“The iPod is the ultimate instrument of isolation. The more we are able to connect with other people without the need to see them, to talk with them, the more the culture of isolation becomes the dominant state of our civilisation. Today, in a city like New York it is possible to self-imprison our selves. Food, information, drugs can be delivered in front of our doors, making the contact with the outside world useless. We can die without having seen a person for years. We can build architectural burkas where it will be possible to hide our social and gender identity. While surrounded by the noises and the blabbering of other pople spending half their lives on cell phones, we mutated into a different kind of human being. By now, we switch on the isolation button automatically. The more the others share their lives with us, the more their lives become meaningless to us.
Music is the new silence. Words are the new feelings. Loneliness is the new screaming crowd that surrounds us. Like stones, we learn the impossibility to kiss another stone. Like stones, we wait for someone to throw us against the glass walls of our isolation. Like stones, we imagine being islands, faraway in the middle of the ocean.”
— “On Isolation” by Francesco Bonami in Raf Simons Redux
