Till we meet face to face, words are all we have

But those images are not our faces, I’m coming to realise. A face is not just an arrangement of features, a shape that can be easily rendered as pixels and fired through the broadband network for presentation to others.

Our faces, and our physical bodies, are so dynamic, real and responsive. They are an authentic expression of our living selves.

This person I used to see, I really miss her face these days. Perhaps more than her spirit. The spirit you can access through verbal and written communication, which transcends the physical.

But ah, our bodies, our faces.

She has a way about her. She surprises you with what she knows.

Once in a restaurant we were discussing 70s pop groups, way before her time, and she asserted, “The Bee Gees are way better than ABBA!”

Shocked to hear so broad a statement from a millennial, I looked within myself and realised that I wasn’t sure where I really stood on the issue. Cue several weeks of studious listening to both bands, before I came to the understanding that indeed, yes, the Bee Gees are vastly better than ABBA!

The Bee Gees’ career spanned about five decades, while ABBA barely managed a decade. The brothers Gibb segued across styles and musical philosophies, from folk to rock to disco. And the songwriting had a power and poignancy that never dimmed.

Also, I think my friend’s family used to play the one Bee Gees album in the car when she was growing up. That’s why she liked the Bee Gees!

The album in question was One Night Only, a live recording made during a series of concerts the Bee Gees gave in Las Vegas towards the end of their career. It’s a definitive career showcase, better than a greatest hits, because it’s live and in person, with all of the passion and energy that implies.

Meeting your friends in person is like a live performance. Texting and having Zoom chats is a bit like the album version. Something considered, curated, compiled and consciously presented to the world.

I miss her live performances.

There was this thing she used to do, when the Barry Gibb sang How Deep Is Your Love, where she would walk up to me in the kitchen while we were cooking, and serenade me face to face, with word-perfect lyrics honed over decades of Bee Gee love.

That line about living in a world of fools, breaking us down, when they all should let us be…

And her eyebrows would knit together into this little frown while she delivered the lyrics there in front of the oven, with the dishcloth as a microphone, the two of us face to face.

We’ve not done that in a long time.

We still speak these days. We’re good. But the days of those face-to-face serenades are behind us, for now.

I don’t think they’re going to be able to digitise that experience effectively for the age of social distancing.

It only really works in person, like a few other things. And those things, the proximity engagements, they still have value, even if we’re convincing ourselves that we can do without them.

Perhaps we can do without them for a while, but not forever. We need them. We need to be close, to look into each other’s faces and sing the words to How Deep Is Your Love by the Bee Gees, the greatest band of all time.

That. That! That is why we’re doing this, hanging in. Waiting it out at home, keeping our distance. So that one day we won’t have to. So we can experience it again, feel each other’s presence. In person.

Face to face.

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