I am back to a point in my life where music once again affects me deeply on an emotional level after going through many years during which I hardly listened to music at all. When I drove, it was always with the radio/CD player turned off. I never just sat & listened to music. I had no patience for the 35-45 minutes on average that it takes to listen to an entire album, whether it be standard music [classical] or popular music [Rock & Jazz].

One of the things I think we fail to appreciate is the strange Alchemy that caused modern popular music to explode like it has. It was technology. Basically, broadcast radio, and, along with it, the newer audio & music recording technologies, all coupled with mass marketing. It is hard for us to appreciate, here in this age of the Smartphone & instant access to the Internet [at least, for those of us in the rich Capitalist Euro-Centric countries], how powerful the impact of broadcast radio, and, not too long after, broadcast television, was to the Global Zeitgeist.

Remember the Moon landing in 1969? That was the first time the entire world was brought together, if only for a moment, and, of course, under the illusion that the whole idea of NASA & of a “Race to the Moon” did not have underlying military motives. Like hell it didn’t! Our improvements in space exploration technology directly translated into more effective nuclear weapons delivery systems, specifically, the ICBMs & SLBMs. And, of course, all along, the “Soviet Threat” was consistently overplayed by propaganda on our side which wanted unquestioning acquiescence from out Citizen-Hostages no matter what the cost.

Blood. Or Treasure. It did not matter.

It was all a Pandora’s Box. A Game Changer. When the ability to build nuclear weapons emerged. But so was the explosion of Mass Communication & Mass Media. And we should not forget that no matter how “supercharged” our Communication might be, thanks to technological innovation, at bottom, the Primordial Link to the “Ancient Bardistry” of it all remains… unbroken.

It was a Box which, when opened, brought us “All Gifts” & it is a Box which, now opened, Reveals all of our Afflictions.

And that is Why Truth is a Two-Faced Liar.