Published Wednesday, October 14, 2009 4:13 PM
Updated Wednesday, October 14, 2009 4:14 PM
Now I’m getting to where I really like it.
I can’t quite bring myself to twitter; no one needs to hear from me that much.
No, the attraction of Facebook, at least for me, is more of a retro thing, really. I mean, knowing you can power up your computer and visit virtually everyone you’ve ever known in your entire life is a little boggling. It’s kind of like when you’re a little kid and believe the car radio actually has a population of inch-high musicians who live in it and play that music – only this time, you click a mouse, and it’s for real. They really are there.
It’s exhilarating and frightening. I can see how you better hope someone didn’t take that picture of you at the Halloween party as you wallowed in a baby pool full of beer singing dirty limericks while dressed as a flasher.
I’m thinking it’s a darn good thing there were no such things as cell phones, phone cameras, You Tube, and digital anything when I was a wild and really stupid young buck. People took pictures, but film was expensive so they didn’t do it that much.
Then in recent years, technology has made some profound changes in our lives. Digital cameras forgive even the lousiest photographers. E-mail has largely replaced stationery. We have become connected to the world, literally.
Then along came Facebook, something I thought I would never, ever be remotely interested in exploring. That’s for kids and cyber geeks, I said loftily. If I do it, of course it will only be a business tool; none of the endless parade of time wasting activities with which people involve themselves for me.
Yeah right. In the space of a couple of months, I have somehow managed to reconnect with nearly 300 people, many of whom I hadn’t thought about in years. To be fair, I don’t do any of the silly games and such, nor do I spend a lot of time chasing down folks from 30 years ago. Nonetheless, I admit it hasn’t been a business tool so much as a continuing reunion.
What can I say? It’s good to connect with people I haven’t seen in years. It wasn’t too long ago I came to the realization – with apologies to Tom Petty – that people come and people go and some grow young and some grow old. The point being is that life has traditionally been a series of transitions and your good friends now are your good memories a short time from now. That’s still somewhat true, but only if you want it to remain that way.
The band in the radio has come to life.
I recently reconnected with a buddy of mine from some of the wild old days of Hot’lanta, the first drummer in the first band I played with down there. A great guy, hale fellow well met, a dude with whom you never knew what turn the night could take. Oh yeah, and a darned formidable drummer, one of the best I’ve ever seen – or with whom I’ve played. We were a solid, hard-rocking rhythm section, to say the least.
These days, he has -- like so many of us -- become a solid citizen, a successful businessman and devoted family man. I suppose we old rock and rollers do get dragged, kicking and screaming, into respectability. This is good, if for no other reason than the only other options appear to be poverty, death, and/or incarceration.
Back then, he was the face of the band. We would play a gig and you could hear the women say things like, “Did you see that drummer? Wow!”
I never heard such things said about yours truly, the bass player. The comments referred to me were more along the lines of, “I wish that doofus thumping around back there would buy some pants that fit and get out of the way of the bathroom door.”
Nonetheless, we had fun and made some pretty good music.
But all things come to an end. Eventually, I would leave Atlanta and move to the beach, where I would truly take leave of my senses and become a full-time writer and musician. In the ensuing years, I would wonder about my old buds -- especially the musicians like my old rhythm section partner -- and hope their lives were good.
Thanks to this aggravating phenomenon called Facebook, now I know.