Throughout The Winter of our Disconnect many entries in the book or sometimes entire pages of it made me stop and think about my reaction to reading it. For instance: “Bill played Satie’s Gymnopédie No.1, on the piano, beautifully…Overwhelmed with admiration, wonder…and guilt. If we’d been ‘experimenting’ all along, where would he be now??” (138). A few parts of this quote taken from an entry on April 24th, later on in the experiment, really stop and got me thinking about what I would be like today if I cut all of the technology out of my own life. And, being a piano player myself, seeing another pianist mastering pieces beautifully because of how they cut out the huge vacuum of social media gets me wondering the same thing as Maushart wondered: Where would I be now if I had done the same, in anything?
Mausharts dialogue here, shockingly, describes my mother’s feeling about me playing the piano and spending too much time on things like the computer. That is the second part of my reaction to reading this passage; how guilty my mother must feel, like Maushart was, about not encouraging me more and more to play the piano or disconnecting me from technology which is simply holding me back! Now, I’m feeling more and more like I need to surprise my mother with a beautiful piano piece like Gymnopédie No.1 sometime and have her admire me and feel good. But, that terrifying thought of losing technology for six months, the thought that had to have crossed Annni, Sussy and Bill’s mind several times throughout “the experiment”, speaks to me and tells me I wouldn’t be able to handle it. But, this quote has me wondering if I could.
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