This is a very interesting specimen. I think a short history lesson is necessary before this “tweet” can be fully appreciated. The trombone is truly an intriguing and unique example of musical history and the Wikipedia article is very instructive1.
Did you know that the original trombones were forty feet long? And that it took a whole village of people to push and pull the thing in and out, the trombone thing? That’s puresocial. That’s peoplework. The trombone is therefore the undiluted instrument of the people. Joshua Green Allen (@fireland) knows that.
From this we can ascertain that the author feels like the world is falling apart. Communities have shrunk just like the trombone shrank, says the author. Applying this logic to the context of this “tweet,” which has been placed in a social media framework itself, receiving critical acclaim no less, probably from well-meaning but ultimately action-proof passersby, demonstrates the author’s belief that the whole system is rotten from the core. Social media linkages don’t mean anything more than the effort that goes into them. Without an effortful community of value-disagnostic altruists to push and pull and push and pull and push and pull that trombone thing back and forth and blow blow blow like crazy you’ll never get any jazz, smooth (my preference) or otherwise.
In the second sentence the author laments his inability to express his feelings in a faltering non-community filled with the pillowy banality that is the absence of hopelove. A bleak prognostication indeed, but fortunately one with a simple remedy, if we are able to see it. Kudos to the author for speaking difficult truths without concern for his social reputation dynamic.
(source)
1 Please go read the whole article at Wikipedia before reading further. I will allow time for this as well as the one-and-three-quarter-hour digression you will experience after a series of clicks takes you to an esoteric article on Ohio State Route 135 which, as I learned almost two hours ago, is the least interesting road in America2.
2 As certified by the National Association for the Cataloging and Filing of Boring American Landmarks and/or Areas of Extreme Low Interest which is something I just made up but I bet if you google it in three weeks it will have, in that time period, become a real thing that has already died due to lack of funding and a controversial letter to the editor of the Times-Picayune written by the Association’s CEO while drunk one evening (on Coors Light, by the way) and blah blah blah blah blah blah just let it go just let it GO Keith nobody reads these
