I like watching people, seeing where their eyes move, their non-verbal language, and how they interact with the world. The phone people — PP, or P2, the ones with attention glued to their phones as they walk along — demonstrate little expression or body language. It’s not a surprise; they’re usually totally invested in that little electronic device. They’re interacting with it. It changes when they’re on video, or actually speaking someone, and — of course! — when a selfie is being orchestrated.
As an aside rant, the P2 annoy me when they’re absorbed by their phone and walking. They expect everyone to move aside and look out for them. Sometimes, I’m an asshole, and I don’t move.
Today’s song was inspired by a woman walking toward me. She was quite the haughty person, swapping all with her eyes but avoiding eye contact with anyone. I do understand it more, now, why many women avoid contact that could be misconstrued with others. Many have horror stories about how their friendliness was misconstrued, leading to ugly encounters with men who thought the women were flirting with them.
This woman’s dark eyes struck a chord with lyrics from a past song, “Here comes the woman with the look in her eye.” Before she’d come within six feet, Michael Hutchence and INXS were streaming “Devil Inside” through me. Although this song came out in 1988, when I was stationed in Germany, I’d heard INXS in the early eighties while on assignment at Kadena AB on Okinawa. That’s because I knew some Australian special forces members there. They knew of INXS’ music and introduced them to me. So INXS is forever associated with Okinawa in my mind.
Sad day when I heard that Hutchence had killed himself, thirty-seven years old. He was younger than me by four years, and it seemed astonishing that such a talented, young, and successful person could kill themselves.
I’ve learned a lot since then.
Michael Seidel, writer 
Each one of us associates a song, a band, an aroma, a color, a taste … to a memory of the past.
Since we have a “normal” past to remember, where the mobile did not exist, where we looked straigh to the faces of people, when we sought the contact of the eyes, where we shared emotions with the presence of an arm around the shoulders, of a strand of hair that slid along the cheek of the person you had greeted… with a real kiss on the cheek.
Let’s keep these memories close, let’s write them in our poems or stories. They help us understand that what has passed, no longer returns. Like the death of Michael Hutchence, Kurt Cobaine, Jim Morrison and many many others…
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Yes, they sneak into my fiction as a part of being there. Thank you for commenting. Cheers
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