Are Friends Electric?

Re-engaging with technology. Or rather not engaging with technology again. I have a twitchy Catweazle quality when confronting the vagaries of flashing lights and wires (dont get me started on "wireless" technology - actual, low level inconsistent magic). I was a late adapter, and to this day I retain a wariness that borders on the medieval - I stare blinking at the domestic marvels of the modern world like a peasant dabbling in the black arts. I always expect it to blow up in my face - and it always does. 

Actually that's not quite true. I'm very comfortable with light switches, flushing toilets, modest televisions and refrigerators. Basically any technology that predates my birth is fine. I can get in a car without imagining I'm Jonah swallowed by a whale. I don't know how any of these things actually work, beyond the broadest strokes, but I'm comfortable with them. A big black Bakelite phone that sits on its own table in the hallway? Lovely. Big curly wire? Mmm. Chunky, clunky rotary dial? Can I get some coffee with this?     

Again I know how none of that stuff works, but that's fine. It's big jolly furniture sized technology with years and years of warranty. You could drop a bomb on that stuff and it would just walk it off. There was no built in obsolescence in those days. Now, mattress manufacturers tell you that their product will be worse than a bed of nails in eight years. Now you go out and buy technology fully expecting it to not to connect to any known power source within 18 months of purchase. It will spontaneously combust, refuse to recognise your fingertips and relay any and all information in cuneiform b, because modern business models rely on you buying all the shit all the time, otherwise the propped up horror of capitalism will collapse, and then where will we be? Don't ask me, I'm as bad as you. I have this stuff and it gathers dust through lack of use. In many ways I'm more wasteful and profligate than you are. There. Happy now?         

I'm trying to record a podcast. A Stalemates podcast. You'd think people would be queuing up to assist me in this endeavour, so beloved are the literal hours of raucous chat and interesting tidbits of information we have collated over the years. Even the tone-deaf naysayers who insists its like "being in the pub with Joe and John" should, after a year of not being in any pub at all, want to soak up that heady ambiance - even though the show in its many iterations is absolutely nothing like being in a pub with us. If it was an accurate depiction Joe wouldn't even be on the show for the first hour. It would be the sound of me swearing under my breath and the furious scratching of my pen nib. 

We've tried a few versions of Stalemates over the Covid crisis - we are beacons of hope after all - recorded separately and then spliced together, or attempting to record on our laptops, where Joe sounds fine and I sound like a hornet in a tin can. So I'm attempting to add a microphone and record it over Zoom. I have two microphones, neither of which seem to work in any traditional manner. 

I have no children, so I have no one to bail me out. I'm on my own, looking at two pieces of technology refusing to talk to each other - actually a pretty neat illustration of mine and Joe's relationship. I'm fairly certain the fault is with the connecty bit - the signal gets through but it is intermittent, it cuts out. I could just buy a new one. It would probably work. But there's always the possibility it wouldn't and the frustration and anger that comes with it might actually finish me off. I am volcanic in the face of failing tech. 

And there's another thing. On one level I don't want it to work. I don't really believe in technology. I'm in complete denial. Computers are for nerds and dweebs, not cool guys like me. I write with a pen and paint with a brush and buy my pornography from a newsagent. There's no way this profane science can have encroached on my world - I'm an artist. I wont wear your lab coat and pocket protector - I'm in a paint spattered smock, drinking bad red wine and wrestling with modernism. I think its a fad. I think your zeros and ones will all blow over. We'll be sending telegrams and a man with brilliantined hair will be telling me "Excuse me, Mr Higgins - you're wanted on the telephone" while I'm at the club. 

I'm supposed to be directing a film in the next month or so. That's going to go well.