…Overheard

“I read it but I didn’t read the whole thing,…just couldn’t get through it…whatever…” (overheard conversation between two octogenarians seated next to me in a cafe)

One of the most fascinating little exercises that captures my imagination when in Manhattan revolves around the snippets of conversation that stream through my mind, not because I’m eaves dropping, but because of the proximity and the public nature of conversation in the city. This experience has a clear analogy to social media.

Arriving in town yesterday a man was telling woman about his dream while buying coffee: a crazy battle resulted in shattered glass all over the ground. Later in the day a man working with his accountants quite flippantly remarked “so I was fifteen million dollars off…not too bad.”

The exercise seems to relate to an idea from shamanism that was shared with me yesterday; that dreaming continues at all times regardless of our awareness of the fact. When we check into the stream during the night, it’s as though we get one glass full from the river that is always flowing.

The challenge I’ve been pondering for some time now is how might this dreaming be unfolding in social media? It’s pretty clear to me that the collective fascination is springing from some deep sources in the psyche and that a phenomenology of the experience seizing us is bound up with a multitude of factors that include impulses for both creativity and power.

And next to me, one of the octogenarians just got up from his chair.  He’s imitating the stooped over manner one of his friends now walks, commenting “imagine, he looks like he’s a hundred and ten!”