Strange Days

I'm feeling contemplative, philosophical even, as I sit in the living room of the Florida Avenue house I am quickly growing to love, as I sip a glass of red wine and listen to my favorite R.E.M. song, Gardening at Night.  

Since the death of my high school classmate, David Easterling, last fall I can't listen to R.E.M. without thinking of him.  He was on R.E.M. early, before anyone else in our group.  If fact, I named this Spotify playlist "Dave's Driver 8," in his honor.  

Sometimes, when I stop to think about it, it's unfathomable how different life is now compared to 25 years ago, when I was 34.  At age 34, I would have laughed in your fact if you had told me what life would be like when I was 59.  We take so many things for granted, today, that it's easy to forget how different, and in many ways, easier, or lives are today than in the past. 

For better or worse, almost everything I need I can hold in the palm of my hand when my iPhone is in it.  I can call anyone in the world.  I can surf the internet.  I can look at photographs I've taken over the past 15 years.  I can find the answer to, quite literally, any question that pops in my head.  I can send messages or photographs to my family, friends, and clients. 

Not only can I pay for anything I buy with my iPhone, courtesy of the Covid-19 pandemic, I can order virtually anything and, often times, it will arrive within hours, courtesy of Amazon.  I have refused to cross the rubicon and order food from my iPhone but I might be the last remaining holdout.  

Right now, I'm typing on a laptop that's connected to the internet in a house I booked online, person-to-person, through Airbnb.  I'm listening to music that I'm streaming from Spotify on my iPhone, which is connected by Bluetooth to a portable speaker across the room.  Quite literally, I have a jukebox in my hand, one I pay a monthly subscription for (Spotify) yet, somehow, it pays artists next to nothing when their songs are played by people like me.  

Earlier, I was reading a Walter Mosley book on my iPad.  I purchased it, online from Amazon, and magical dowloaded to the Kindle App on my iPad.  It's in my Kindle library, along with close to 150 other titles.  Oh, and by the way, I turn the pages of the Walter Mosley book, which doesn't exist in any physical form, my moving my fingertips across the screen of my iPad.  

Don't forget, too, that I can place a bet on almost any game, sporting event, or proposition by using the FanDuel App on, what else, my iPhone.  

I could go on and on and on.

I mean, really, what in the hell would 34 year old Phil Newman think about all of this?!?

And don't get me started on AI, which its own thing.  

Strange days indeed.