There are a couple of things I would have a difficulty to understand, if I came visiting earth as an alien: how humans sometimes choose to live in groups under such incompetent leaders, how most of us spend most of our lives working with things we don't like and the rest of our time in weird trains on our way back and forth to this work, swiping our smartphones. And...why we take utmost care in practical details and everyday perfection, choosing the right soy milk, but not always the same care in the emotional details of life.
But, as always, there are also things on earth that would impress me immensly - the fruit for instance. So simple and so delicious. Or the amazing beauty of our nature, the frozen lakes of the North, the red soil of Africa.
In spite of all these astonishing and beautiful things, though: I wouldn't understand what the whole fuzz is all about before I heard music. Imagine (still being an alien, of course) coming to a concert hall with an empty stage, asking yourself what people are doing there in their evening dresses. And then, the musicians come on stage and it sounds, finds its way through flesh and bones, to the very core of us, the place nobody has managed to describe. Makes us complete in a way that no other form of art I know can.
All of our highways, our drainpipes and toilets, infrastructure nets and breakfast buffets, tax departments and smartphones, banks and cars, everything to no point without culture - our content in life. For me: the reason for keeping up the functioning world, the one thing that defines us as humans. Out in space. And here back home.
Happy New Year!
Yours,
Mikael