X Marks contribution be cool ..

[Derek]

The wife and myself are working on several new songs that we have written for a new cd that we intend to release later this year.
I came up with the thought for an x marks 'input' for one of them, which would make the song quite global and an interesting way of writing the verses.
A little background to the song. Over the years of using public transport etc, I have noiticed that most people, if not all of them using it, have their heads either bowed down texting on phones or fiddling on laptops or got headphones plugged in listening to music etc. Apart from the engine noise, the bus/train is silent.
So thats whats led to this song ... the art of conversations dead.
If anyone would like to come up with a verse to follow on the first verse that we have written that be brill. Ideally we need another four verses. In the meantime I beaver on.


Heres the first verse


The Art of Conversation's Dead

The art of conversation’s dead,
Thought it something that I said,
On bus and train, the silence says,
It’s finger n’ thumbs, and texts instead,
Computer screens, conversation’s dead

Iechyd Da
Derek

[bdkilted]

I'm no song writer, but what about this:

The art of conversation's dead
I never know what should be said,
so I keep my head in the book I brought
and hope you will talk instead.

You probably feel the say way too,
and dread the rejection that my come.
The art of conversation's dead
If not for me, and not for you
no friendship made, and conversation is dead.

Use it, change it, ignore it, up to you. Just thought I would try to help.
BD

[Lallans]

I'll dedicate my contribution to the young women I see riding on the Toronto Subway on my very occasional visits to that city, and to the young men and assorted pickup artists I see yearing to talk to them:

The art of conversation is dead
I'll tune in my Ipod instead.
If you dare to talk, I'll call a cop
And the art of conversation is dead.

I'm sure this will work on any subway system in the modern age.

[auld argonian]

Derek, you's readin' my mind. I've been on public transit a lot lately and I'm flabbergasted by how everybody is plugged in and staring at little screens while their fingers do little jerky patterns on wee little keyboards.

The late Chicago writer, Studs Terkel, used to walk through building concourses muttering to himself about being in "zombie valley" twenty years ago. I'd pass him in those concourses and say hello and he'd just look up and say, "You're in zombie valley, young man...do you know that? Zombie valley!" If he could only see how far it's gone.

Sorry that I can't think of any lyrics but I do have a true story. About two weeks ago, I was on the el on the way to the Duke Of Perth. Everybody had their ears plugged and their heads down staring at their phones and pods. We passed the high rise garage across the street from one of the big local theatre companies and there were two fellas doing "guerilla theatre" on the top floor or the garage in full view of all of the people on the passing el train. And when I say guerilla theatre, I mean it...one fella was literally wearing a gorilla suit and attacking the other guy who was holding the gorilla off with one of those big punch'em balloons on a rubber band. I saw these two yahoo's and just started smiling...and then I looked around and realized that maybe three or four people on the entire train may have seen this while all the rest were focused on their personal entertainment devices or whatever.

Sort of made that act of theatre even more important. We used to have a theatre here that had a small neon sign with the words from Hesse's Steppenwolf: For Madmen Only. In this case, who are the madmen? The people who saw the performance or the people who totally missed it because they were so absorbed?

Camera obscura.

Best

AA

[Calico]

Sorry, can't talk now. . . text me, k?

I'll think about it, but I'm no good at versifying.

[Mike_Oettle]

Sorry, Derek, no verses come to mind for me, either.
But for 18 years I commuted daily by bus. I always had a book (or a newspaper or magazine) with me, but I was also always willing to chat. I made a lot of friends that way, from school kids to grannies. Sometimes I had to talk rather loudly because of the engine noise, which attracted attention from other folk nearby, but it never bothered me.
I was well known for walking to and from the bus reading, too. People wondered how I managed not to trip or walk into things, but I always kept an eye out for that sort of thing!
A young man who works with my wife used to ride the bus. When I met him at my wife’s place of work we didn’t recognise each other (obviously he wasn’t the chatty type), but one day he saw me walking with a book and he recalled that he had often seen me on the bus while commuting to the university campus.
For some folk on the bus, the art of conversation was certainly dead. But I struck up conversations with many commuters.
I remember when only one Harry Potter book had been published, and I was reading it on the bus when a little girl noticed the cover and called out: “That’s so cool!”
My reading matter was often a conversation starter.
Regards,
Mike

[3fingerslinger]

modern times have left me cold
with it's technological advances
it should have stopped at the electric guitar
hanging out at the concerts and dances

[Lallans]

This thread has made me mindful of something I saw while visiting the Gettysburg PA battlefield a few years back. It was on the spot from where Pickett launched his famous charge and there was a group of people who had just pulled up in two cars, obviously two youngish families plus a privately-hired tour guide- and me, I ended up lurking at the edge of the group getting some free tour guiding (and dirty looks from the guide, who was fully aware of what I was doing). The adults all looked like minor academics, high school teachers or some such, and they were absolutely enraptured by what the guide was describing, asking questions, nodding, smiling. And there was a frowny teenage girl standing up but with her head down, intent on texting via her cell phone, and there were two equally sullen but even more demonstrative teenaged boys, both sitting on the ground with their heads even more down, both intent on pounding their beeping Gameboys. It was quite the modern tableau- thinking back to my own childhood, I was envious of the kids for having parents that could and would hire a personal tour guide but they obviously thought they were in hell.