Selfie Stick

It seems experience has been eclipsed
by the proving of experience
we are no longer concerned
with wonder or adventure
but only with the ability
to have others observe us
in wonder or adventuring
hundreds of visitors see the surrounding beauty
only through their screens
incessantly documenting
but neglecting to actually be
where they are
reveling not in the majestic canyons
but in the anticipation
of the coming praise and envy
they expect to elicit
via their preferred digital attention farm
if Gaia were to kill us all
in an ecstatic rockslide
I could not fault her
so obstinate are we
in capturing her image
not out of gentle joy or grateful pleasure
but out of a perverse desire to possess
for the sole purpose of proving
in this our corrupting modern age
there is nothing more hubritic than the selfie.

Phantom Call

Back in high school, a time before cell phones and constant communication, I was in a play at the local theater called Scapino. Unlike a school production this was a professional theater with two stages and our run was six weeks not one weekend. Pretty cool. Because we had so many shows over an extended period(and the fact I had a supporting part) there was a lot of down time. During that production I taught myself to juggle(with left over limes from our opening night party), read, explored, and made prank phone calls.

Now my calls weren't malicious I just called random numbers and tried to engage people in conversation. Ask them how they were, what they were up to, if they had seen O' Brother Where Art Thou?. During my random dialing I found a woman's work voice mail, because our shows were always outside normal work hours I was confident she would never answer so I started leaving her messages. From what I remember they were relatively innocuous. I'd wish her well maybe tell her some interesting thing I'd seen or read, maybe share some piece of personal information like I thought this or that park was really great for hiking. I left probably half a dozen messages or so over the course of a couple weeks and they got increasingly more introspective. I'd ask her if she was happy, try to figure out if I was, that sort of thing. 

One of our last shows I called the number and someone answered. It wasn't the woman it was one of her co-workers that had to come in on the weekend to pick something up. The first thing she asked me was "Are you him?" worried I might be in trouble I reluctantly said I was. She told me the woman would be crushed that she had missed me, that the whole office was intrigued by the mystery, and that the woman herself seemed to be touched by my messages. I said I was sorry to missed her and quickly said goodbye. The show closed and the next time I was out and by a payphone I found I had forgotten the number.

It was a nice cool thing. Kind of reaching out and connecting sight unseen. With the pervasiveness of cell phones, the extinction of the pay phone, and the slow decline of privacy and anonymity(and by extension mystery) this situation would be impossible in this day and age. The challenge then is to find ways to connect, find ways to be kind, despite the impersonal and acidic illusion of connection that social medial and the internet provide. Not to say the past was better or easy but there are different issues that the technological necessity has uncovered, some of which we have yet to address.

Portent of the Future

Years ago
I went with my sister and mother
to Brown University
scouting the place
for my sibling's potential
collegiate home
and I don't remember much
as I was twelve
but I do remember
the soda machines
which could be charged
to your meal plan
with your student ID
as it was 1996
this was quite breathtaking
and technologically advanced
how easy
how convenient
how delicious
what a marvel
higher learning must be
I thought
what wonders the future must hold
for myself
and the world.

I was wrong and I was right.

Consuming Content

There is pleasure
in entertainment
thrill and comfort
in distraction
but the TV
from its advent
has been addictive
the drone and glow
of the box
necessitating legions to
turn on, tune in, and drop out
now phones
give us the magic square
every where
and the risk
is to become
complacent
satiated
compliant
sleepwalk through
the jobs we tolerate
to be diverted
by the ever-growing mass
of prestige long-form television
we the memers
the 21st Century Lotus Eaters

Movie Purgatory

The past couple days Nicole and I have watched some movies from the early 90's- Powder, Soapdish, and Howard's End. They were bad, surprisingly good, and shockingly bland respectively. The last got 9 Oscar nominations yet couldn't be more forgotten, or forgettable. I asked around about these three movies and most people hadn't heard of them or only heard of them but not seen them with a few exceptions.

There are some movies that stand the test of time. Movies that are remembered and re-watched, that find their way into the cultural lexicon. But many others fade away due to their own mediocrity and simple time's passing. For a while the video store was the place where these forgotten films would be, if not remembered at least preserved. And browsing the shelves and watching a swath of moderate to bad movies you might find something cool. I still remember fondly Legend of the White Horse, a 1987 movie with Christopher Llyod, and Josh Kirby...Time Warrior! both of which I don't think anyone I've ever met has seen. With the advent of streaming and the extensive accessibility of mainstream entertainment the video store has gone the way of the buffalo. And so to the ability, and pleasure, of finding relatively unknown films.

But time has passed, streaming services are now the watchword and with their popularity they have all focused, almost primarily, on original content. With the majority of their money being spent on their own shows and films streaming services don't have the money to continually buy rights for all new releases. In order to keep their catalogs full they've begun digging deeper for content, acquiring rights for little known, little seen, or forgotten films. Which brings us to Powder, Soapdish, and Howard's End.

Of the three only Soapdish I would actually recommend but its nice to have the access, to have the ability to go back and watch these 20+ year old films that can, if not necessarily entertain, evoke a time period, a style, and a culture temperature. Films are not only entertainment they are time capsules and, good or bad, can teach us, can have value. With the bankruptcy of Blockbuster and the extinction of the video store as we know it something was lost, not the access to the new releases but access to the breadth of film history, we still have Taxi Driver and Titanic but hundreds of thousands of movies fade into obscurity. With Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon all pushing hard into original programming we are getting that breadth of access back. And that's a good thing.

Distractions

Perhaps the future is bright
and this compulsive documenting
serves to strengthen memory
or evolve storytelling
but I fear the pervasive proving
of experience
serves to undermine
rather than enlighten.

The middle aged couple
in the Japanese garden
stopped incessantly for selfies
every path bend and fountain,
every coy pond and rock garden
needed their loud and leering faces
in front of them
immortalized in pixels.

But what of the quiet,
peace and tranquility.
That was lost.
Perhaps never to be found.

Sound and Fury

The internet is counterfeit
this has been true
since its first blush
of fanatic popularity-
AOL chat rooms were clogged
with baseness and dissimulation-
and since its grown in scope
and proliferation
but still maintained
its paradoxic uselessness
for, although it provides near
boundless information
and news' dissemination,
time and time and time again
the residue of its use is but
emptiness, despair, a sense of
failure and frustration.
The truth is Digital
only offers illusion,
neither action
or inspiration,
its flesh and sun and
physical conversation
that fosters change
and collaboration.

Facebook is a hollow husk
parasitic, a cannibal,
it is pretense, ego, masturbation
at its best distraction more often
nauseating, self involved, flagellation.

'Lo And Behold: Reveries Of The Connected World' A Review

Lo And Behold: Reveries Of The Connected World is a documentary about the internet, the latest offering from Werner Herzog. Through a series of interviews with internet pioneers and innovators as well as digital detractors Herzog investigates our current digital age, where it may go, and what it may cost.

From the founding of the internet in the 70's to tech mogul Elon Musk's plan to colonize Mars, from an off-the-grid radio tower in West Virginia to a recovery home for video game addiction both sides of the digital spectrum are covered. Perhaps not as engrossing as some of Herzog's previous works due to its sprawling subject matter it is still constructed with a tight framing mechanism, arresting visuals, and an eerie score which make for one hell of a compelling watch. Equal parts doom and hope Lo and Behold paints a complex picture of the effects, benefits, and collateral damage of technology. Bleak yet bemused.

Herzog isn't as present in the film as he is in some of his other documentaries but what remains is his ever vigorous curiosity. He may be somewhat detached and skeptical about much of the "positive" advancements of our digital age but he almost refrains entirely from judgement. He covers the subject almost as if its alien. At one point in response to a scientist discussing AI he says one of the only lines he has in the film "what about love?" which the scientist brushes off and Herzog lets go as if the scientist isn't worth the argument. What the film ultimately highlights is not how far we've come electronically but how universal and unshakable nature and interpersonal connection are.

A bizarre exploration of the digital world that affirms the real.

See It.

Tech Savvy

It is an increasing expectation
to surmount the phone and its distraction.
To relate in the real
one must circumvent the digital.

What promise do coffee lines
and commuting hold
when compared to CG designs
and simulated adventure.
Endless information
near boundless influence
unrestricted interaction-
a prospect difficult to question.

But careful how far you recede
don't mistake facsimile for deed.
Plugging in can become a habit
barriers increasingly elaborate.

Deactivate

This past week I deactivated my Facebook account. In most respects I'm not an opponent of the digital(love instagram) but I just found myself upset by it while also compulsively checking it. The world can be a cruel place, this isn't anything new, every day there are small and large scale tragedies happening and I think its important to be informed. However.

Overtime I've found the echo chamber, grandstanding, toothless nature of Facebook to be truly off putting. I agree that important information needs to be spread but posting and sharing takes so little effort and even less understanding that it lacks any real meaning. There is also this element of posturing, of narcissism about it all, cultivating a "compassionate" and "informed" digital persona, an element of "look at me I'm so enlightened" that is just exhausting. It propagates the illusion of involvement, of influence, of progress.

In my experience even if the content that is being shared is good and the sentiment accompanying it genuine it does not incite change, it is not actually participation in a political or social discourse. Petition signing, monetary donations to organizations, actual in-the-flesh protests/demonstrations, those have some actual stakes. Sharing a Huffpost article with your circle of friends who have the same beliefs as you doesn't actually do much.

Our culture is more partisan than it has ever been, beliefs more ingrained. There is little ground given in debate and discussion, minds rarely changed. This is no where more apparent then on Facebook where huge threads will develop from that one antagonistic conservative/liberal friend you have from high school/former co-worker/family member who tenaciously comments and uses incendiary language. No one is persuaded, everyone is angry. It's a zero sum game.

This all coupled with the fact that my checking Facebook had become habitual. Whenever I had downtime at work, at home, while commuting, a spare minute in line at Starbucks I'd check it even though it almost unilaterally intensified my boredom and caused me frustration. I couldn't stop I had built it into my muscle memory.

Now I don't say all this out of a sense of self-righteousness or superiority I just got tired of it, it made me feel bad. Social Media and digital technology is suppose to be helpful, make life easier, streamline communication, bring people together. At this point with it so ingrained in our day-to-day lives we have to police how successful it is for us, how much we get out of it, and decide if it is, in fact, useful.

It's important to remember that true change, inspiration, and tolerance are found in reality. Not in a What Disney Villain Are You quiz or 14 Vital Things You Don't Know About Syria article, as diverting as those things may be.