Floating Towards the Future

Marcus has had a crazy idea simmering for months. As of late, it has started to boil over. He wanted to float a truck inner tube from his city to the next one over on the river. The trip would be around 35 miles with varying levels of difficulty. Marcus wrote for a hobby and he felt that this would give him something to write about.

Marcus procured himself an inner tube. Given the danger in a few parts of the river along the way, his family and girlfriend were dead set against this. It had been raining fairly hard in the past few months making the volume of water even greater than usual and the force of the current, stronger.

This did not dissuade Marcus. Despite his 35 years of age, he still felt as indestructible as he did at 21. He could be described as slightly reckless. Marcus felt that a life not lived, red lining the RPM’s, as he often joked, was not worth living at all.

One Saturday morning, Marcus woke up early. He got his stuff together and put it in his car before his girlfriend even noticed he was no longer in bed with her. He then gently woke her up. She was to drive him to the starting point, then drive to where he was hoping to end his successful little journey.

They got to the opening in the tree line where Marcus was to shove off. They said their good byes, Marcus wide eyed and electric, his girlfriend sleepy and yawning. He was off. It was not long that he was out of sight of his girlfriend as he rounded a bend. She got back into the car, gave one more big yawn, turned the key and was off to the final destination.

Marcus was enjoying himself. This part of the river was barely touched by the hands of man. It was fairly virgin wood. It was beautiful. He thought to himself, this is what it is to truly live. He could see some rough rapids in the distance but he did not want to worry himself with the future, he wanted to bask in the now.

In the quickly approaching rapids there were two distinct sides. One has flat smooth rocks that are, for the most part, laid over for precarious, but otherwise safe passage. The other side has jagged, sharp rocks the shoot up from the river bed taunting anything raging down its lane to be ran through.

Marcus turned his back to the rapids as to put them out of sight. They were making him nervous, and that made his enjoyment of the present all the more difficult. He could hear them and just the sound of the water smashing against the rocks made his heart beat faster so he covered his ears. His smooth floating started to rapidly pick up speed. He thought about turning around as to look at the rapids and make a choice but he wanted to savor the serenity in which he was enveloped in for just a few moments more.

Finally, the serenity was gone. His gracious floating became more and more turbulent. He had to face the fact the rapids were upon him. He turned the inner tube to access the situation and he was in horror. He know that the first rapids had two sides and that he had to choose the side with the smoother rocks. But, he could not. It was too late. He was now getting sucked into the rapids and there was no way to steer the inner tube away from the side with the sharp rocks jutting out of the white foaming water.

His last thought as he was violently torn apart upon the millennia old meat grinder was that he should have thought about the future just a little more.

His girlfriend waited for him in the neighboring city until nightfall. When Marcus never arrived the cops were called. Rescue teams were put into action. His inner tube was found floating along the river only a few miles up from the city he was rendezvous in. Some of his gear was found near the first rapids that took his life, his body was not.

How the iPod could destroy the creativity of a generation

Since the very first time a homo-sapien rhythmically beat on a log we, as a species, have been awed and inspired by music. Fast forward thousands of years and the ubiquitous ear buds can be found jammed into the aural openings of the majority of today’s youth giving them instantaneously access to rhythmic sounds of all kinds. Because they cannot be left to their own thoughts with the constant drone of the art of others playing into their head, this cannot be a good thing for their own artistic development. Furthermore, the music itself cannot have the same impact on the mind of the listener.

Imagine just a few centuries ago. To hear music, it had to played live and right in front of you. This is hard for us to wrap our heads around but not so long ago, there wasn´t even amplification of sound. You could not be more than a few dozen of meters away from the artist to hear them make music. This diminished the chances to hear music. In this way, the music could be planted in the mind like a seed to be left to germinate in the mind of the listener. Today with the constant onslaught of art being injected, it no longer has this time to sprout roots in the mind. Music is no longer reflected upon but consumed ravenously and sometimes not even deliberately.

Even as little as a few decades ago, hearing a great song was a beautiful thing of chance as you had to wait for it to come on the radio, be in a household with an archaic record player or be fortunate enough to be in the presence of live music being played. Now, we have the access to any song at any time right on our communication devices. This will decrease the creativity of the next generation as the constant feeding of art directly into their head will retard the creating of art. The mind, much like the testicles of a steroid abuser that stop producing testosterone when artificial test is introduced, will atrophy and stop producing its own unique art.