With a smile I have to admit that I’m starting to turn into the Old Fart I’ve spent my life despising. You know who I’m talking about; the type/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 that wasn’t all!), in one of the most remote parts of the world, some people walked into the frame. No sweatshirt. I like people. They tend to add to my images, like little specks of energy dancing on this great mom’s body.
And then, sitting together side by side in the perfect framing position for a shot of the sun lighting up the ocean right above their heads, they each pulled a cell phone from their respective pockets and marked down a few moments elsewhere.
One of my life quests 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 your driveway, by your side 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 loneliness with another human being, lives the Intruder.
When this cell phone thing started to move out of the cities and become more rural, I was living in an intentional community in Oregon. It was (a surprisingly eclectic group of) about 30 adults and 8 children who lived on 87 acres and ran permaculture design centers and conferences, as well as running a personal growth workshop and publishing a magazine. We were known as a community that really seeks to work the angle of interpersonal connection in the daily (and formidable!) tasks of life as examples of sustainability.
As you can guess, though not on the radical “tree keepers” 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) shook their cell phones and walked (of course, within the limits of the places ” live” or whatever they’re called) the property — trails, streams, meadows — chatting with the ethers.
Every week we had a business meeting. At one of those meetings, where we decided on policies and stuff, barely giving it a second thought, I tabled a consensus motion to set aside a specific area for people to use their cell phones.
Hell, there was earlier. Years ago the community did the same thing with cigarette smokers. There was a small spot on the property, near the conference center classrooms, where one could go for a smoke. Admittedly it was a depressing shed type shed with a disgusting chair and an ugly open coffee can for butts, sitting on the cement driveway. If I had come to that community smoking, I would have quit out of sheer shame. Since the area was within sight of the roads leading downtown, it always looked pretty zoo-like, the only thing missing was Dunce caps for the less than 1%.
I fervently hoped that the community would feel that such a kidnapping would help people face themselves much more directly. Hopefully, what seemed to be true for smokers, eventually enough people would feel uncomfortable enough for word to get 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 get over this, but boy was I wrong! As soon as the words “I’m sick of seeing ugly little bastards glowing everywhere I look” left my mouth, I noticed three or four hands sticking out of 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) would catch little metallic flashes from knives and guns. ready out of the corner of your eye.
And these were my community partners. 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 Marlboro Man images into spreads, foldouts, brochures and whatever 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 outcome. Today (September) and in any shot with five or more people, one of them points her phone at her or someone else’s ear. Some of my images look like a gunfight in one of (actually, many!) Quentin Tarantino movies.
But how arrogant am I!
For being all that balanced person that I pretend 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 as common to have cell phone-laden photos of people 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 complaining while on the cliff, I might have found that each of these people was, in fact, transmitting 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 fool 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 screw 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 that mobile phones suck out of you.
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 going to get a cell phone. I don’t have to The last time I and my motorcycle broke down on the road, 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 within four cars and near side bump, 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, because I’m 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 bitch with the cell phones and the spawn of her.
Now, the privileged drive SUV’s with those systems that put them in contact with the Central Command immediately in case of an emergency. Like if one of the kids in the backseat says “I have to pee,” next thing you know a voice is out of the sky saying, “Just turn left, go two blocks, and turn toward McDonald’s… Oh, and while you’re there, don’t forget to enlarge the fries, the extra salt will help kids hold their bladders longer, and Mr. Mandel, please don’t run the red light like you did three blocks ago. .”
While I personally have nothing against him, when Gary Coleman tells me (in commercials scattered across TV, the Internet, AND movies!) “Someone should” know where I am every minute of my life, I can’t help but shudder and brace myself for Armageddon. . .
I know it starts when people like Gary show up to me 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.