Last night I stood on the roof of my apartment building with two total strangers and watched the blood supermoon eclipse peer its etherial eye through intermittent clouds, as if parting them by some will of its own. This was the first time I'd spoken to any of my new neighbors for more than two minutes, and it felt good to focus our common humanity on a genuine celestial spectacle (see Week 18, a personal favorite, for more on a similar subject). My neighbors and I took turns discreetly texting, tweeting, or otherwise engaging the social sphere with our photos and thoughts on the event. Nobody was outrageous with their technology in the moment, but it was there with us, just as it always is. Satisfied with the mystical and unifying wonder of the cosmos, I went back indoors and within minutes I had fallen from the heights of the supermoon, down down down to the murkiest depths of my personal devices. This is a tension I have addressed from time to time, and I think my generation is uniquely suited to comment on it. We straddle the line of what was and what is coming. We just barely remember the old world, and thus hold a lingering suspicion of the new, even as we embrace it in our routines. We make a habit of living with suspicion, of looking behind our backs, of feeling like we may soon need to flee, and all the while we calm our nerves with fantasies of the wonders that await us in the data. I seek the moments that puncture these fantasies. That's what I'm singing about this week.
-M.E.
lyrics
Picture yourself standing outside
Everyone marvel at the night sky
Later on when you're all alone
Once again stare into the catacombs
It makes you want to run run run
Run run run in the open air
No, Listen you should run run run away
Never look back lest they see your face
'Cause to the old world
Everyone looks like a cannibal
And in the new world
Everyone feels like a rising star