Telephone, All Alone Feeling Blue.” Why should the phone create 
an intense feeling of loneliness? Why should we feel compelled 
to answer a ringing public phone when we know the call cannot 
concern us? Why does a phone ringing on the stage create 
instant tension? Why is that tension so very much less for an 
unanswered phone in a movie scene? The answer to all of these 
questions is simply that the phone is a participant form that 
demands a partner, with all the intensity of electric polarity. It 
simply will not act as a background instrument like radio.

     A standard practical joke of the small town in the early 
days of the telephone draws attention to the phone as a form 
of communal participation. No back fence could begin to rival 
the degree of heated participation made possible by the 
partyline. The joke in question took the form of calling several 
people, and, in an assumed voice, saying that the engineering