With a smile I have to admit that I’m starting to become the Old Fart I’ve spent my life despising. You know who I’m talking about; the guy/person who says things like, “I just don’t understand the things people do these days.”
Well I do not.
The other day I was doing my photography and in the middle of a particularly spectacular sunset (as if they weren’t all!), in one of the most remote parts of the world, some people entered the frame. No sweatshirt. I like people. They tend to add to my images, like little specks of energy that dance on the body of this great mom.
And then, sitting together side by side in the perfect framing position for a sun shot lighting up the ocean right overhead, they each pulled a cell phone from their respective pockets and ticked off a few moments elsewhere.
One of my life searches has been to learn to be more here, more present in each moment. As if to insult a lifetime of searching, everywhere I go there are people THERE now! On the street, in their cars, in the driveway of your house, next to you in the restaurant, coming out of the bathroom, even in the middle of a conversation! Wherever you go, whatever you do, you are surrounded by people whose bodies are in front of you, but their presence is elsewhere.
Not that this was new to me. Somehow though, this felt like a new insult. Right in the place where you surrender your worries to the richness of the moment, one of the few places where you can share your solitude with another human being, lives the Intruder.
When this cell phone thing started to move out of the cities and become more rural, I lived in an intentional community in Oregon. It was (a surprisingly eclectic group of) about 30 adults and 8 children living on 87 acres and running permaculture design centers and conferences, as well as running a personal growth workshop and publishing a magazine. We were known as a community that truly seeks to work the angle of interpersonal connection into the mundane (and formidable!) tasks of life as examples of sustainability.
As you can guess, though not on the radical “tree-keeper” side, even the ex-Navy intelligence officers in the community among us were clearly oriented toward a value system of relationship over action, presence over distance.
But then, in my fifth year there, more and more “guests” (people who came to a conference and spent the weekend living with us) would shake their cell phones and walk around (within the confines of the venues, of course)” live” or whatever they are called) the property –trails, streams, meadows– chatting with the ethers.
Every week we had a business meeting. In one of those meetings, where we decide on policies and so on, on a second thought, I tabled a consensus motion to set aside a specific area for people to use their cell phones.
Hell, there was before. Years ago the community did the same thing with cigarette smokers. There was a small place on the property, near the classrooms of the conference center, where one could go to smoke. Admittedly it was a depressing shed type shed with a disgusting chair and an ugly open coffee can for the butts, sitting on the concrete walkway. If I had come to that community smoking, I would have quit out of sheer shame. Since the area was in full view of the roads leading downtown, it always looked pretty zoo-like, the only thing missing was Dunce caps for the less than 1%.
It was my fervent hope that the community would feel that such a kidnapping would help people deal with themselves in a much more direct way. Hopefully, what seemed to be true for smokers, eventually enough people would feel uncomfortable enough to get the word out that of course we’re tolerant, but if you smoke or use a cell phone in this part of nature You’re going to feel like an idiot.
I figured it would be a piece of cake to top this, but boy was I wrong! As soon as the words, “I’m sick of seeing the ugly little bastards glowing everywhere I look,” left my mouth, I noticed three or four hands outside a table of about 18 people reflexively heading somewhere. of their clothing or anatomy to make sure they had their cell phones with them.
It reminded me of when I was a paramedic and walked into a tough bar across the tracks when we (my partner and I were the only white people around) were catching little metallic flashes of knives and guns. prepared out of the corner of your eye.
And these were my fellow community members. It was then that I knew that life as I have known it is over.
Back to the beach. My first thought was, “What the hell am I going to do with this shot?” But then I realized, “Shit, they’re all like that!”
I’ve taken so many deeply moving Primo nature photos with people and cell phones in them that I might as well gear my entire portfolio to turning the Marlboro Man images into spreads, flyers, brochures and whatever it is that promotes the cell phone and at least do some money from the damn photos I end up throwing away because this unnatural thing is happening.
And now, it’s getting exponentially worse because cell phones take pictures.
On beach photography projects, even in May 2005, I could work with the sunset and photograph people celebrating it and not once worry about the result. Today (September) and in any shot with five or more people, one of them points her phone at her ear or at another person. Some of my images look like several gunmen clashing in one of (actually, many!) Quentin Tarantino movies.
But how arrogant I am!
For being all that balanced person I claim to be, here I am denying the experience of other humans for nothing more than my own greedy need to die in a world that is familiar to me.
Probably ten years from now, it will be just as common to see photos of people carrying cell phones as it is to see handkerchiefs in the pockets (suit pockets, no less!) of men on the street in photos taken in the 1950s.
Why does it sound scary to me?
Also, if I had spent a little more time observing and less time complaining while on the cliff, I might have found that each of these people was in fact passing on photographs of that joyous sunset to their recipients. How sweet: sharing this glorious moment with friends in Louisiana under four feet of water!
It’s hard enough being in a bad mood and having to listen to that bubbly dork on the other end of any phone. But being able to get the full picture of that joy is torture. The moment turns into a series of bolt bullets, “See how happy I am? What’s wrong with your miserable existence?”
You are so busy getting angry with the happiness of the caller that you can’t even appreciate the beauty around you, that’s the soul sucked by mobile phones.
What will happen to our anonymity and privacy? “Come on darling, I know you’re miserable, but turn on the camera so I can really see!”
No, I’m not getting a cell phone. I don’t have to. The last time my motorcycle and I broke down on the highway, for example, I jumped in the middle of the road, spread my fingers with my little finger pointing to my mouth and my thumb to my ear and into four cars and near sideswipe, a guy stopped and let me use his cell phone to call for help.
Like any passionate American, of course I reserve the right to be hypocritical. But still, as an American, I shouldn’t have to give up my inalienable right to hide. There are fewer and fewer places to hide, and that, in the final analysis, is my dog with the cell phones and I spawn from her.
Now, the privileged drive SUVs with these systems that put them in contact with Central Command immediately in case of emergency. Like if one of the kids in the back seat says, “I have to pee,” the next thing you know, a voice is coming out of the sky to say, “Just turn left, go two blocks, and turn into McDonald’s… Oh, and while you’re there, don’t forget to enlarge the fries, the extra salt will help the kids hold their bladders longer, and Mr. Mandel, please don’t run the red light like you did three blocks ago. .”
Although I personally have nothing against him, when Gary Coleman tells me (in commercials scattered on TV, the Internet AND movies!) “Someone should” know where I am every minute of my life, I can’t help but wince and brace myself for Armageddon. . .
I know it starts with people like Gary showing up to prepare me for what life will be like. I know that the same technology that will allow you to see and talk to me will allow “them” to see and hear me, and frankly, I don’t want any of that.
Unless, of course, I get stranded.