By Hans Ebert
@HansEbertMusic
Visit: www.hans-ebert.com
Once upon an Insta Egg, there was the land called Dum Dum. It was a strange little place where many talked and talked and repeated and repeated and repeated themselves almost as if to convince each other that they knew what they were doing. But nothing was ever doing or going anywhere. Nothing ever happened. Not even Baby Shark.
The village elders were senior Dum Dums. The generation before them were mediocre Dum Dums. The youngest Dum Dums were lost Dum Dums as what to do next. They didn’t wish to be Dum Dum Dumbed Down. But what could they do?
They didn’t wish to be like the senior Dum Dums who were carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders. Why were they weighed down by this? Information overload borne out of boredom.
Did they have to carry the weight of the world on their shoulders? No. But they needed to do something. So, why not save the world with some #hashtags and just follow what everyone else was doing? This way, they were doing something without doing anything.
The young So So who lived amongst them looked at everyone in Dum Dum land and saw that everything weighing them down had to do with honesty. A lack of it. Being honest to themselves scared them. Scared to face the truth. Scared to improve their lives. She wanted to change their way of thinking.
Everyone desperately wanted fame. Instafame. And believed they could buy fame without working at it. Playing the fame game had become a full time job.
The more one played it, the more and more one had to KEEP playing it. Keeping up false pretences was a full time gig. There was no time for anything else.
So So thought about something she had watched with her grandfather many years called The Point.
Her grandfather was not a Dum Dum. He showed So So many things from his past- wonderful music, films, drawings, paintings- everything from the most creative minds of those times.
Though her grandfather had left to continue his life’s journey elsewhere as had her parents, So So never forgot his stories and everything he had shown her. But what had happened? Or what had NOT happened? Who had stolen creativity and happiness and fun and building new things? Why had everything been allowed to become Dum Dum? Why had everyone to be the same as everyone else?
So So could not understand where everything took a U-turn and ended up following each other but which was heading nowhere.
She remembered listening to the story of Bollo. Bollo was the only round headed boy in a land of people with pointy heads. He didn’t belong.
With his dog Arrow, Bollo set off looking for the point. The point to anything. She saw herself as being like Bollo. She wanted to change things. Not be a Dum Dum.
Because she hadn’t anything special except for her imagination, So So decided to give away something that was not great, but only just, well, so so. And tell everyone the truth. That what she was giving away was only so so.
What did she give away? Imagination in empty bottles of different shapes and sizes.
The Dum Dum people all wanted these. They believed anything given away so honestly as being just so so must really be More than it said it was. It had to be more than the sum of its equal parts.
The more she insisted that what was being given away was only bottled imagination, the more the Dum Dums wanted these empty bottles.
Some opened these bottles and inhaled what was inside. They felt that it made them feel better. Everyone carried these bottles wherever they went. They talked about them. They talked to each other about them.
They also quickly discovered how these bottles could be used- to create art. To bring people together. To even make music.
Soon Dum Dum travelled somewhere way beyond the obvious. Why? Because imagination has no boundaries.
There was no more Dum Dum. In its place was One. It’s where everyone shares their gifts and where everyone is happy to be different.
As for So So, she is now known as Somebody. Visit her sometimes.
Copyright Hans Ebert, January 2019
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