RUDIMENTS 823.

RUDIMENTS, pt. 823

(from zero to sixty in four seconds flat)

The subject was telephones;

frightening things even in

1967. The household wire

phone was a bad blemish,

yet nearly every house had

one or more, and those that

didn't, wanted to. People had

'gossip-benches' in their homes.

Sort of a portmanteau seat

(my father reupholstered any

number of them; I've seen,

and lugged, my share), but to

the right or the left was a sort

of desk-compartment shelf

thing, for the telephone, as

a table-top, and for storage

too. Phone books, etc. I

detested phones, from day

one, and could never abide

them and to this day, unless

for emergencies and the like,

I simply do not use one; do

not have one; will not report

to one. Besides that, I have

nothing to say. Back to the

Gossip Bench  -  we had one

in my home when I was a kid,

covered in some horrid green

fabric, almost plastic-like, but

not. It was, honestly, seldom

used but at the same time was

 also not really part of the

house furnishings; it was

upstairs at a spare phone. I

had sisters, and the extension

phones, and Princess Phones

(incredibly, that was a pastel

colored, or pink, phone

marketed exclusively for

yappy girl teens). Nowadays,

I see men, or 'males' anyway,

with phones, yapping as much

as females. I always considered

the telephone something a man

would not use. Still do. It's a

feminine thing  -  its borders are

sentiment and emotion, or rank

babble. In the old days, my days,

a 'Man' didn't do that crap. Now

they do, and still insist on that

gender identification; wrongly.

I keep no place in my life for

either of those things : sentiment

or emotion. They went out with

the Nina, the Pinta, and 

the Santa Maria.

-

The earpiece and mouthpiece in

one unit, did you know, is a

French design - development.

The 'French phone' has a single

unit mouthpiece and earpiece.

(Old land-line phones, of course).

It shows itself as a singular

indication of the French

connection of the senses that

English-speaking people mostly

keep separate. French, the

'language of love,' was called

that because it unites voice

and ear in a unique way; a close

way. So does the telephone. It

is quite natural to kiss by via

phone, but it's not easy to

visualize while phoning.

-

Once I came across a statement

that really stopped me dead : 'To

the blind, all things are unexpected.'

Like the telephone conversation,

so with the blind. There's nothing

visual about it. One may think

they are visualizing, perhaps, the

other person on the other end of

the call, but it's only imagined

that that is so. Pushing even the

prostitute aside, the phone gave

us the 'call girl!' The prostitute was

a specialist; the call girl is not.

She is someone who listens.

She may even be be a 'matron, at

home, making some extra bucks....

off your imagination. All that

stuff is the power of extension,

(no pun) and the comfort of

the 'Gossip Bench' gets then

superseded by other uses. I

wonder, did anyone expect

all this?

-

I just never had anything I

cared to talk about on the

phone. One time, a friend

of mine got in the habit of

calling with each new

record album or interview

of some rock and roll demon

he came across, and we'd,

or he'd, go on and on at great

length about the comments

or the cuts. Frankly I was

bored, and added little. Any

contribution I made to these

conversations was to simply

reiterate or agree with what

he'd just said. It dawned on

me that NOTHING was

getting done, no real

information was being

transferred, and all we were

doing was validifying some

dumb status quo. The phone

was proving itself useless.

I was that distanced. The

format of the phone just

really annoyed me. Later,

in the so-called 'business'

world, the phone was

everything. My God, I

could have died with

that one  -  placing orders,

for paper, ink, binding,

rags, whatever; or arranging

trucking and delivery, or

even the endless pricing

and bidding on print-jobs.

Hideous, nasty stuff  - not

worth the language  and

not worth ten cents of my

time. I often wished to be

deaf, and dumb. Figuring

I was, at the least, halfway

there, on the dumb.

-

One of those African 

countries, right now I 

forget which, let's say

Gabon, they went from

'nothing' in the last 30 

years, to complete cell 

phone coverage. OK? 

Big deal? They skipped

ever having telephone poles

and wired lines! Think of 

that. They were propelled, 

en masse, into this era 

without the tedious

compunction of land 

connections, telephone 

poles, wires and lines.

I guess 'infrastructure' for

the phone companies  -

which we had years and

years of time to get used

to, sort of makes a grasp

or understanding of what's

going on a bit more stable.

A sense of craziness is less

pervasive? (In Pennsylvania,

we had a 'party line' of maybe

the next five or six gabbers 

down the road  -  for the first

few years before they then

modernized. I'd never heard

such annoying stuff. What 

was the most annoying art was

the way it rang : You had to

listen to all the ringings. I

think we were, as newest 

entry, four rings, for our 

party. So you'd have to 

carefully listen for the 

pattern and see if it

stopped and repeated 

at 4-rings. Really pesky, 

because you had to go

through the whole sequence,

and because of that you'd

get everyone else's rings

too, even if not for you. It

seemed like the darn phone

was always ringing).

-

Anyway, think of these

African people, going right

from a nomadic, bushman,

status, let's say, to cellphones,

as civilization settled in on

them. What magic was that!

It must have been incredible, 

plus I bet it wreaked havoc

on all their old and tribal

beliefs in spirits and shamans

and tribal tokens and 'contact'

with other-worldly stuff. It

could have driven them all

to a proven insanity  -  it's no 

wonder we see all those crazy

photos of them now, walking

about in all those cast-off

American tee-shirts and 

clothes. Joe's Plumbing.

Teddie's Pizza. Ralph's

Army-Navy. They had no

longer any 'reference' to

the outer rim of all that old

and spirit-magic stuff which

had buttressed them and their

societies  -  or what there was

of them  -  for all those years.