I’m sick of emailing and texting.  I never come over right.  Are sixteen emoticons enough to convey what I’m feeling?  All the punctuation symbols in the world cannot tell you what I’m trying to say.  Or the tone of my voice.  And are you really Laughing Out Loud (LOL) when you discovered you’d lost a fiver or that there was no milk left?  I have come to hate myspace, bebo, texting and all forms of interactive everything because it is NOT interactive at all.  The very technology that was supposed to make us less lonely has ended up making us more lonely, more incapable of communicating our hearts and thoughts than ever before.  It is Big Brother giving me a controllable menu of mentalities, emotions and acceptable language (you must use at least one swear word and end a text  with at least one x otherwise the recipient will think you hate them or are being sarcastic).

Well, none of them fit.  None of them. And how come the American/European versions are different? Why can’t I add the American emotions?  I don’t feel like you say I’ve got to feel and I don’t care that I don’t.  What is this really telling the next generation about world peace and politics?  Language is politics.  Commercial art, film, music and language has become bland, mediocre, appealing to the lowest common denominator. Education has been seduced by technology and really believes that teaching kids how to press buttons and write the right answers is the way to change everything. Well, it’s the way to raise teachers’ and executives’ salaries anyway.

Five years ago, I stopped watching TV.  I don’t have TV connection.  And yes, I don’t know what’s happening in ‘Skins’ and yes, I did miss the Channel 4 premier of ‘The Unloved’ by Samantha Morton. I did miss the Red Riding trilogy and Comic Relief. But I also missed all the dismal credit crunch baloney headscrambling nonsense and my happy, carefree, grateful days are partly due to a lack of this ‘essential viewing and listening’.  Every dictator and terrorist knows the best way to control people is through fear.

But my  idyllic island is not quite how I would like it to be.  I am Blackberry-dependent.  I’m sure I have become more introverted since I got one, ruder and lost all courtesy.  I wish so much I could just ditch it. I hate this selfish, frightened world I have created to keep these voices at bay.

The problem is I actually do love people.  They interest me. I want to keep in touch. But nobody has an address that stays.  They are all thrown out into the universe, into this virtual stratosphere which circles us with all our thoughts, feelings and dreams orbiting our planet while we beneath on planet earth  rummage around in boxes, helplessly chasing pieces of paper which take or give, following our vain ambitions believing they will lead somewhere concrete while our hearts soar way above us, laughing at our mundane ridiculous waste of time. So, yes, I cannot avoid everything.  I have to mess with some of these ridiculous devices.  I have to answer my phone sometimes. Every now and then, I do have to send a text although it is generally misunderstood and lands me in trouble.

I wish more than anything I knew how to talk.  And I wish, even more than that, I could listen. Really listen.