Unheard

Information:

• Source: Emperor’s New Clothes Notebook
• Key: C Major/ A Minor
• Measures: 48
• Parts: Cello and Piano
• Duration: 3:05 Min
• Pages: 4

“Social media doesn’t create negativity, it uncovers it.” - Jay Baer

TROUBLE IN PARADISE #

By the time you read this, the Internet may seem as ordinary to you as electricity does to me. But when I was growing up, none of this existed. Then came the Internet, followed by email, and suddenly we had an entirely new way of communicating. It was fast, convenient, and, at first, it felt almost miraculous.

We thought we had opened the door to a remarkable new world. And in many ways, we did. What we didn’t notice at the time was that, little by little, we were also closing another door - the one that led to actual human connection. Funny how that works.

You should also know that the Internet came into our lives before we really had any idea what we were getting ourselves into. We were fascinated by it, and for good reason. It made so many things easier. We could work faster, create things we couldn’t have imagined before, entertain ourselves endlessly, and communicate with people on the other side of the planet in seconds.

The problem was that the same tool was available to everyone. And I mean everyone. The Internet gave us an extraordinary way to share knowledge and connect with one another, but it also gave people with less admirable intentions exactly the same opportunity. The technology itself was neither good nor bad. It simply gave human beings a much bigger stage - and, unfortunately, some of us brought our worst behavior with us.

AN INVITATION TO REFLECT #

My calculations tell me that things really started going to shit around the year 2000. Then came social media, followed by the so-called smartphone, and that was pretty much the last straw.

Now, before you judge us too harshly, remember that none of this happened overnight. Social media was supposed to bring us closer together. And, technically, it did. We suddenly had hundreds, sometimes thousands, of… “friends” and could know what everyone was doing at any given moment. The funny thing is that, despite all this connection, we somehow became worse at actually connecting.

Before the turn of the millennium, conversations were still conversations. People sat across from each other and talked. They listened. They argued. They noticed each other’s expressions and pauses, and occasionally had to deal with the uncomfortable business of being in the same room with another human being.

Then the smartphone came along and changed the rules. Conversations were gradually reduced to little bursts of text, emojis, abbreviations, and whatever the hell “LOL” was supposed to accomplish. We could communicate instantly, but understanding another person became increasingly difficult. Having more ways to communicate didn’t necessarily make us better at communicating.

PAPER & PEN #

You probably won’t believe this, but there was a time when writing to someone required an actual piece of paper, a pen, an envelope, and a stamp. It took time. You couldn’t just type something, hit send, and move on to the next distraction. You had to think about what you wanted to say. You had to choose your words. And because the whole damn process took time, there was at least a chance that you’d think twice before putting something stupid on paper.

A letter demanded a certain degree of presence. You couldn’t hide behind a screen or disappear in the middle of a conversation. Person-to-person communication required you to actually be there, paying attention to another human being. Looking back, that may have been one of its greatest advantages.

PRESS THE BUTTON #

Social media also gave us something we apparently didn’t know we needed: permission to speak simply because we had the ability to speak. We created these virtual spaces with names that often sound like they were invented by a committee of twelve-year-olds, and then proceeded to fill them with whatever happened to be rattling around in our heads at the moment.

We type before we think. We react before we understand. We attack people we’ve never met because they have the audacity to think differently from us. And, every now and then, we manage to do all of this while demonstrating that we have somehow forgotten how to spell.

The really strange part is that we seem to believe we’re accomplishing something. We write something nasty about someone, press a button, and feel a tiny burst of satisfaction. Then someone else does the same to us. And around and around we go, generating an endless stream of words that somehow manages to contain very little information.

ANONYMITY #

And anonymity makes it even worse. Give people a screen, a keyboard, and the comforting belief that nobody knows who they are, and suddenly courage becomes very cheap. People say things online that they would probably never have the balls to say to someone’s face.

We’ve turned social media into a machine for producing noise and then convinced ourselves that noise is communication.The irony is that nobody really wins. Not the person writing it, not the person receiving it, and certainly not the rest of us who have to wade through the damn thing.

Then came Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and a dozen other platforms whose names you’ll probably never hear of because technology replaces itself before we’ve even figured out the previous version. We suddenly had more ways to communicate than any generation before us. And somehow, we manage to fucked it up.

BEDTIME STORIES #

There was a song recorded back in 1994 by Madonna called “Bedtime Stories”, written by Björk. You may know it, or perhaps by the time you read this, nobody remembers either of them. Who knows. Anyway, I’ve always had my own interpretation of that song, and looking back from where I am now, it feels almost prophetic.

I don’t mean that Björk somehow predicted social media. I’m sure she didn’t. But some of the ideas in that song seem to describe remarkably well what it eventually felt like to live in the world, particularly after the year 2000.

My interpretation of the song is pretty simple. In fact, it can almost be reduced to a tongue twister:

We speak loudly. We make demands. We have opinions about everything. We insult people because we’re insecure. We criticize because it makes us feel superior. We condemn anyone who threatens what we believe.

I suppose that’s progress.

TALKING DOESN’T WORK ANYMORE #

But I keep going back to 1994. I was twenty-three years old and beginning to notice something I couldn’t quite put into words yet. Words were already starting to feel inadequate for describing certain things I was experiencing. There is that line from “Bedtime Stories”: “Words are useless, especially sentences.” I remember thinking about those words years later. It’s almost uncanny.

Here was a song released in 1994 that, at least in my interpretation, seemed to describe the communication disaster that would arrive a decade later.
That’s why I keep coming back to the idea of words. What I want isn’t more communication. Zeus knows we have plenty of that.

What I miss is communication that actually means something. Words chosen carefully. Someone willing to listen instead of immediately preparing a response. A conversation that doesn’t have to be documented, posted, liked, shared, or turned into an argument.

So, if you’re reading this sometime in the future, here’s one piece of advice from someone who lived through the beginning of all this: don’t be afraid of silence. Choose your words carefully. And, above all, learn how to listen -and learn how to spell for crying out loud!

THE DUET #

I have to admit that realizing what we eventually became in these social spaces is deeply disappointing. Sometimes I look around and feel as though I’m living in a world that was only half-finished, a civilization that somehow forgot to install the part responsible for self-awareness. At other times, it feels more like a gigantic experiment and we’re all the lab rats, except nobody bothered to tell the rats what the experiment was about.

There is another thing I want you to know about the time I lived in. A very personal thing. I wrote a piece of music as part of a project called Emperor’s New Clothes. The duet is about illusion, truth, and the strange power of collective denial. I was interested in the contrast between the emperor, who is completely invested in his own deception, and the child who simply sees what is in front of him and says it.

This duet not only brings the story to life but also invites you - the listener - to reflect on the masks we all wear and the power of honesty in a world often clouded by pretense. If there is a"like" button when you listen to it, by all means, click on it!

TWO EARS ONE MOUTH #

I suppose the endless torrent of words is one of the defining symptoms of my time. We have become a society that is strangely disconnected from itself while being permanently connected to everyone else. We are surrounded by communication, yet so much of it is little more than noise - the kind produced when education, respect, and basic consideration are nowhere to be found.

We call ourselves intelligent beings without truly acting intelligently. We believe we are an advanced civilization without actually advancing. Perhaps we should have all spent less time speaking and more time listening. After all, we have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak. Then again, perhaps not knowing was all part of the experiment.

Sheet Music Archive

Published Score.
The complete work is available for consultation and download.