Another day gone and not nearly enough work done on the 'Plectronica' preparations. Had to deal with a gas boiler problem and service today. Seems we need a new boiler as the one we have is around 17 or 18 years old and becoming increasingly unreliable.
So, a man from British Gas is calling tomorrow to have a look at our current central heating/hot water set up and will file a quote on the cost of replacing it with a new system.
That too will rob me of time that I could better use for work. I will also have to take Emi's car in for an MOT tomorrow morning, which makes the day even less musically productive for me. (And I suspect that there will be some expensive work needed on the car to get it through the MOT too.)
Had to take some exercise late afternoon to get my blood sugar levels down, so we went into town and had a walk around, then dropped into a wine bar/cafe for some refreshment before returning home.
Looking at the decor in the wine bar, it was interesting to see the clash of antique mirrors and lamps from different places around the world mixed with more contemporary elements. Which got me thinking. We live in a time when history is constantly available for our perusal via books, photographs, films, video, museums and the internet. There's a rich tapestry of history at our fingertips,
Likewise our ideas of 'the future' come into the equation too...The newest technological developments, artificial intelligence, electric vehicles, advances in computer science and so on, plus the speculation of where this all may lead.
Then there's a weird mix of past and future, echoes of a time when we dreamed of flying cars, jet packs, utopian cities and unlimited supplies of energy, the retro-futurism that, strangely enough, has inspired the technological here and now. We seem to have arrived at a point in time when past and future converge.
This perspective wasn't available to our ancestors. They could only live in the present with limited access to the multitude of time lines and cultural, global richness that many of us enjoy today. (Though it's fairly obvious that there's an aggressive backlash against globalism and a retreat into insular, isolationist attitudes. I guess from the kind of people who put Trump into power and, here in the UK, dragged the country into Brexit with all its contentious ramifications.)
So, these are indeed strange days. We sit in a kind of target zone, shot at from all sides, past, present and future. How we make sense of it all, how we cope with the barrage of information, the endless distractions from things that really matter, will determine our real future. It will take much more wisdom to fathom out than a few idle words on the internet...
