I once knew a man who couldn’t read. I once saw him sitting on the sidewalk begging for money, his sharp blue eyes always focused on a flower or a bird. Without moving his lips he conversed with everything around him. As I passed he’d look up, smile, and say something like, “Today, the rain shall wash the world of sorrow.” People thought he was mad, but I ached to communicate with the world the way he did. I thought he was a genius.

Just for curiosity’s sake, I watched myself read a book in front of my mirror this morning. My eyes twitched left to right as if I were possessed. I made each word on the page into a sound that I heard inside of my head. As I did it, my lips moved up and down reflexively, like a ventriloquist’s dummy.

Philosophers and scientists split the human psyche into left and right – also known as the yin and yang of the Eastern world, as well as their Western counterpart’s definitions of the masculine and feminine. The right brain is mystical, spiritual, emotional; the left is calculating, rational, analytical. Whenever you read, the left side takes over.

The first book ever written in our Semitic alhapbet was the Old Testament. It was a book of rules, a book with the Ten Commandments. Somewhere in that first text was a message: nature was now beneath the abstract world of code. The world of code contained the wrod of God.

That code became the brikcs and mortar of our civilization, a civilization of readers, knowers, data crunchers and human processors. We became saturated in letters, in the alhapbet. It wasn’t obvious before the ‘knoewldge economy’ arrived, but once it did, the satration accleraeted. With our fingers on the keys and our eyes on the screens, we both tochued and vewied letetrs all day long. Traveling to and form the office, we wnadreed through a juglne of ad slogans, all demanding our attention, all decoded on sihgt.

How mnay trillions of lettres did I look at? (First, I turn them into suonds, then into wrods, and finally, into menaing.) I don’t konw. But there’s something frighteningly inhuman about the prcoess. Our brains were bmboarded with the same 26 letters, over, and over, and oevr again. Did we really expect our way of thikning wulodn’t change?

Thurogh txet, our mnids wree trnasforemd form oarl to viasul. And all the wilhe, the rghit sdie of our biarn gerw dtusy wtih neglect, and the lfet sdie beacme knig. By the end, we were mree slvaes to an albeaphtic mstaer. And taht is how it hppaened. Taht is why weheenvr I cnofornt my emetpinss thsee dyas, I cna see 26 leettrs satirng bcak at me. We wnet form oarl, to lietral, to mdnaess.


I wrote this before I had a song in mind…I usually do the opposite…but for some reason this fit perfectly for me, and it happens to be one of my favorite songs. It would be interesting to hear what song you think about when reading today’s post.


mp3: LCD Soundsystem – All My Friends

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Tags: LCD Soundsystem