In the future, nothing will be experienced, but only recorded. Documented on video for later viewing on smaller and smaller screens, your child in glorious pageantry dancing her sugar plum fairy across a pre-school stage will be a digital reproduction of an evening you won’t remember because you were there only to hold up your iPhone to capture a moment in her fleeting childhood. Why did you want to capture your daughter’s performance? Do you even know? Perhaps it was important to her, and therefore to you, because she had been practicing for weeks, telling you excitedly about her part, showing you her twirl, sharing anew the tale of the Nutcracker and the Rat. She wanted to know that you and Daddy would be there. You assured her you would, and, indeed, smiling to yourselves that evening on the drive over, proud parents, you both showed up (though your cell phones were on silent and you had no intention of not answering any vibration). When the lights dimmed and the magic began, tiny cameras held aloft (with all other parents), you videoed this evening’s performance because it was an important event—but evidently not important enough to pay attention to the performance itself while it was unfolding before your eyes. You missed it.
Or rather, you captured the performance, either partially or whole depending on your arm’s level of endurance holding up the device, so you could—well why, exactly? View it in the future in its greatly reduced capacity for reasons not strong enough then to sway you to experience it in the present?
Perhaps you wanted to forward it to me, because surely I get as much delight watching your daughter perform as you did recording it. Perhaps you wanted to upload it to Facebook, and monitor your wall awaiting the “likes” and effusive comments. We agree: she is just too cute. My, how she’s grown.
Perhaps years to come when she’s a snarling teenager averting her gaze and mumbling listless responses to your humblest morning greetings, you’ll sift through your saved files to watch in her more innocent and loving times what you didn’t watch the first time around. And under the clutter this is the driving reason, isn’t it: to remember. To scoop from its ceaseless flow a cupful of time’s rushing river. This is your daughter when she was young and beautiful and didn’t resent you. It was your daughter back then, too, when she was a sugar plum fairy, and that magical evening would never come again, though so many days and evenings were still to come, and many of these you recorded as well—blessed technology!—but the river kept rushing, didn’t it? Where did the time go? After receiving from your daughter a somewhat halfhearted goodbye hug—she fell limp too soon, you thought—and waving as the taxi took her to the airport for her flight to Prague to live with an indie filmmaker, who will end up not marrying her, you return to your digital recordings. There she is (no, there she was). You did it: you captured that wonderful evening long ago. She loved you so. Look at her smile. Don’t you wish you would have been there to see it?
Ask an ambitious mountaineer why he (or she) desires to ascend Mount Everest, the mountaineer may cleverly remember to answer “Because it’s there” and we nod and grin admiringly, sharing the aptness of this stock response. But that’s not the reason to ascend Everest, is it? You could brush aside the mountaineer’s unintended evasion and lay scrutiny: no really, why? Next response might come “Because I want to” or “Because I’ve always dreamed of doing it” which are variations on the original evasion. You persist. If at this point the mountaineer isn’t annoyed at your dogged pursuit, you may get a shrug. He may not know the reason. Or he may. But because the mountain exists isn’t a reason to climb it. The chair I’m sitting on right now also exists, but I doubt the mountaineer wants to climb it. Giraffes exist. After his descent from Everest, will he scale them?
If we can record it, we should record it. By recording it, we don’t have to bother experiencing it. Recording it is certainly much less work. We don’t have to attend to what we’re seeing or hearing, just whether we’re getting the footage we want and whether the device has enough power. We are relieved of the dreaded responsibility of living in the present, and more importantly, thinking about the meaning of the experience. Thank goodness. We can use our minds more constructively: putting the recorded footage on Facebook, for instance.
Look, your daughter has sugar-plummed her way offstage. You may stop recording now, and continue watching the delightful play. You have missed seeing your daughter, but she’ll return soon. Here she comes again: stop experiencing and start recording, quick. Well done: you have succeeded in missing another moment in your daughter’s life.
I had a friend who, when asked by strangers if he would be so kind to snap a photo of them standing in front of (insert attraction: waterfall, statue of stern king on horseback, sunset, whatever), would kindly refuse. I’m sure they didn’t expect that. What an asshole, they murmured as he walked away. Or perhaps they asked, why not? Being a kind person as I know him to be, he probably answered them truthfully. I know what he would have said. They may or may not have understood the gravity of his answer.
Make sure you take photos. You will often hear this as you bid goodbye to friends and family before embarking on any adventure or vacation. They want to see what you’ll see. You may meet some really fun people. Let’s say you do. You have such a great time with them, you make sure to document the four of you together to commemorate the amazing time you had. One of you approaches a stranger to ask him to take a photo of the four of you (careful whom you ask). Click. You’re all captured smiling gleefully. Back home, showing the photo to friends, you try to convince them how absolutely cool and amazing these people were. It should be apparent from the photograph. It’s not. But we all nod heartily and say “Wow, sounds like you had a great time” which isn’t entirely insincere.
I was in a bar once with a friend. We’d had a few drinks. A woman arrived with a hand-held video recorder and began filming the young woman behind the bar who busied herself wiping down the counters. I waited for the bartender to do something, or say something…well, significant, or out of the ordinary, or flatly just worth recording. She didn’t. Excuse me, I slurred to the video recorder, why are you filming her? Unwavering in her concentration, the woman replied, “Because she’s my friend.” I persisted, probably a little more impatiently than a few drinks before—okay, she’s your friend, but why are you filming her? “Because I want her to be famous,” her tone a bit annoyed I didn’t grasp the obvious. Well, of course I persisted again (I suppose I should have just asked if she knew any giraffes). As my friend pulled me off the bar stool toward daylight, the woman finally looked away from the device. “God, what’s wrong with you!”
Well, there isn’t just one thing wrong with me. But in this I’m simply trying to understand why people find it necessary to video-record the everyday. I walked along a North Carolina beach yesterday afternoon and passed a father with iPhone recording his two daughters splashing in frothy waves. They were too small and too young to evince any talent; they’d bend their squishy little legs and gather up water and let it drop, that’s pretty much it. When I returned direction twenty minutes later, young father was still their posed to record daughters repeating their fun. I suppose I shouldn’t be prejudicial: perhaps he wasn’t filming them, but watching porn.
The Venus de Milo, or Aphrodite of Melos, graces the Louvre in Paris, solemn, demurring her gaze, a sensual masterpiece of ideal Hellenistic beauty. Famous, it is mobbed by visitors because they’ve read or heard it’s famous, and here they are, a family, finally in Paris after a long and expensive flight from Ohio. They’ve read the guide, planned their few hours, and behold! In the marble flesh! They stand back and take a photo. This time they don’t have to ask: a stranger offers to take a photo of the whole family in front of it. Duly documented, it is forgotten, and the family searches out the next famous work of art in the guide. They’ve got photographic evidence that they indeed saw this famous statue. Thank goodness, because they can’t really afford numerous trips to Paris on what their salaries.
When they get home, they can prove to their friends.
Gather round the laptop. Look here. Click. Enlarge the jpeg. Ohhh, we say reverentially. You narrate: yes, that’s the famous Venus. Wow, we say, you really saw it. Click. Hey, that’s you guys next to the Victory of Something. That proves beyond doubt that you saw this famous statue! I guess you liked it so much you also bought a large cardboard glossy reproduction of it. Fifteen dollars? Whoever took that photo is a real professional. No, I know you’re not a professional photographer, you’re an accountant. So why did you take the photo when you also bought this expertly glossy reproduction? You just wanted to. I see. Rest assured, I don’t doubt you actually visited the museum and saw first-hand this famous statue; no reason to lie about a thing like that. Although here on your bookshelf is an art book you grabbed from the bargain rack at Barnes & Noble before your trip. Doesn’t look like it’s been opened. But here’s the photo of the Venus. Another real professional job. But hey, you now have your own photo of the famous statue. But tell me, the Venus is famous for its sensual expression of a Hellenistic ideal of beauty, so what did you notice about it specifically? Oh. But I thought you said you saw it, and this photo of you and the kids proves you were there. You just took the photo, is all. So you spent thousands of dollars and flew all the way to Paris and visited the Louvre which houses this famous statue which, let’s face it, you probably won’t visit again, and you were right there in the presence of this masterpiece of ancient sculpture, and you didn’t even look at the statue except to take the photo, the same photo you already own within this heavy art book you bought on the bargain rack at Barnes & Noble? The real work of art you simply ignored?
Well, at least you have your own picture.
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