Put Down your iPhone and Live a Little

 Years ago when I was working on ships as a pianist, I debated whether to buy a laptop computer.  At home in my small, personal, music studio the heart of the system was an antiquated (by today's standards0 PowerMac with a G3 accelerator card.  I had been enrolled in the Doctor of Musical Arts degree program at what then was just "Ohio State University."  (Now it has been rebranded "The Ohio State University.")  Choosing to matriculate at this university was a culmination of several situations which presented themselves to me over the course of a tumultuous year.  (This year was the year I moved back to Fayetteville after spending approximately five years in Columbia, South Carolina.)  When I first moved there, it was because I was offered a Graduate Teaching Associate (GTA) position in the jazz program and the University of South Carolina.  It was a good fit, and moving to this historical city was a step up in my quality of life.  It remained a positive experience, until President George H. Bush decided to invade Panama with a huge conglomerate force of American military.  For months these troops mobilized at all their locations across the continental United States entailing massive efforts of transportation.  Mobilization.  This is for what the 82nd Airborne is known, deployment to any hot spot in the world in under 48 hours.  Is this now an anachronism?  No one can deny the world has changed, and with this change also has come changes in military strategy.  It began with Donald Rumsfeld, a complicit dupe of then Vice President Dick Cheney to harvest oil in the Middle East.  Mr. Rumsfeld's ingenious plan, instead of sending a massive invasive force (boots on the ground) to Iraq, was to destroy this country's infrastructure from above with highly accurate bombs dropped by the United States Air Force.  With satellite imagery, a technique now well shored up over time, the Pentagon surveilled Iraq's landscape and specifically targeted the nation's integral infrastructure.  Power plants, sewage treatment plants, and television stations all were targets in America's mass annihilation of Iraq.  The irony remains.  It was the wrong country.  Iraq was not responsible for the attacks on the twin towers on Wall Street in lower Manhattan.  George W. Bush attacked this country as a vendetta and for revenge for his father's humiliation by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.  That's was a large price for a family vendetta, and consequently still America remains in the longest war in history.  ISIS or ISIL was created by this misguided and erroneous attack on the wrong country after our troop pulled out and left their equipment rife for the taking.  In retrospect the gravity of this action by head strong, ambitious, but misguided men is on the level of a war crime.  Perhaps it is a war crime, but with an unprovoked attack on the World Trade Center.....?  "Ah, President Bush.  Osama Bin Laden here.  We are friends, no?  Would you like me to mastermind a reason for the United States to attack Iraq and plunder their oil fields?  No?  Sounds like a good idea.  Let me set it up, because that despicable Saudi Prince refuses my offer and the use of my covert fighting force."  It sounds like a conspiracy.  All of that aside Rumsfeld's strategem to destroy a country from within was barbaric, unChristian, and violates the Geneva Convention.  Because these men duly were elected to power by the citizens of the United States, this attack was sanctioned and deemed appropriate.  Twenty years later our country not yet has recovered.  In 1990 when I left Columbia I was depressed.  My mind and my senses had shut down, and I did not know why.  It is not unlike the way I feel during Operation Rolling Thunder.  When the American military mobilizes with all of its brute strength, one will be intimidated.  The question remains who?  Perhaps the dozens of shooters who have purchased assault rifles and seemingly inadvertently killed innocent Americans subconsciously are being influenced by such warfare.  You cannot ignore the United States military.  When I became depressed in Columbia, South Carolina George H.W. Bush was invading Panama.  Troops from all over the continental United States mobilized by air and sea and descended upon this third world nation.  They came from Alaska, Texas, Alabama, and the East Coast.  With all of this aggressive energy enveloping the nation, it would be difficult to ignore, even if it was subliminal.  When I finally moved to Columbus, Ohio to attend OSU, Bill Clinton was elected president.  It was a good thing.  The country was ready for a seeming docile, soft-tongued, dough boy of a leader.  As it turns out Clinton is responsible for several grievous ills which have beset themselves upon the nation.  I don't agree with his auction of the airwaves single handedly creating the mobile telecommunications industry.  I do not own a cell phone, and I do not need one.  I do not need to talk on the phone when I am driving.  I do not need to talk on the phone when I am walking my dog.  I will not become addicted the that iPhone interface as enticing as it is.  My decision as to whether to buy a laptop computer was relevant.  A laptop computer is not a mobile phone.  It is not a glorified social amenity.  Although I had a rock solid Apple PowerMac G3 sitting at home, I decided a laptop would be a tool I could use to improve my job skills.  My decision proved itself multifold.  Over the years I began to use this laptop computer to store music files, most importantly music files of shows I was required to perform.  There were many.  When the cruise industry realized I could play classical music on the piano off to Europe I went, and the job description for the orchestra pianist changed.  Now instead of repeating the same Motown Guest Entertainer show, I was required to read and play multiple classical oriented shows.  In Sydney the performers kept coming.  Classical pianists, violinists, and singers became the norm for our evening musical shows.  I enjoyed the change of content, and while the music was more demanding never was it impossible.  In any situation you must learn the music.  That means having it in your head.  If recording these shows and archiving them on a laptop aids in the process, it is a positive.  The laptop computer became the major tool in my job vocation, and until only a few years ago it remains as such.  I couldn't pack the G3 in a carry on bag and fly it on the plane, so the portability of the laptop computer is its major asset.  The ironic downside of the iBook was that eventually I killed it.  It became such an extension of my body's kinesthetic process, unknowingly I began tossing it on my bunk.  (not literally of course)  Perhaps I tossed it on my bunk a few times...  Without realizing the danger of my action I came to think of this iBook as a hard cover text book.  As such you could treat it as such.  My experiment failed drastically, and after a few weeks the bottom of the computer flexed, the motherboard bent, and a conspicuous, now known, solder joint separated.  That was the end of my iBook G3.  I spent over five hundred dollars trying to diagnose this now known flaw.  For a short time this failure was covered by Apple, and they would repair it.  I unfortunately was out of this window.  Another laptop must be had, and it was a year old unit that upon arrival was slow and clunky in operation.  A few years later I upgraded the OS and magically its performance improved dramatically.  Today this computer still works, and the manufacturing date is 2005.  It stays turned all the time in SLEEP mode.  When I record cassette tapes this is what I use to record from my Nakamichi cassette machine.  The laptop computer has proven itself indispensable in my musical life.  I do not own an iPhone, and I do not want one.  The iPhone conversely has proven to be a great detriment to mankind.  We are less human of a race because of it.  Police would perform more humanely, if we didn't spend so much time researching humans on a network.  If we put the phones (and computers down) and relied on the tried and true but challenging process of listening and observing human beings in real time and people, there is hope for the future.