Michael said to me a little while back that he went to a rock concert in the late 90’s and he took a photo on his mobile phone. He said he only remembered the moment when he
looked at the image. He couldn’t remember the atmosphere, scent, feeling and everything nice about that moment. Lost to cybers memory and not a way he wanted to remember such a cool moment.
When Michael and I met back in 1997 we did not have mobile phones and social media was not yet invented. Facebook came about in 2004. I have a print out of my first email then called cc
mail. It was a note to Deb about how funk I thought Michael was. We both were issued with work mobiles in 1998. We did not embrace them until 2014.
My thing when I toured with bands was to go to the mosh pit on my own. My private time amongst the masses. ACDC in Brisbane was the only time I took photos on my phone. I remember every
other concert except this one and at the time I thought how cool it was going to be to have them. I have never looked at these photos.
When I was 16 I used to help mum in her work office. She had a fax machine. I was asked to send a memorandum to one of her clients. I said no problem leave that to me. Well, I must have
sent that fax 20 times. In my mind the machine was so modern I thought it sent the piece of paper through the wires. The sound of a fax machine calling a landline was a little on the wild
side, and the recipient in my attempt of modern communication was not impressed with it.
Now a fax machine does that actual thing I thought about 35 years ago.
Explaining why real is now unreal needs to be explained. Real is a feeling, a scent and touch, looking at it right in the eye and keeping that moment to yourself to be then filed and recalled
when needed. A memory in a device is not proof of life. It is satisfaction of the unreal.
