NY and me (retitled: Time and me)

Written in May 2015, but as I re-read this, i know i'd write the same exact thing today:

I sat in a cafe in NYC this past Spring, a beautiful Spring, and this is what came to me...

To so many it sounds like a broken record, but the goddamn phones are ruining our society.  They're taking down this section of the the human race that buys into their importance as a lifeline to everything but what is right in front of them.

Someone's nose in a book, someone reading a paper, almost invites a comment, albeit brief in many case, but in some...it's the window to a new conversation with a stranger;  a meeting of the minds:  Have you read?  Did you see?  What did you think about...?

People still move at the speed of light.  The still predominately wear black.
They eat lunch from 12-1 and it's never brought from home.
They still yell, "Hey, how are ya?! and "Get the fuck outta here!" both of them, lovingly.

I'd like to say it feels like I never left.
Then I realize,

I move slowly now.
I rarely wear black.
I'm lucky if I get to lunch and it's always brought from home.
I don't yell out so much, 'cuz I don't see my people.

But the biggest difference today is that every single person in the city is staring into a phone.  They all look down and peer into something the rest of us are not a part of.  The people seem younger.   I don't exchange smiles with the boys on the street; I must seem older.  I don't recognize the bartenders.  And even if I wanted to, the eye contact is almost impossible to make:  They're all on their phones.  

Hello, 1982 in a nutshell

 It seems, sometimes, the best way to use today's technology is to search for scraps of yesterday's simplicities.

Luckily, I suppose, is that most nostalgic debris exists somewhere  on the 'net (might be audio only, or someone just videotaping their television, or one single picture).

This interview on one of the biggest shows of the day (but with a continued character study even today,  of david letterman) - this is pure gem capture of 1982.  Right down to Letterman asking Carole King what she got paid to write studio songs - and kept asking until she answered.  King's nerves with confidence, her headband, the piano player on national tv in a tank top, getting the mic caught and no stage hand coming to her rescue, the way she constantly adjusts her hair while in the her mega boots, the music itself.  Gads, I wish we could return to the innocence of naiveity around self, fame, anything being filmed...