Years ago, I was temping for a company called Metromedia, a fiberoptic cable company located on Hudson Street in Lower Manhattan. I worked the front desk and answered the phones for a room that was staffed by engineers 24/7. The engineers kept track of the fiberoptic cables that spanned the globe and was responsible for most of the internet connections, well, connecting.

We’d eat our lunches together in the conference room and I’d use the opportunity to find out more about what was happening on those video screens. After getting a tour of all the different cable centers and the node, I was given the opportunity to examine the cables themselves. Shocked by how fragile our physical communication lines actually were, I wanted to know what would happen if something something happened to them out there beneath the ocean.

For the most part, no one messes with them, given how far beneath the ocean they happen to be. Occasionally, however, sharks like to chew on them. But there are deep sea divers who specialize in resorting the cable lines. At any rate, I wrote a song about it.  Stefan Weisman scored it, Mezzo Soprano, Hai-Ting Chinn did the lead vocals (I did back up vocals and when Stefan worked his magic it came out sounding all fugue-ie).  When Linda Ganjan created this amazing animation to go with it, it became it’s own entity—an animated short!  Was screened at a couple venues and I recently posted it on my You Tube channel, as well.  The video you’re streaming when watching it is, very likely, being transmitted to you over the very cables that inspired me to write it.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering whatever happened to Metromedia and did they ever find out about the song? They didn’t. Tried and track them down to share the song w/ them long after the fact, but they seem to have disappeared. Dunno if it means they merged or just went under the deep down under ocean night. If anyone reading this knows who I’m talking about and forwards it onto their engineering team, I’d really appreciate it, though.