BLACKOUT: A Report from “The Drowning World”

This unusual Monday post is just a quick weekday drop to get something out there, especially to anyone who may be wondering where your bumble blogger disappeared to. My last post did indicate an anticipated slowdown in activity on the blog and the likelihood of posting only a couple of times a week going forward due to time constraints, at least for a while, but I had no idea that I would be absent from this space for over 2 weeks after my last drop. That’s because I didn’t anticipate what would happen on the evening of Friday August 8, which threw me into a tailspin for nearly a week.

Whether the world is “drowning” or “burning” probably depends on which version of climate hysteria you’re reading that week, but I can tell you that this album, and a particular song on it, was one of 2 that came to mind that weekend of the 9th/10th…

“Tonight, I’ll spend the night in Mona Lisa’s bed

She’ll hide this beaten man beneath her innocence

Tonight, no dream’s denied in Mona Lisa’s mind

We’ll ride a drowning world through the cold black sky”

That is some DARK stuff, kids! As an aside, it also appears to demonstrate I am not a “true fan”, as I understand that hardcore followers of Swans – and the band themselves – utterly loathe, and have disowned, what I consider to be their best album! Regardless, the gloomy outlook of this whole record could have been the score for my 2^nd weekend of August!

I was in my middle teens by the time my mom and dad made enough money that they could afford to install an in-ground swimming pool in the generously sized backyard of our house in SoCal. It would’ve been 1988 or ‘89, not long before I graduated from high school, in the era when upper middle-class people who worked for a living could still afford homes with yards in California, and if they did well enough, could even put swimming pools in them. As we’re all keenly aware, those days are gone now, which is why I’ve never had one myself. For years in my youth, I was something of a “water baby:” I was in the pool all the time, every chance I got, sometimes even in the winter if we could afford to heat it that month. So, a couple of weeks ago, when one of Jason‘s friends – who has been that fortunate in his own life – decided to throw a backyard barbecue and pool party at his home in suburban Denver, and I got invited, I was giddy at the prospect of a chance to go swimming again!

Thing is, precisely because it’s been so long, I dove into the pool a little bit too enthusiastically, and in doing so, I forgot something. It was only a few seconds: I realized my mistake almost immediately and jumped back out to correct it. But it was too late.

There was a time when we still had to remember things. Directions lived in our heads, or in a little spiral-bound Thomas Guide shoved between the seats. Phone numbers weren’t icons — they were recited, memorized, whispered down the hallway in case you forgot. We moved through the world without a tether, and somehow, we managed to live like that just fine!

But now? Now our entire sense of orientation — physical, emotional, even existential — is mapped to a glowing rectangle in our pocket. It tells us where to go, when to leave, how fast to drive, and whether the sun will be out when we get there. It remembers birthdays so we don’t have to. It holds our passwords, tracks our steps, keeps our calendar, and silently—almost tenderly—makes the whole architecture of our life seem manageable. Lose it for an hour and suddenly we’re free-falling, like someone snipped the umbilical cord to reality.

What’s unnerving is how subtly it happened. These devices didn’t replace one skill all at once — they hollowed things out one tiny function at a time. A compass here, a friend’s phone number there. Piece by piece, the machine said “don’t worry, I can hold that for you.” Until one day we looked up and realized we weren’t holding anything anymore.

And that’s the really dangerous part — the illusion that because the phone is with us, the knowledge is in us. It isn’t. The moment the battery dies, the map disappears. The to-do list vanishes. The memories evaporate. And we’re left blinking in the summer sun, trying to remember which turn we were supposed to take, or why we even walked into this room in the first place.

So I spent days acquiring a new phone at great expense-one that I didn’t want to don’t even like, which is another irony, since I have been anticipating the release of the iPhone 17 due to the rumored upgrades to the camera and video capabilities, and was planning on upgrading to one when they hit the market in early September! I didn’t quite make it. But what was harder was recovering the data. Yes, of course I had a backup, but it wasn’t 100% complete; there was a lot of sensitive data I didn’t want in “the cloud” and it took many days to reconstitute that from hand-written notes, files across several computers at work and at home, etc. And those “Multi-factor authentication” apps and tokens? Well…you get the idea.

2 weeks later I’ve mostly recovered; there’s still a good year and half’s worth of photos I’m trying to rebuild but the data still exists, its just jumbled and misnamed and it will take a long time to sort it all out. But now you know one of the reasons why I’ve been so quiet lately! And let my misfortune serve as a warning to you, dear readers! The real issue isn’t that the machines have invaded our lives — it’s that we welcomed them in, handed over the keys, and now can’t even remember what it felt like to be alone with our own thoughts.

I’m looking forward to returning to blogging soon with some updates on some small changes around the track, some new die-cast developments, another “deep dive” into the history of some of our favorite model cars, and some new installments expanding the ever-spawling lore of Drag City Raceway. So don’t forget about me: I’m still out here doing my thing; you just haven’t noticed while I was unplugged! All of which makes me want to ask: how did we get through the 1980s? And why do so many of us remember the pre-internet era so fondly? There must be a reason for that. Is it just the same garden-variety nostalgia all people experience as they age? Or is it something more?

A lot to unpack there, dear readers, and in the future we’re gonna go there, so stay tuned!

“My little waterbaby
Stands in a field of ruins, says:
“When do we fly again?”
No word for what he’s doing
My hungry little savage
Bright as a burning building
Turns on himself again
Nothing he loves is worth pursuing”

_{The artwork in this post was taken from an illustrated edition of J.G Ballard’s 1962 novel The Drowned World. It seemed apropos}