Last Friday evening I went out for a run on one of my usual routes.  I was running past a local pizza restaurant with outside seating.  There sat a very nice looking young couple with a partially eaten pizza for two sitting atop a little stand, and a half filled bottle of wine.  The young man and woman were both intently gazing…at their cell phones, texting, or whatever.  They did not notice as I ran by, and they were not speaking to each other.

I had the good fortune to see Paul Simon at the Mann Theater in Philadelphia a few weeks ago.  At the age of 74, he put on an amazing performance.  His backup band of ten musicians played too many instruments to count, including brass, wind, percussion, guitar and bass, and keyboard.  They all were fantastic.  Very moving, though, was his solo rendition of Sounds of Silence.

Hello darkness my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again.

Running along, alone, I get a chance to converse with myself.  I have running (heh, heh) conversations in my head as I go along.  Passing the couple paying attention to their smart devices and not to each other, I wondered what they were looking at.  Texting?  Looking at a “social media” site?  Checking out what other people are doing?  I don’t know, but they were silent.  Not everyone is like that, and certainly not in every social gathering, but how frequent it is to see, not just a couple, but groups of people all looking at their cell phones (an anachronism, now, to call it a phone), and not connecting with each other.  This conversation I had in my head, and it kept me going for another mile.

In the naked light I saw ten thousand people maybe more.

People talking without speaking.  People hearing without listening.

When I think of these lines, I think about the disconnect between groups of people in our country and also around the world.  I want to delve into a group’s message, to see what they are really trying to say.  What are their goals, their fears, their aspirations?  Why would there be a strongly supported vote in a particular state to enforce laws about who may use a particular restroom?  Are the proponents of such a law just rigid, or do they have some fear that needs addressing?  Do people who support a law promoting “religious freedom” in fact feel their freedom is impinged if they cannot refuse service to a gay couple?  If so, is there a way to address their concerns without denying the gay couple appropriate service?  The NRA and the people wanting to carry a 9 mm Glock on their hips into their local Burger King clearly have a message they want to impart, which is completely missed by the people wanting to ban assault rifles.  And in the USA, I think our ultimate miscommunication is between members of congress on both sides of the aisle who cannot agree to discuss or compromise on anything.  World-wide, there are just too many examples to start a list….

And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made.

At the Paul Simon concert, the sun had set and the audience was under the darkened cover of the outdoor theater.  There were hundreds of people holding up their cellphones capturing video of Paul Simon and his band performing.  The light from the cell phone screens reminded me of concerts past, before cell phones were invented, when people held up lighted Bic lighters as a symbol of solemnity and reverence when the song particularly moved them.  Now, the light from the phones is seen only from behind, and is a function of people capturing the performance so they can show their friends how lucky they were to be there.  In the first instance, the light from the lighters is a shared experience of people silently communicating.  In the other, it is all about the individual out of the moment.  From the back, though, I felt a sense of nostalgia.

Hear my words that I might teach you.  Take my arms that I might reach you.

One, an individual, must be receptive to be taught, or to allow an interaction.  We have opportunities to communicate, to agree, to disagree, and to blend thoughts.  Our world seems ever more dangerous and disconnected.  Whatever we can do to make it less so is an improvement.