Ulysses Traveling Band

Porchfire, pictured left to right: 

Tim Stoutt, Alexandra Smith, Jared George, Mark Newman. 

Photo by Stacey Lynn Brown

There's a lot of hubub goin' on about the 'Power of Social Media!' It's been going on for quite sometime, but I have not been keeping up. Some of us are adept at navigating this labyrinthine Atlantis, some of us are like a fish out of water. As for me, I'm wading knee deep and braving the rapids as I go. Hey, look at me! No, not at me executing an awkward belly flop next to ragged rocks then getting swept out with the current and mixing my metaphors... No, I mean just look at me.

That's how I feel sometimes, like I'm waving madly just hoping you notice my awkward flailing. And then feeling shy when you do. I have overly enthusiastic phases, when I spend too much time online. I have days and days that go by and I don't miss it at all.

I don't know how you feel.

This is how we communicate now, for the most part. We get to send messages in real time, we get to show and tell our lives to our friends and families in an instant. We get to find that long lost friend and fill in the gaps of our lives. We get to be travelers to other worlds, other countries, other time zones, and our lives are somehow bigger; or is the world smaller?

As silly as I feel sometimes, every now again something a little bit magic happens. Something that would not have been possible without social media.

Having fallen prey to the whole #throwbackthursday or #TBT phenom (if you don't know what that is, I strongly suggest you forget all about it), I posted the above oldie photo to my Facebook page. Clearly, it's a band photo, 1996-ish. It's my band, Porchfire. I recently came across this photo after not even remembering it for years. Yeah, I was in a band, I sang, we rocked. A gypsy, a hippie, a rogue, and a Sheriff's Deputy for a drummer!

I didn't think it over much as I posted the photo, I certainly did not expect what happened after. Just because I put a funny old band photo on a post - it made for a reunion. The band got back together for a moment, all except Tim, the drummer, who doesn't computer face. Not just the band - the photographer, and the old friends that haven't spoken in years...they talked (typed) to each other. The photo was shared by a couple of the original hooligans pictured and so on... and soon it kind of took over. It was a little overwhelming.

A flood of memories, the hesitation fades, the good times are recalled and a splintered community comes together again for a brief recognition of shared experience. All us gypsies, ramblers, rogues, straight lacers... all of us, everybody, everywhere, we've grown up a little along the way.

We shared messages in real time, I made contact with a long lost friend and we started filling each other in on the years that have gone by. A good many years mind you. As funny and strange as it all was, it was also that little bit of magic I was telling you about.

I'm still a bit awkward and clumsy when it comes to social media. Sometimes I get fed up with all of it. I'm also grateful for it from time to time, for some of those long lost friends, the really good ones, have come back into my life because of it.