Fifteen minutes into the future, you will experience the real only if you remember to record it. Documented, posted, shared, gunning for the viral.
Friend, let me join you at your daughter’s preschool performance of a mundane and flimsy-scripted Nutcracker, gazing proudly through viewfinder for later viewing on smaller and smaller screens. Your child in glorious pageantry dancing her sugar plum fairy across the stage will be a digital reproduction of an evening you won’t remember because you were there only to hold up your device to capture moments in her fleeting childhood. Why did you want to capture your daughter’s performance? 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 and costume, sharing anew the tale of the Nutcracker and the Rat. She wanted to know that you and Daddy/Mommy would be there. When the lights dimmed and the magic commenced, dozens of devices held aloft, you and the gathered parents 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 look forward to—well what, 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 hence when she’s a teenager averting her gaze and mumbling listless responses to your humblest morning greetings, you’ll sift through your saved files to watch her more innocent and loving times—what you didn’t see 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 deluge. 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 flood kept rolling, didn’t it? Where did the time go? After receiving from your daughter a somewhat halfhearted goodbye hug—she fell limp, pulling away too soon, you thought—and waving as the Uber took her to the airport for her flight to Prague to live with an indie filmmaker, you return to your digital recordings. There she is/was. You did it: you captured that wonderful evening long ago. She loved you so. Look at her smile. How wonderful the real thing would have been.
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, 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 our brave mountaineer scale them?
If we can record it, we should record it. By recording it, we don’t have to bother experiencing it in the boldly deemed real time. 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, reflecting on 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 more cherished moments in your daughter’s life.
I had a friend who, when asked by strangers if he would be so kind as to snap a photo of them standing in front of a waterfall, or statue of grave statesman on horseback, or slow melting sunset, would kindly refuse.
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 in California. My friend and I had more than a few drinks. A young woman arrived with a hand-held video recorder and began filming another young woman behind the bar who busied herself wiping down the counters (her employment). 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 peer onward and replied, “Because she’s my friend.” I persisted, probably a little more impatient 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 annoyed that 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!”
I was simply trying to understand why people find it necessary to video-record the everyday. I walked along a North Carolina beach one afternoon and passed a father with iPhone recording his two daughters splashing in white foamy 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 there 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 bubbly, 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 in this hallowed room! A fawning wonder blooms on their faces, expectant, as if waiting for the Venus to dance. Father wobbles the camera to frame, cocking his gaze down to focus. Happy to oblige, : 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 their salaries.
When they get home, they can prove to their friends they were there—the Eiffel Tower, the padlock love adorning the bridges across the Seine, their affable French waiter—and verify that, in Susan Sontag’s words, fun was had.
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 scintillating 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? 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 a memento...
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