Echoes of Flavio's Ghost Dreaming

First 'real' mail became trash. I only get envelopes in windows either demanding payment or trying to sell me stuff ('To The Homeowner'), this has been the case for many years now. I do get a couple of Christmas and Birthday cards (a couple, literally) and a letter over Christmas of a friend and former pupil who updates me on her life and times but leaves no address, real or email, to which to answer. The rest of the paper mail I receive is either boring or stressful.

Now e-mail is going the same way. Communication with friends and family seems to have moved to Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger and a couple of other ad-hoc apps. Most of the email I receive these days seems to be people trying to sell me stuff or people trying to scam me. And receipts of things I've bought, ok. It is a pity, in a way, given that on those messaging applications you tend to stick to one paragraph or two, email lends itself better to long form and when looking for something you said or was said to you it is much easier to do that on an email archive than trying to slowly scroll backwards on, say, WhatsApp.

I suppose every step we take and every door we open and get through involve the giving up of the possible alternatives. With email you lose the thrill (a small thrill but one nonetheless) of getting an envelope with an exotic postmark from a friend you've long not seen. With the messaging apps you lose the ease of writing or reading long form. What's next? Purely emoji communication, like the Kinographs in Neal Stephenson's Anathem? I don't think I would like that.

How's your week-end?

I'm just back from a gig, playing classical guitar at an Irish goth wedding.

Way way too early. Not even 6:00 am and I've been up for over half an hour. Bú.
(I'll live, though. And, in my line of things and in these times, better to have work than not to -music education is probably the very lowest priority in this economic and political climate...)

 And the world becomes a different place. 

So we have a new Prime Minister. Hm, I don't like him, I do not like what he stands for and what he intends to do but, on the other hand, the other lot had clearly exhausted themselves. Power seems to do something very noxious to people. I'm sure many of them start with good intentions, maybe they still believe they are only doing whatever's necessary for the greater good by the end of it. But they seem to become encased in their different little world, surrounded as they are by sycophantic cliques that will tell them what they think they want to hear.

I actually like Brown. Ok, shoot me now if you will. I do like him and believe he's an honest man. He just should never have been the Prime Minister. 

On a different sphere of things, my life seems to be changing enormously. A ghost from the past seems to be becoming the possible shape of the future for me. We'll see. Sorry to be cryptic on that one. It's all good, thus far.

Ok, more coffee and I'm out of here. I'm late already....