Inattentiveness of each other's lives
was the main reason The Beatles broke up.
You can see it all in the mixed messages
between the humour and lack of eye contact
docuemted in the more conflicted rehearsals
in the film, 'Get Back', which replaced
the badly edited and far more barbed 'Let it Be'.
A decade and a half after The Beatles split,
'the German Beatles', Kraftwerk, faltered
in their creativity. Many outside the band
wondered why. The first member to leave,
who recently wrote his autobiography, knew.
They were not known for their banter
or making jokes in the studio,
but like their predecessors, all four
were known to work well together.
But as they invested more in computers
they invested less in each other.
Where the music was concerned,
what machines might be made to do
was more fascinating than what humans
had to say about each other.
Now, doctors surgeries are high tech places,
where receptionists get glued to the screens
that the public know are there but can't see.
The receptionists are too busy to receive
patients who arrive for appointments.
That required human confirmation is gone.
When I go in nobody wants to know who I am,
or advise me of the right place to wait.
As a patient I am much nearer being a ghost
that the staff cannot care enough about,
even to exorcise, than anything more substantial.
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