I belong to a very small, totally informal blogging group, no more than six or seven active. All affected to a greater or lesser degree by Covid-19. Cut off from families, reduced to domestic routines, half-mad from watching telly. Why has it taken ages for the possibility of Skyping among us to be raised? And then only timidly.
Does everyone understand Skype? It’s very very simple, for many (ie, mobile phone and laptop owners) it costs nothing to install and use (the software’s free), the few would need to spend about fifty bucks for a webcam/mic. The rewards? Long, long conversations round the world that cost nothing and allow us to see each others’ faces as we talk.
I Skype three times a week. Twice to members of my family. Once to receive my singing lesson where the shape of my mouth and my enthusiasm – or lack of it – for certain works can be precisely checked by V my teacher.
There are risks. Perhaps we don’t care to reveal our looks, our foreignness, small details about the interior of our residences, our incapacity to frame interesting conversation or our inability to wrestle with new technology. Those are understandable restraints. But we face an indeterminate period of incarceration. We need new stimuli to prove we are still developing human beings.
Or are we getting to like our prisons?
Wanna ask me a question without blurting your misgivings to the world? I can’t promise I’m not the ogre you suspect. But what the heck – try rodrob@globalnet.co.uk
I tend not to be a social person. I'm pretty quiet and entertain myself with running outside to see what's happening in the sky. I understand the need for human connection, socializing, and communicating. I admire it from afar. Merry Christmas to you and your family.
ReplyDeleterobin andrea: I entirely sympathise. What's more - given the number of commenters you attract - your attitude toward blogging seems a good deal more successful than mine.
DeleteThe above post was meant to appeal - mainly - to those who, for a variety of reasons, have never been drawn to cheap communication systems like Skype (there are others) and especially their potential for developing into communal chat groups. I should have stressed that for me blogging and Skyping are separate activities and need not necessarily overlap. That Skype's usefulness is more in keeping with that of a phone than a computer, albeit a phone with knobs on. A system for chatting offline with someone who has become familiar via their blog.
As you can see I listed a number of reasons why many people might not wish to Skype and there are others. I get the feeling that it may have been a step too far and that rather more thought on my part might have stayed my hand. That I could have devoted the above space to the etiquette in US bars where, for strange reasons, no one ever says thank you.
The sky's a less complex - arguably happier - world. Keep a look out for that star that is supposed to have played a prominent role at this time of year. As a younger, more innocent, self I attended a lecture at the London Planetarium that sought to identify what sort of astronomical event led to that phenomenon in the Middle East. The result? Inconclusive.
Cheers to the both of you
Robbie, everybody's doing exactly that with Zoom now. Have you tried Zoom? It's free and simple to use. Type 'Zoom' in Goggle search and you'll see all the info. People are using it for multi-peopled meetings not only with family and friends but also for work, conferences etc. I have tried but rarely use Zoom or Skype or Messenger chat etc. but would be happy to participate in whatever form of friendly online gathering you decide to set up, or simply with you and Veronica I have Skype, by the way.
ReplyDeleteVery best season's rationed Christmas greetings to you and yours.
Natalie: Alas, I sought to simplify but ended up overdoing it. I was addressing people whose loneliness throughout the pandemic might make them yearn for other diversions. In fact, as I admit to robin andrea (above), such loneliness is unlikely to find comfort in more elaborate phone systems. Even less so in a chat group which was never my primary intention
DeleteI'm aware of Zoom and got slightly involved in it when VR (my preferred way of referring to her in this blog) was drawn reluctantly into a Zoom circle for her art group. My impression was that it was somewhat more complex than Skype which does exactly what I require of it (especially with regard to singing lessons), experience which I would hate to discard.
Familiarity is at the base of these activities. Failing that overweening self-confidence, one of my eternal faults, and one that is likely to discourage exactly the sort of people I was attempting to reach. VR has many qualities which have acted as glue to our 60-year-old union, but love of technology is not one of them. She even abhors the phone. She sits in on the sessions we have with our daughters but that's as far as it goes.
VR has, however, made one suggestion about engaging with a pandemic Christmas. "Let's stay in our pyjamas the whole day," she said (we will be self-isolating) and I have to say the idea does appeal. "Acute lack of moral fibre," some would say. What's your outlook on PJs all day?
Does one paint on Christmas Day? I don't see myself writing fiction, perhaps because there's too much fictional competition from the event itself.
Cheers to you (I am constrained from using "merry" in this context).
I misunderstood your post, Robbie. I thought you wanted to set up an online meet-up with visitors to your blog so I suggested Zoom as a possible alternative to Skype, but to tell the truth I've only ever used either of these maybe twice or three times in all. So I'm not advocating the online group-meet as a cure for loneliness. I'm a loner myself, have been for decades, but am not averse to company and not shy. If you did want to Skype, we could have a conversation but if not, that's OK too. I'll cook a Christmas meal for me myself alone tomorrow and spend the day as usual in an undisciplined kind of creativity and normal indecision. Very best wishes, seasonal and general.
DeleteNatalie: The idea was not thought out. Solitaries who lack a central core of activity may become lonely. The pandemic may exacerbate this loneliness and Skyping might help. I was to some extent offering a familiarisation course in using Skype but a little thought would have suggested that Skyping - essentially an extrovert activity - would not necessarily appeal. That written blogs with written comments tend, on the other hand, to maintain a necessary cordon sanitaire.
DeleteTo give myself a tiny bit of credit I did partially foresee this as my fifth para mentions.
I benefit from not being a solitary which is perhaps just as well: writing, where improvement of style is almost as important as subject matter, and lessons in solo (as opposed to choral) singing are not likely to widen my circle of acquaintances. As a widower I might feel different about this.
I have had previous ideas which have died on the vine. This one seems destined to follow that course. Next week, fencing perhaps. That's with swords. I had one hour's instruction in the RAF in 1955, more than enough for an initial 300-word post in Tone Deaf.
I may pay you the ultimate compliment for "undisciplined kind of creativity and normal indecision". You know, plagiarism.
Scary.
ReplyDeleteFrohe Weihnachten, lieber Robbie!
ReplyDeleteMy elderly aunt still lives in Frankfurt and though she has sons, they don't have time for her. She was actually the one who turned me on to "WhatsApp" when friends finally talked me into gettig a smartphone (only about a year ago ... I'd been holding on to my Nokia flipphone for dear life). So the younger learned from the older, and it is lovely seeing her face again.
We use Zoom at my workplace, and uff ... I'm a bit zoomed out. But over the winter holidays, I have connected with friends far and wide (it sort of takes the place of the Xmas Letter and is more personal). I do have a Skype account, but haven't used it for years and I don't think I have the app on my PC.
In the end, I still write letters on cotton rag stationery to close friends. My Olivetti's are part of my life.
I'll send you an email later this morning!
Dear Roderick, I never found Skype (visual calls to be that stable) but then that was a few years ago. The group I was involved with was 2 Scots, 1 N.Ireland, 1-Cyprus, 1-YouAll Lady from Tennesee, me, Anchorage Alaska, 1-Kiwi, 1-Aussie, and a London Brit lawyer. Well, just to get everyone online at any given time was a feat in itself, but the dialects, accents, was hysterical. I found myself laughing so hard, I couldn't get anything accomplished.
ReplyDeletePretty much the same with our Christmas Eve (Facetime-on phone) with the family--only 7 of us...and it was chaos. At least with zoom you can appear civilized. Really is an exercise in technological abilities though, always someone with feedback noise, or spouses yapping in the background, dogs barking or a bird competing for air time.
And, have a Happy New Year, however you can celebrate! Sandi
DeleteSandi: When I Skype with the family, we have a maximum of four windows open, more often three. However the locations of the callers are all within the southern half of England and there are no technical problems of reception. Also we have fixed dates and times, thus avoiding the corralling of distant callers.
DeleteMy singing-lesson Skypes are immutable: 08.30 on Mondays. Previously, when I visited V (who lives a 20-minute drive away) the starting time was an hour later but always on Monday. An exhilarating way to start the week.
As to accents, when I worked in the USA I happened to refer to a US citizen's accent. He seemed irritated: "Waddya mean. I ain't got no accent." This was in the days when only a tiny percentage of Americans had passports and the majority admitted they didn't care for Brits anyway, given the state of their orthodontics.
I embarked on a well-honed disquisition, beginning, "On the contrary..." For I was paid to turn academic papers into jazzy magazine articles and I had a fair number of arrows in my quiver for this.
I always thought I had an 'ear' for accents, having worked in my family's fishmarket serving many nationalities and also in a University library. However, in the meetings when the Scott argued with the Aussie, the conversation was quite hysterical, as half the time they couldn't understand each other. As for American accents, there are locations in the US where it is difficult to understand anyone. We used to joke that south of Cicero---was down South. Chicagoland is rich in accents, just as northern Wisconsin has their 'hey ders' and syntax issues. Having been brought up by immigrants, I honestly have syntax issues in my writing and speaking, early ingrained in my own speech patterns. There is a sliver of Wisconsin that a public water fountain is called a 'bubbler'. And this word alone can place you in only 3 places in the US: South Milwaukee/Racine, Wi, South Philly, Pa, or South Boston, Ma. What do these places have in common, I'm not sure?
DeleteI'm sure you could share many stories of the US slaughtering the 'English' language. I know that in researching early 19th century American language, we were already a melting pot of languages and customs, which contributed to speaking 'American' and ruining the English language.
Sandi: Slaughtering, perhaps. But only by people who don't matter: politicians and businessmen, in love with unnecessary, barely comprehended long words. What I treasured was the conciseness of the under-educated (ie, people like me), the working-classes. I went out drinking with one such guy and his talk was pure joy (provided I wasn't put out by his casual racism and his laddishness about women). So compact, so laconic, so well aimed. I envied him this skill knowing I could never match it - I'd wriggled my way down different streets three thousand miles away. But I could try my hand at including this style in my fiction.
DeleteOccasionally I got slightly closer. Mike Brubaker is the Texan flying instructor who taught Jana, my central character, how to fly:
Another Brubaker theory. “Give them drills – all that repeated stuff - for forty minutes; grind their asses. Then perk ‘em up. Let them just fly. Prove that the hard work’s worth it.”
More Brubaker:
"...OK, when I’ve finished this smoke you and I are going to walk over there and… what?”
“You’ll pre-flight the plane.”
“Keerection. You’ll pre-flight it. That worry you?”
“No.”
“You’re sure full of confidence. Course, it could be something else you’re full of. So, pre-flight’s done, prop’s turning, gauges say there’s a chance of life. What next?”