An old friend of mind likes to post pics of albums he is listening to on Instagram. On one hand, I don’t give a shit. But on the other, more important hand, i LOVE that he does because it reminds me of great music.
He recently posted a pic of The Police album Ghost in the Machine. My least fave Police album, his fave by a band he is meh about. Also one of my fave bands ever. Here are my responses:
RESPONSE
*Very* interesting take.
I always loved The Police, and as big as they were (are?), I thought they should have been bigger!
Sure, Sting can be a weirdo and has created more than his fair share of garbage, but he is also a genius.
Take the line “We have to shout above the din of our Rice Krispies” from Synchronicity II, for instance.
On one level it is simply a reworking of “the silence is deafening”, but on another it is a statement about family meals, an intense and honest one.
All this BS about “families really matter” and “think of the next generation…” All horseshit. ALL of it.
Sting cremates that gigantic LIE so efficiently yet so vividly that it is almost scary. Godlike, I tells ya.
The breakfast table is silent, except for corporate, ultraprocessed, garbage “food” snapping, crackling, and popping, and our families are so incapable of communicating that what little is said is said in angry shouts:
- “Do your fucking laundry for a change!”
- “Get a job before sundown, or we’re shipping you off to military school with the goddamn Finklestein shit kid!1
“Too many cameras and not enough food” from Driven to Tears is another of my fave Sting lines. Shit, it ought to be inscribed on Justin Trudeau’s tombstone!
And Bono’s, speaking of U2!
Fun fact: Ghost in the Machine sold 36,056 copies in the former Yugoslavia!
“Many miles away” X a lot!
RESPONSE II
Since you are not a big fan of The Police, it makes complete sense that Ghost in the Machine is your fave album of theirs.
First off, it is a concept album, the only one they made. It’s a good and familiar concept, too- the same one Townshend successfully explored in Tommy, then unsuccessfully explored with Lifehouse. It all probably goes back to Georgie Porgie’s often-cited, seldom-read book 1984, I suppose.
Fun Fact: Bowie’s song 1984 was released in 1974 and “originally intended for a stage musical based on the novel”. Orwell’s widow decided to “turn on the red light” for the project, but not in the same way that Roxanne turned on the red light, so the musical never happened.
The whole concept of Man vs Machine and losing our humanity to an ever-increasing bureaucracy and technology goes back way farther, though. Folks like Marx and Chaplin explored it, and even that “bad hombre,” Diego Rivera, painted the greatest murals ever: the Detroit Industry Murals. Hell, the Marx BROTHERS made a career out of poking fun at “The Machine”.
The latest machine that has a lot of people’s panties in a wad is, of course, AI. The Luddites are out in force, as are concerned parents, who claim it is the end of the world. Personally, I feel fine about that.
Social Media has been banned in many unsociable countries, so this will likely encourage and empower many more Karens. “Woo Hoo, we threw a hammer in the machine, just like in the Apple 1984 Super Bowl commercial!” Or maybe they feel like Charlie Kirk, or Charlie Kirk’s killer, or Luigi Mangione. Or something.
Anyway, I am sure they feel as if they, and they alone, represent the true Ghost in the Machine. Either that or they aren’t happy unless they are furious. Or they are too lazy to raise their own kids. Or something.
Second, Ghost in the Machine sounds and feels different than the other Police albums, so it makes sense that a “meh” fan might dig it, maybe the same way a non-fan of Neil Young digs Trans.
The longing for something tactile: Why Can’t I Touch It?
Not too long ago, kids were all over some social media app where posts automatically disappeared after a couple hours. I never understood that one. It was kind of reverse Polaroid: instead of watching a picture develop, watch it disappear.
And now Polaroid is sorta making a comeback, because kids (and maybe even people) want something they can touch and feel and smell. People want more than ghosts. They certainly want to be more than Ghosts in the Machine, and maybe they even want to be able to afford and benefit from their labour, rather than have it all go to Elon Musk et al. A trillionaire is what Marx wrote and warned about.
The Kids are Alright
Last fall, my friend’s daughter, who is halfway through her undergrad degree, told me she appreciates the links to NY Times articles I share, but she would really love a physical copy of what is probably the last decent newspaper in North America. A link was like a ghost, and she wanted to feel more human. She wanted “Polaroids”, something to hold and touch and feel. I also suspect she was planting hints for what she wanted for Christmas, and god bless her for that.
For further listening:
A train ride with a Ph.D. student soon to be a Teacher
Similarly, a couple of weeks ago I was on a train from the very inhuman Union Station in Toronto to the even more inhuman Pearson Airport in Toronto. To be in Union Station is to be a Ghost in the Machine. You do not matter. It was designed by politicians so out of touch with humanity that they should be considered a separate species, with the real purpose being to further enrich the politicians and their friends who built the giant labyrinth, which is more a way to dehumanize people than to efficiently move people.
I got lucky though: after I folded up my old, broken-down body into a window seat, a 20-something woman who was seeing the finish line in her quest to earn a Ph.D and become a teacher took the aisle seat next to me. She was on her way to Winnipeg to mingle with other educators, and I was on my way to Fort Lauderdale, Florida to mingle with alligators.
People living in condos turn into maintenance fee payers instead of human beings
We discussed how Toronto turns people into Ghosts in the Machine. People living in condos turn into maintenance fee payers instead of human beings. She hated Toronto and had gotten out of ROGERSville as soon as she could, looking forward to a life in bucolic Peterborough, ON. (Somehow I managed to keep myself from making socks and sandals jokes. IYKYK.
The one thing she loved about Toronto, though, was the way people came together after a big snowstorm. Neighbours helping neighbours, human interaction. Human interaction brought on by an act of god (the term you might use if you are in the Insurance Business), or by climate change (the term you might use if you are in the Doom and Gloom Business).
But soon winter wonderlands turn into real life. Our joy and humanity are demolished as we find ourselves navigating a city clogged with snowbanks, cyclists crying about their bike lanes not being cleared of snow, and slush.
Slush and AI Slop are both the products of “The Machine”.
Slush and AI Slop are both the products of “The Machine”. Void of any redeeming value, AI Slop is like the slush that those of us in northern climes have to wade through in wintertime. It is heavy, wet, ruins shoes and the bottoms of trousers, and makes us all miserable. AI Slop is also like barnacles, like zebra mussels in the Great Lakes: an invasive, parasitic species that makes us all miserable.
Naturally, the role of AI in the classroom came up.
“Everyone in lectures is looking at a screen these days. Everyone. And nobody is looking at anything related to the lecture. None of them.” – The Ph.D. (soon to be)
I mentioned a recent NY Times article about a prof named Carlo Rotella who banned AI at the courses he teaches at Boston College. Rotella goes all out in his anti-AI stance, demanding that students show their work, including what they write in the margins of their textbooks.
For me, that illustrates a case of the cure being worse than the disease, an egomaniac thinking he is the one throwing the hammer through the screens in the Apple ad. Get over yourself, sunshine. These kids took your class for an easy A, and you want to reinvent the wheel? Do you want people made in your image rather than individuals with unique thoughts? The kids are gonna game YOUR system, too, just like they game every system. At least the smart ones are.
This is where we finally get back to The Police, and Ghost in the Machine
I don’t remember how the subject came up; both of us were giddy and talking over each other a little, overwhelmed by the novel idea of communicating with another person from Toronto who is an actual human being, not a Suit, not a regurgitator, but the remembrance of my attending the Police reunion concert came up.
We had “bad” seats so we couldn’t see the giant video screens that most people could. That meant being our own directors: what and who to watch. The three of us had to think, focus, and decide what we liked and who was shining brighter at any given time: Sting, Andy, or Stewart. We were not Ghosts in the Machine!
We didn’t rely upon someone else’s ideas of what to look at, we weren’t having our strings pulled by some flunkie who landed into a sweet gig. We had a bird’s eye view of a bird’s eye view2.
It was tremendous having a bird’s eye view of a bird’s eye view of Stewart Copeland, Andy Summers, and Sting. Copeland attacks the drums like Keith Moon used to, but with the reverence and precision of Neil Peart. There’s a devotion to the craft that these three men brought to the stage, a talent, and a love and appreciation for what they do that very, very special. Few people have the gifts that they do, and they are most certainly NOT Ghosts in the Machine.
And it was magnificent! We were human beings, goddamnit, and our lives had value. We had a LOT of fun!
The Ph.D. woman seemed genuinely impressed, and I didn’t even mention that I had also seen The Police in Buffalo, at the legendary Aud. WAY before she was even born. “That must have been awesome!”
PLAYLIST:
Coming soon!
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YVcDCvHiIo ↩︎
- Line uttered by coked-out Canadian icon Gord Downie at Woodstock 99. Downie died of brain cancer. Gee, i wonder why? ↩︎
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