Dale Bozzio, the female lead singer of Missing Persons, an
early-80’s MTV darling band, was anything but subtle. Teaming up with former
Frank Zappa musicians, Missing Persons was a bright, but short-lived comet in
the transition between the 70’s and the 80’s, jumping onto the scene with
“Mental Hopscotch.” Bozzio and company were known by appearance for their moussed-up
coiffures and heavy pastel make-up, not to mention Dale’s lack of clothing for
the most part.
The follow-up LP to the eponymous “Missing Persons” was
“Spring Session M,” (an anagram of the band’s name) and contained the plaintive
song, “Words,” in which Bozzio asked the all-important question, “What are
words for, when no one listens any more?” Indeed.
As one can easily see from the timeline of my posts this
year, there was is a glaring lacuna of a few months. As I have also recently
written, I was blocked. Seriously blocked. I had the ideas, but not the
motivation, nor the desire to write. I didn’t care, much for the same reason
that “Words” has always resonated with me at some level. I have at times in my
life felt that “words” are futile, especially when no one is really listening.
Listening is an Art, a techne
perhaps, not a given. It is often taken for granted that the person to whom we
are directly talking, may in fact not be listening at all. It can be a rather
unsettling realization.
During my hiatus from posting, I wondered to myself quite
often, is anyone listening? That is not on a judgmental level, but purely
technical. Was I just throwing out hundreds of bottles with messages (messages
that I cared deeply about) scrawled on scraps of paper, thrust out into the
vast Internet ocean?
I knew of a handful of people in my immediate life who would
read my posts via casual comments in emails and whatnot, but beyond that, it
was merely numbers on the Stats page of faceless, nameless, comment-less
hypothetical readers.
One of my favorite lines from a movie is from Shadowlands, a glimpse into the tortured
mind/life of C.S. Lewis, best known for his Chronicles
of Narnia and Christian Apologies (in the Greek sense of “defenses,” that
is). Lewis, articulated by Anthony Hopkins, was not a happy man, and fought the
shadowy angst that indeed, no one was listening.
The line, spoken by Peter Whistler, one of Lewis’s students
is “We read so that we know we are not alone.” That has conversely been my
motivation for writing. Why have I thrown out literally hundreds of messages in
bottles? Perhaps so that someone out there might indeed pick one up, read it,
and in turn, not feel alone.
Sometimes, like the lyrics from “Words,” I’ll slip in a “I
think I’ll dye my hair blue…” to see if anyone is listening.
What I have come to terms with though, in the past month or
so, is something quite different. I have come to realize that it does not
matter if I actually know that someone is listening, but rather, it is just the
act of writing that allows me to feel that perhaps I am not alone.
In a world of billions and billions of people and words, it
is all I can do to make a few of them count.
Thanks for listening…
