A Brief History of Chris 'n' Vickie (DEEPER UNDERSTANDING)

[rhill@netrun.cts.com (ronald hill)]

        Well, as requested here are some quotes about the SONG Deeper 
Understanding.  Note this is about the SONG, and not the more-famous 
soon to be released 'lectronic book.  :-)

        About a year ago, they had some pieces on TV about how he had 
apparently dumped his wife and now was having an affair with his nurse! 
 Apparently the nurse's husband is the same guy who designed the voice 
thing that helps Hawking to comunicate, and the husband is still 
updating the software to that!  When I saw this I couldn't help (as 
Kate had said Hawking sounded like "the voice of God) seeing Kate 
watching this on TV and saying, "well, I guess God's having an affair." 
:-)

        How do you feel about the character who's so desperately, 
pathetically lonely, (s)he's formed an addictive relationship with a 
computer?
        Well, wherever you live, chances are you won't know your 
neighbours, you won't even know the person who lives next to you.  But 
I see this song set in America, just because it's so much more extreme 
out there: people don't go out of their houses, they watch the 
television, they can shop from the television, they speak to people on 
the phone.  If they want, they needn't have any form of human 
communication of a real kind at all, and I think that's being 
encouraged.
        You know, a couple of years ago there was a lot of news about 
how women were divorcing their husbands because they were spending all 
their time with their computers - they were in there all night.  I 
suppose it's still happening.  And this song is about this very intense 
relationship that developed, where this person spends all their time 
with computers.  They talk to the computer and the computer talks back.
        I suppose I really liked the idea of deep, spiritual 
communication - deep love which should come from humans - coming from 
the last place you'd expect it to, the coldest piece of machinery.  And 
yet I do feel there is a link.  I do feel that, in some ways, computers 
could take us into a level of looking at ourselves that we've never 
seen before, because they could come in from outside all this...I'm not 
really sure what I'm saying...
        She laughs and takes a sip of tea.
        I think a lot of things in Nature are almost programme-based, 
and a lot of things that we do are very mechanical, so maybe somehow 
going right through a computer, almost so that you come out the other 
side - going through all that science - will take us to something very 
spiritual but very earthy.
        I was very inspired by Stephen Hawking.  Have you heard about 
this guy? I think he was an Oxford scientist.  [Actually Cambridge.] 
He's very ill and, basically, he's coming up with how everything is 
created...or not created, as he sees it.
        I saw him on television, and it was so moving: this guy who's 
so close to the answer of it all, in a body that was desperately...it 
was going, and quickly.  And he was fighting against the time he had 
left, and yet...Here was this guy who was probably the closest to 
knowing it all, and he was speaking through this voice-processor.  It 
was almost, for me, like hearing the voice of God.
        What he was saying was so spiritual, it was not like a 
scientist.  It was someone saying, "Well, look: it wasn't ever created 
and it won't end, it just is."  You know, this wonderful conceptualism 
is almost beyond words, because he's gone so far through the process.  
Words can't explain what he's discovered.
        I find that a bit scary.  I wonder if we want the answer?
        Well, I wonder if we'd understand it!  Even if we knew the 
answer, we probably wouldn't understand it.
        But if we ever found out, definitely, whether there's a God or 
not, it would be like definitely finding out there are aliens from 
outer space: the human race couldn't handle it, couldn't cope with not 
being the centre of the universe.  And what if we found out there 
definitely isn't a god, what then? The truth would be too much to bear. 
 The idea of death being an inconceivable nothing would drive us mad 
with the contemplation of extinction.
        We seem to be very much in the era of reason, and I think 
science is the ultimate example of that.  The other side is the 
instinctive, which is not logical on any level.  Perhaps it's the 
putting together of the two.  You know, like what you were just saying 
there about aliens? Most people's response would be that it's just not 
possible because their reason says so, but then an instinctive person 
might feel, 'Yes, this is so's because it just feels right.
        Maybe we've lost touch with our instincts, so it's become very 
important for us to work out logical explanations for things all the 
time, which I think is a bit of a shame, really.   (1989, Melody Maker)

        It's like today, a lot of people relate to machines, not to 
human beings, like they hear telephone [makes ringing noise] and think 
"Is that for me?" I guess it playing with the idea of how people get 
more and more isolated from humans and spend a lot more time with 
machines.  I suppose America's a really good example where there are 
some people who never go out, they watch television all day, they're 
surrounded by machines, they shop through television, they speak to 
people on the phone; it's just distant contact.  The idea of the 
computer buffs who end up going through divorce cases because their 
wives can't cope with the attention the computer gets.  They have an 
obsessive effect on people, and this track's about one of those types.
        "But I was lonely, I was lost/Without my little black box/I 
pick up the phone and go Execute.  .  .  .  I turn to my computer like 
a friend/I need deeper understanding."
        I was playing with the juxtaposition of high tech and 
spirituality.  I suppose one inspiration was a program I saw last year 
about a scientist called Stephen Hawking who for years had been 
studying the universe, and his concepts are like the closest we've ever 
come to understanding the answer.  But unfortunately he has a 
wasting-away disease, and the only way he can talk is through voice 
process.  It was one of the most moving things I've ever heard.  He was 
so close to the answers to everything, and yet his body was going on 
him - in some ways it was the closest I'd ever come to hearing God 
speak!  The things he was saying were so spiritual, it was like he'd 
gone straight through science and come out the other end.  It was like 
he'd gone beyond words, and I do think that there is this possibility 
with computers that we really could learn about ourselves on levels 
that could take us into much deeper areas.  With my music, I like to 
combine both the old and the new, the high tech and the compassion from 
the human element, the combination of synths and acoustic instruments.  
 (1989, Pulse)



*       I think, more and more, we're becoming isolated.  We don't have 
healthy human contact, we spend the entire day with machines, all of 
us.  And I do think human beings are getting lonely.  There's a lot of 
unhappy people in our modern world.
        You must know these people, who spend all night in this crazy 
relationship they have with their computers.  Their wives want to 
divorce them because they're in there all night with the computer.  And 
it was an idea born out of something so cold, so inhuman, so unfeeling 
as this computer buff sending off for a programme he sees in a 
magazine.  He puts it in - and suddenly this programme almost becomes a 
being, like the voices of angels, a visitation.  And it's the idea that 
this could actually happen through a computer, that someone can get the 
most real love they've ever experienced from the most unexpected 
source.
        I suppose in some ways one of the inspirations for that... have 
you ever heard of Stephen Hawking?  I recently saw an interview with 
him on television; it was so beautiful, that's the impression I was 
left with.  It was this really moving notion of a guy whose body is 
really deteriorating, but his mind and soul are so alive.  Hearing him 
speak through his voice-processor, for me it was the closest thing I've 
heard to God speaking.  Because some of the things he was saying were 
pure science, but it was as if he'd gone right through science and onto 
the spiritual level. 
        I don't have a "downer" on computers at all.  I think they're 
really good and very important.  And I also feel there's this really 
strong spiritual age that's going to hit us soon and it will be very 
much due to computers, because of the pure way they can break things 
down.  Also I think they can teach us a lot about ourselves; we've 
never been in the position of having something else through which to 
look back at ourselves.  But they are encouraging humans not to have as 
much contact as they should have, not to be as affectionate as they 
should be.  We should really try to develop our priorities as people.   
(1989, RAW)

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rhill@netrun.cts.com (ronald hill)
NetRunner's Paradise BBS, San Diego CA