparse carriages congregation.
Internal monologue started to feel a certain emotion I could not grasp.
‘I can’t fathom the depth of people’s meditative awareness and specified ignorance of others. Suburban neurosis seemed to reflect how incapacitated with rules, etiquette and fear we’d invented. It was all ether we’d bought into just to get by without having to do our own thinking, and if you couldn’t think there was plenty of food and Drink. This commuting feels infectious with energy slowly being leeched from each working soul.. I mean.
He’d drifted into deep cynical angst with no idealistic promises of a neo-Culture, new-Music, new-Philosophers or new-Religious unity. Nothing particularly miraculously had appeared and yet ones in charge of the balance of power were still grappling with how to build everyone into mini-suburban emperors and rape the world of everything it had.
The city skyline gave way to suburban trees in each passing yard. He felt this place was the pain of existence manifested. Yet he knew it clothed and fed me in its thoughtless position between the northern desert and southern Antarctic. The isolation of Australia in general made for islands of people always stuck in apprehension of cliques and social standing.
I thought that in the digital age it didn’t matter where you lived, we were all condensed on gossamer of images. I could only reason that four legged cute animals doing stupid things were sent by aliens to save us from our own inability to face our reality. A temporary salve to the hell that permeated from the corporate machine, and so on, and so forth.
The news consistently force-fed its 6pm Porno-Death-Political Media barrage of Trends, Stocks, Baby Pandas, Assorted Natural and Manmade disasters of the worlds newest Designer Disease. I’d had enough and chose to go off the network.
I just wished and prayed for the four Horsemen of the apocalypse that would Appear. Yet it was the Bearded Terrorist with his can of American branded beverage that popped up during facile talent and reality shows. It worked a charm to sell more toilet paper and tinned food.
He stopped and thought about earned this month. Somehow by writing program’s and applications for phones and gadgets. He knew that basically his job equated to cut and paste from templates. Hardly utilizing all his vast skills and creativity. It was now more emphasized to battle office scruples to stay sane. Each workers personal politics was centre stage from Monday to Friday.
He quickly named it ‘The information or i-dark age’.
The myopic place where all the information in the world wont be content until all the information is removed from human minds and thus becomes meaningless. Kids grow up to hit their forties and reminisce about outdated video games and social media conversations…I don’t think so.
He watched a mix of Commuters strangled with wireless technological devices embodying a new revival of previously repressed cultural isolation, everyone was chained to anything with the lower case ‘i’ or ‘e’ prefix. The new generation unable to face reality without the Anti-depressants, Games, Apps and victimless digital frivolity of shocking, entertaining and disgusting that could connect to the Global Ego Masturbation of Western imagination we’d now produced. Now a status of evolved consumption or you’d be consumed and not much more could be done without massive sacrifice and risk.
I refocused from the scratched window to see the few people left seated on the train. Each unknown intangible asset of the working world machine was now truly plugged in and tuned out, negating the need for eye contact or involuntary conversation between the intermissions of work and home.
I had given up on TV, internet, cinema and kept a shit of a mobile for work purposes only. It was a new digital nineteen fifties age version 2.0, Now with double the denial and no residual trauma of WWII. It was merely the nine eleven Terrorrific excessive Airline security and age of self censorship.
Geek Sheik had given us new ways of communicating in fucking abbreviations or MEMES, or quickly outdated catchphrases from distractive media feeds.
I turned to the scratchy window but the internal monologue continued.
No way to stop progress? Except Global Warming and its melting glaciers or beloved wayward Asteroids to excuse our lack of real evolution.
A Ring-tone broke the contemplative resentment as people glanced from their screens for a millisecond. It was a silent majority as each available ear pricked up covertly. All joining in for a communal eavesdrop on the person’s mobile conversation. How disappointing that it lacked any content, appeared slightly mumbled in delivery of the verbal exchange of boring frozen dinner ideas as the guy referred to his children with mournful resentment.
I lost interest and caught few glimpses last moments of a sour winter sun blocked while passing a familiar sequence of lamenting gumtrees up to the station, the leaf’s wet and shiny spill brushing the carriage. I couldn’t reason the comfort and love we’re all chasing through our unrealistic expectations. I saw my station approaching that distracted my daily cynical focus on the remaining ceramic faced commuters.
I blurred the scene into a sea of winter grey cloth and variable multitude of tonal skin colours.
‘Just another day on the earth with the other seven billion petulant gene-pool slaves with Baby boomer yardsticks. We were definitely a lost race without a Despot or common Villain. There was a common feeling I was apart of the process and it was my destiny to go with the flow of the river, just like all the other dead fish.’ I thought
The last few remaining two stops relieved passengers onto the concrete platform. The fluorescent suburban name obscured with vandalism, while vague stoned kids gathered in the light. There faces appeared lost, almost unable to find solace within the suburbs prefabricated glacial pace of life. Faces diminished with out a moment of care to wish familiarity.
‘We’d become the predisposed sequences of work, eat, kill, sleep, procreate, pharmaceuticals, death, and the alarm clocks bell reminding us of the remaining life expectancy, struggling against death to get this larger more advanced TV, stainless steel appliance, Vehicle of status and Power over whomever you wanted?
Whatever it was we actually wanted?
‘Maybe it was just about power.’
Each one of the thoughts opened a new feed of debilitating frustration. He could not find something other than cynicism to cure boredom and raging hatred for the cage in my mind that built with each passing day. I stroked the mobile on, checking the time as the carriage emptied into awkward single figured heads bowed, hunched in prayer to their phones. It looked as if the new religious subservience to the digital priesthood has become the over-ruling religion. I restraining from picking at the dry eczema on my forehead and cheeks feeling a glance, there was a moment of sensitivity was never there to open conversation, as the pre winter rules of attraction quickly gave way into the numb winter frown and forlorn sighs took hold.
I knew it was me that was bitter, cynical, resentful, distrustful, old before my age, a dilettante, a jaded art student, anti-just about every organization and avid believer that our species was incapable of working together, well… with out using the tenants of evil to gain power over others and every living thing. I’d definitely been a particular species generated for a one off production. God’s very own intentional mistake, or just wrong time wrong place.
The end of line pneumatic hiss informed the usual three people to follow me down the platform and traverse the wire maze crossing. We all leaned forward striding up the steep aquiline road, shrouded with dense wet trees draped over high fences protecting a drab gathering of apex rooves. Each low-maintenance-evergreen-Eucalypts and manicured creeping ivy and whimsical potted accouterments balance the façade of each home.
He was on direct course to a usual Friday homemade pizza, masturbation and French Art house DVD’s that had become morose, forced and depressing. I threw my damp blue German Mariners Jacket across the chairs to dry and sat down to strum a couple of ideas on the acoustic, hoping to emote some sounds worth recording, each attempt more hopeless and depressing than the last. The years of self-imposed hardship and perpetual system of bridge building and burning had come to no wise advantage. I threw the guitar softly into a chair and grabbed a pen and paper to devise his next movement in life. He recalled a Documentary of the Original Baba’s of India and in a flash of light he was almost spoken to from a deep voice within his mind. He put the two disparate wants and needs together. The traveling of a Baba was the dispersal of beliefs information and culture through the mountains of India and greater parts of Asia. ‘Why not just embrace the new technology
“That is it I will become a Digital Baba
DIGITAL BABA MANIFESTO
A vow of total silence and non-interaction to the human world only the computer could direct his interactions.
The world must be only seen through digital format or digital lenses.
All social media platforms must be engaged constantly.
Travelling the world to find spiritual masters to find if digital is our true spiritual state of evolution.
Digital Enlightenment must be the only outcome.
He was quite happy with his moment of inspiration and endeavors that now faced him in his ways of attaining digital enlightenment. He paced back and forth as his mind began playing with the coding for a application that would access the internet hive mind and all known knowledge and basically feed his behavioral responses and access the global mind and language. He had written programes using he basein logic before and apps were a piece of cake. He chewed at one fingernail too excited to notice he’d ripped the nail off and watched a thin sliver of red appear to congeal.
There was notime to lose. He rang up work and gave an excuse of glandular fever and sourced his online fake doctors certificates to give him a week of paid sick leave.
“This app is going to be beautiful.” He coughed and then grasped the kettle and coffee cup. Storming around his apartment gathering printouts and began sketching the process and plan of attack.
was going into other than it was something worth losing.
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