I have been writing about and living in the digital age for several decades, and it is a fascinating time for me. Great change, new challenges, cultural revolutions. I welcome creative change, it inspires and defines me.

Lately, I’ve found myself insisting that people speak to me.  I’m fighting for it. And I’m surprised how strongly I feel about it. I told my daughter that it was great to get texts and e-mails and news feeds from her Facebook Page, but I needed to hear her voice fairly often, so that I could get a sense of how she is, how she is doing. So that I know her and she knows me. She was surprised, I could tell, it is not something she needs, she does not need to hear my voice very often. This is hurtful, although I know she means no harm.

My editor rarely speaks to me on the phone any longer, she sends me books edited on multi-colored software. I e-mail her and say I need to speak to you sometimes, I need to hear what you really liked and what you really didn’t, not to just read blue and red text marks. I want to hear your voice.  She agrees, but is also surprised. She doesn’t need to talk to me anymore, we e-mail and message each other. I used to talk to my editor often, it was one of the most important relationships in my life. She is a great editor, but has no time to know about my life.  I have a wonderful agent, but we rarely speak on the phone. Sometimes, I need to talk to him. But I often feel that’s strange, and I am just needy. I rush to get off the phone, I don’t want to bother him, take up too much real time.

I told my friend Jenna yesterday that people who only read one another’s blogs are not friends, they are digital connections, avatars. Friends, I said,  actually speak to one another. She laughed. Jenna texts.  I told another friend the same day – she was upset that I unsubscribed to her blog, I am getting too many messages to read, that this meant our relationship was over – that a blog subscription is not a friendship, does not signify closeness any more than reading a print magazines makes you a friend of the writer. I said we had not spoken in more than a year. She did not respond to me.

I tell my students in the Hubbard Hall Writer’s Workshop to call me if they need to talk about their work. They sometimes do, but mostly post messages on the workshop’s Facebook Page. They respect my time, but I can’t convince them to call me if they have a problem. I don’t think I can change that. I feel the same way about my  bank, although I never speak to them any longer, unless it’s technical support or security. I need to talk to a human being when my computer acts up, not a message board. I’ve never been good learning in that kind of way.  I find myself saying more and more often, sometimes you need to speak to me.

I have a financial issue to resolve with someone I value, someone I think highly of. I can’t resolve it with her because I never speak to her, we exchange texts and cryptic e-mails. I need to look her in the eyes and ask her some questions and listen to her answers. I’m not sure I ever will. We all understand that no government agency or business wants to talk to human beings anymore, it is so much cheaper online. When I do insist on speaking to someone, they invariably remind me that I can do the same thing online. I am putting them out, not being efficient, holding back progress.

Please visit our website. We are all getting used to this, and are too busy to sense what is lost and cannot be reclaimed.

I am not needy, nor am I grumpy about new technology. I used new technologies all of the time, in all of my work, from computing to video to social media. I value it and appreciate it. But I will continue to fight to talk to people. I am not needy, not out of date. Hearing someone’s voice is important. It is the essence of human connection, the only way to know someone, to love and trust them, to be a friend or lover. Nuance is important, so is intonation and range. I’m not talking about the loss of land line telephones, but the essence of being a human being, a person with emotions, needs, shared experience. Voices are our identity, our signatures, our transmissions to one another. I hear fewer voices all the time.

There is a coldness and disconnection to parts of my life, growing parts, yet I feel like a crazy man ranting into the ether, like I am slipping into an Orwellian universe, lots of messages everywhere, no human beings with feelings. Sometimes my life feels lonely to me. I am a person who loves being alone, I need and love it.  Maria and I talk to one another all of the time. But the outside world is slipping away from me, and it is a very sad thing to me. I love talking to people, it nourishes and informs me.

But one by one, the people who used to talk to me don’t, and I miss them, I sometimes want to cry out into the universe, please, please, talk to me.  Facebook notifications and likes can’t do that for me, neither can text messaging. But I see that the idea of talking to people is receding. I understand that this a struggle I can only lose, people seem willing to give it up, like privacy and local business. I have never heard a politician or civic or business leader argue that we need to talk to each other more. Just think of the things they fight over all day, but the idea that we have stopped speaking to one another is not on anybody’s list of critical issues.

As often as I tell people, please, sometimes I need to speak with you, no one has yet said, oh, you are right, I feel that way too. I can tell they are just appeasing me, and on day I will probably give it up. Sometimes they oblige me, sometimes they don’t, but I feel myself slip farther and farther away  into my own curious and isolated feeling, from the essence of being human, one human voice listening to another and responding. Even though I sense I will lose this struggle, I can’t give it up. I have to keep trying for now. Sometimes, you must speak to me.