In 1981 Raymond Carver published a collection of short stories called “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” – also the title of a sad and powerful story in the collection. Carver’s theme, as you will know if you have read his work, was the abyss between people, the yearning to reach out, to love each other, and the difficulty we humans have in doing just that.<\/p>\n
But now, nearly three decades later, we have entered a new age. Emotional expression has been boiled down to sound bytes – tweets, texts, blog posts, scribbles on facebook walls and all the other modern tricks we employ to fill in the vacuum of life’s random moments. This constant chatter in short electronic bursts can give us the feeling that there is no distance between one human soul and another, no alienation at all.<\/p>\n
I wonder whether we as a culture are gradually mutating as a result of Twitterization. I don’t believe for a moment that we have found a magic cure for alienation, for misunderstanding, for the essential distance between us all. But I do think we may have found a drug that dulls our perception of these things. If you can send and receive dozens of little messages throughout the day, post your moments to Facebook, type out 140 character epiphanies into the aether, then perhaps you can create the illusion that the demons are at bay – the demons of loneliness, the demons of sorrow.<\/p>\n
The demons of mortality.<\/p>\n
In Carver’s world, people regularly found themselves face to face with their essential loneliness. But now – thanks to the miracle of modern technology – we can create walls of chatter throughout the day that shield us from those feelings.<\/p>\n
Perhaps this is a good thing – maybe the drugs help.<\/p>\n
Who am I to judge?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In 1981 Raymond Carver published a collection of short stories called “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” – also the title of a sad and powerful story in the collection. Carver’s theme, as you will know if you have read his work, was the abyss between people, the yearning to reach out, … Continue reading “What We Tweet About When We Tweet About Love”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2051"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2051"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2057,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2051\/revisions\/2057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}