Musings: 2008 Archives

Arthur C. Clarke said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." This thought was also expresed in Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court: a modern man who travels back in time to the middle ages and awes the primitive locals with his "magic" modern technology. I think it is not too much of a stretch to say that most of our current technology would indeed appear magical to the people of the 19th century - what with iPhones, the internet, MRI scans, and so forth.

But I don't think that will be true any longer. Take a moment and think what the future could bring: immersive VR multiplayer games, anti-aging drugs, space travel, even hand-held laser weaponry... none of it sounds like "magic." It just sounds like very advanced science. If someone walked up to me with an alien teleporter from 2200, I'd just start asking them how it worked. I wouldn't think: "Oh noes! Magic!"

This reflects a two-part change in modern society, I believe. Firstly, because of the rapid advances in technology and their saturation of our daily life, we have come to accept that scientific mystery is not magic. We are surrounded every day by complex and amazing devices whose inner functions we couldn't ever hope to understand. Most of our gadgets were designed and built by whole companies of people with individual specializations. We are the product of Ford's assembly line, each doing our own little part as best we can and trusting that everyone else is doing the same. Mysteries are easier to attribute to the intellectual genius of another person than to mystical forces. Even in the most artfully executed staged displays, we look for wires and sleight-of-hand, not telekinesis.

The second part is that the idea of magic has become so very popular in the Oughts. Which probably hasn't been true for nigh on a thousand years, once the Christians started burning people at the stake for suspicion of it and all (actually, the Romans had some similar laws on that matter too, come to think of it). As near as the 1970s Dungeons and Dragons was linked with Satan-worshipping child-murderers in most people's minds. But now pretty much everyone can read Harry Potter and say they're a Wiccan without being tossed willy-nilly into prison on false-memory child abuse charges. Magic is a nice dream - an adult fairy tale to make life seem a little less cruel.

And I think these two changes have necessitated a shift in what we perceive as magic. Before, magic was just the unexplained. But now the unexplained can be very boring (advanced technology). Magic has needed to move into new ground - the unexplainable. Not just advanced science, but the anti-science. It exists outside of the laws of physics. Whereas wizards of the past were the most educated of their day, utilizing the forces of the universe in grand and unbelievable ways, now most fantasy stories internalize it into their characters as a talent, an innate ability that is powered by emotion or spirit. Magic is like perfect pitch - a special gift that only a few people have at which the rest of us can only wonder from afar.

There's something a little sad about that change. It's the difference between believing a great artist is made by working hard for years and years and becoming a master of his craft, versus believing that a great artist is born that way and produces his greatest work in his 20s and then drifts on into obscurity or monotony. It makes it easier for us to dream that we could be special, but a lot harder for us to achieve it once we have recognized that we are not.

I'm an old-timer on the Internet - not so ancient as the Bulletin Board posters of the early 90s, but old enough to remember when AOL was a walled garden and all the links fit on one page. The internet was so big then: full to the brim with tiny sites featuring fun games and comedic rants. For the lonely and isolated (like me), it was a way of reaching out and finding new families - best friends we would never have met, constrained as we were by physical location and social habits. When the late 90s rolled around and commercialism seized the internet, we complained that the fun places were being drowned out by the big brands. You couldn't find Barbie parodies anymore, or teasing twists of trademarked phrases like "Ham, the Other White Meat," because those companies were sending out lawsuits left and right. But then things turned around a bit with blogs and MySpace and the connections people started making in the Oughts. Web 2.0 was all about bringing people together, about making collaborations and virtual families. The internet became a world where we could socialize even better than the local coffee shop.

But I think something's gone very wrong. And - admittedly - this may just be me being old and missing the point, but it seems to me that instead of becoming a place where people who don't fit in can find a niche where they belong, the internet has ballooned into a giant clique where the nonconformists are more scorned and isolated than ever. Blogging is a popularity contest and - for all I love to read Dooce and the like - as a consequence, the less popular are dropping off the map, drowned out and never seen. Instead of connecting by setting up a little home on LiveJournal or Flickr, you just get told every day how incredibly worthless and undeserving of companionship you are, staring at that zero counter month after month.

And the senior clique? They are more confident than ever that they are all the world needs to hear. The way the internet en masse attacks movies like The Crystal Skull, while blithely ignoring the other monumental failures of the genre. The way everyone reads the same books (from Harry Potter to Y: The Last Man). The way everyone knows the same celebrity gossip and CuteOverload vocabulary. You are either in, or you are out (and yes, they all watch Project Runway and blog their reality TV picks with zest).

And I've always been an outsider.

I wander the internet now and it's entertaining enough in a sugary sort of way, like green Jell-o for my morning doldrums. But it's all so same-y and predictable. Occasionally I find a new site that makes me laugh, but it wears off after a few months. I read odd books and wish I had someone to talk to about them. Someone who doesn't like Star Trek or SG-1 or Harry Potter. I wish I had a smaller community of artists where I could feel like I wasn't at the losing end of insignificant.

And I guess that's the real problem there. There are over 6 billion people on the planet, and more of them get on the internet everyday. And - as in real life - there are more desperate-to-fit-in sheep joining up than lonely outsiders. Maybe it was different once, maybe it was smaller and more selective. But it's not. The world's not. And we can't be special anymore. Even the statistical uniqueness of our fingerprints is about to disappear up against that huge number of people. And I don't know how to accept that.

I'm looking at the piece of fairy cake and I just can't grasp how very small I am.

When I was eleven I got a cat named Caesar. He was a tiny kitten when he came into my life, but he quickly grew into a giant, fluffy gray tabby. He was an accidental addition to my life: I had been begging my mother for a cat for years, and when she finally said yes, I immediately came home with a little spotted female kitten from a friend's house. And my mom took in Caesar the same day from my older brother and his wife. It was an awkward moment. She wanted me to pick one, but they were kittens and I couldn't reject one. So they both stayed. And the female cat hated me almost immediately. But Caesar became the love of my life. At night, I would sneak him inside - even though it was forbidden - and let him sleep on my bed. I would clean up his kitten messes, and brush his tangled fur when he became a quarrelsome tom. I snuck him tuna and old clothes to sleep on out in the garage. He adored me and would rub against me with his whole body, just begging to be patted on the head or scratched under the chin.

Eventually the female cat had a tiny litter of her own. And a few months after that, she and her kittens disappeared. My mother told me they ran away. My sisters told me they went to the pound. I believed my sisters. But secretly I didn't care. As long as I had my fluffy Caesar I was happy.

As he got older, Caesar got pretty dirty. He lost a good chunk of one ear. Then his eye got pretty infected. I cried a lot and petted him more. He drooled on me and purred his heart out. Then one day he, too, disappeared. He was only a year old. My mother told me he ran away. My sisters told me he went to the pound. I didn't believe any of them. I knew he had died somewhere, all alone, fighting out his little half-feral tom life.

I never asked for another cat. My parents were relieved. They decided it was just a phase. My mother had never really understood the whole pet idea in the first place. Animals were more of a functional contribution to the farm in her mind. She hugged me and told me I was allergic to cats anyway. I didn't believe her. I was heartbroken without my Caesar. My high school years were lonely and bereft of his furry company. I kept the few pictures I had. For a long time I secretly kept his name tag in a little jewelry box. I would take it out and remember how much I loved him and how dirty and sick he had been at the end. And I hated myself because I hadn't taken better care of him. He was my best friend and the thing I loved most in the world, and I had let him slowly be eaten away by the cruelties of animal life because I was too young and stupid to know how to protect him.

Twelve years later I finally gave in and got another little kitten. His name was Orpheus, and he was an accidental addition too. I went to the Humane Society with my Significant Other and we came home with a little black female. And she hated me immediately. But the next day I found little Orpheus, the size of my hand, abandoned, crippled from hunger, and near death. And I couldn't say no, so home he came. He was a little wobbly at first, and jumped around the house like a bunny as he struggled to make his legs work again. But soon he could jump and snuggle and climb under the blankets and purr against my chest. And he was the love of my life. He adored me and would rub against me with his whole body, just begging to be picked up and held.

Orpheus grew up big and strong and I got him all his shots and the best food I could find, even though I couldn't afford it. I got him fixed when he was old enough and then I took him in for antibiotics after all the fights he got into anyway. I took him into the Kitty E.R. when his liver failed and paid $600 from my last credit card to keep him alive. I smuggled him his favorite blanket and fed him his favorite treats. And I thought, when he dies I don't think I'll ever ask for another cat. Because I'll be heartbroken.

But he got better. And he sleeps on my bed every night, even though I am allergic to cats after all. And I drool a little on him (because of the allergies) and he purrs his heart out. And even my little female cat comes around, snuggling up in the end and deciding she might like me too. And I look down at them and think, "I love you, Caesar."

Maybe I can never change the short, wretched life I gave my beloved friend, but I am making it up to him the only way I know how. By doing all the things for Orpheus that I should have done for him. And all the love that I give my little cats is the love that I owe my childhood cat. I miss him.