On Viewing a Video

Beto ‘Riginale

Many videos are now available online of musicians socially distancing yet creating videos of classical music. The video above is one example: Dvořák’s New World Symphony. Each musician plays in synchronization, each in their home, socially distanced from the other and from the conductor.

We have had social distancing of discourse for more than a century -the telephone -and more recently through computers and email, and more again through WhatsApp and Facebook.

Now we exist in a world of nearly total isolation, each relegated to their home, no physical contact, not to mention etheric and astral interaction. Will we live in a world with no smiling faces, no warm touch or hugs., nothing but that cold flat computer screen or phone?

If, as seems likely, we will need to endure the lack of genuine human interaction for the next few years, as each fresh wave of the current virus and its mutations rolls over humanity, will we have forgotten what human contact and interaction is? Will we live the dystopia depicted by Orwell in cold concrete cells dominated by the voice of Big Brother (our government)? Will we give up our humaneness for fear of illness and death?

I live the life I live – apart from much social contact – by choice, not because of fear of a government edict. The life I lead is one of peace and beauty, one achieved through reducing my surroundings to only what is essential, unfettered by what the society in which I live deems vital for me.

Is this our new world?
Is living a life of fear what lies before us?
Is that dystopian sub-human life a life at all?

Beto ‘Riginale
May 2020