Relatively Crazy

The world is a crazy place and seems to be getting crazier by the minute. It's not that the crazy train hasn't been riding the rails for years, but similar to the new normal of our weather patterns, the crazies get wilder, more extreme and more unpredictable with each advancing day. It would not particularly surprise me if it was announced that North Korea allowed their citizens access to news on American airwaves just so Kim Jong-Un could point at the American President and say, "See? It's not me who's crazy. That guy gives crazy a whole new meaning!"

Even here in Kingston some people may think the crazies have touched down. We now have everything in place to construct the third crossing. To many out-of-towners, I'm sure when they are first exposed to our constant dialogue about the Third Crossing, they must imagine some sort of historical, religious or political event that has had a profound effect on the people of our city. Once it's found to be just a bridge construction, I am sure they would be a bit disappointed. This bridge construction is something that has been poked, prodded, studied, debated, written about, argued about, vilified, glorified, cursed and praised and now it's fact. More mental energy has been wasted on this project than almost any local issue I can remember.

As Billy Joel so aptly put it in his 1989 hit, "We Didn't Start the Fire", the crazies didn't start in today's world and I'm sure if he felt inclined, he could have started his song lyrics long before 1949, the year of his birth.  I'm sure our friend Oog, that loveable caveman, thought that his buddy was, to put in today's vernacular, totally cra-cra when he started to cook meat. Crazy is all relative, but I should point out that not all relatives are crazy.

Technology has certainly lent itself to the advances of crazy. I look at the behaviour of many people today and if one were to transplant that behaviour to 20 or 30 years ago people would be looking at them and at the same time doing the cuckoo bird salute, twirling their fingers beside their temples. A lot of people seem to shut out the world, sequestering themselves in their houses. Their only link to the outside world is a computer, tablet or phone screen. Even when they venture outside, the world is shut out. The wander the sidewalks with ear buds in their ears and eyes averted downward to phones, stumbling blindly into telephone poles, traffic or other people. Perhaps, if they activated their cameras on the phone, they could watch where they are going on their screens, then update their progress on Instagram.

The relativity of things, is not new, it existed long before Einstein developed his theory, we just didn't recognize it. But that is true of many things. In absolute terms time is, at least to our current knowledge, pretty linear. A year is a year no matter which way you look at it. Just the same as a decade is 10 years and a millennium is a 1,000 years. It doesn't speed up or slow down (within reason). But what happens during those periods vary. Advances in science, society and structures have grown by leaps and bounds.

I often befuddle myself, which I may point out before anyone else does, is a fairly easy task, when I think about music and its relativity. Today's kids, be they as young as 4 or 5 into even their 30's likely all recognize and perhaps even actively listen to music from the 1950's and 1960's; the Beatles, the Stones, Elvis, Buddy Holly or any number of artists. In some cases this is reaching back as much as 60 years in some cases, but the music does seem as fresh and as innovative as ever. If I were to apply this time line to myself when I was 18 and at the height of my musical awareness and music had its strongest influence over me and I reached back even 40 -50 years in musical history, this would like groovin' to the megaphone tunes of Al Jolson or Rudy Valee and the Connecticut Yankees. Social outcast, I likely would have been. It was hard enough to even acknowledge that you listened to the Beach Boys back in the '70's.

Perhaps this can be attributed to the music from those periods being so readily available online and in pop culture. Music is so much more accessible today as compared to my day. In those days if you wanted to listen to Al Jolson you had to pray that your grandfather still had some disks for the Victrola or bang it out on the parlour room piano if you had the sheet music.  

But just as crazy is relative and music is relative, so is the rest of life.  There are always two sides to every issue, just as there are two sides to every coin. There wouldn't be one without the other. Whether this is good or bad is a whole other debate, relatively speaking.