When the Pope got pushed at Christmas, the thing that disturbed me most about the incident wasn’t the pontiff prodding, it was the fact that everyone had their cameras/phone-cameras in the air, recording the service then the fall. Last night, John was watching some videos of beatbox competitions on YouTube and it was exactly the same – everyone in the audience was giving the hi-tec salute. And last year, at Unity Day in Hyde Park, I remember everyone noticing how pretty it was when we looked down an avenue of trees as the low, much-welcome sun streamed through onto the silhouetted revellers mingling around — and we all instinctively reached for our cameras to capture the scene. Since none of us are particularly skilled photographers, and at least half of us were using crappy phone cams, the image would never be a fraction as beautiful as the reality of the situation but we couldn’t help ourselves.
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about Susan Sontag’s essays ‘On Photography’. I first came across them when I was 16 when I was just starting Media Studies – I’ve not re-read them since so it might be that I’m missing some key points or remembering the whole thing wrong but what stuck with me was the idea that you can’t both participate in and record a moment – you can do one or the other but not both.
I guess this has been on my mind not just because of the Pope and beatbox but because it’s the start of the year and various people in my life and/or feedreader are starting “photo-a-day” projects for 2010. I’m a big, big fan of recording things for posterity for my own future enjoyment but I worry that our current obsession with recording everything – in photos and videos as I’ve mentioned here but also Tweeting and other such instant text-based records – is stopping us enjoying the moment as it happens. We feel like it hasn’t happened unless we can share it instantly with everyone in our social network. It’s not only instant sharing – I find myself composing Tweets-for-later-posting or Three Beautiful Things in my head all the time. An example of this just happened: I looked out of the living room window and a magpie flew across the snow-covered garden. Rather than just enjoying the monochrome vision, I started to think how I would write about it for today’s 3BT update.
I realise that I’m being a bit harsh here. These latter more creative projects certainly have their good points – a lot of people’s “photo-a-day” projects aren’t as much about capturing a moment as they are about an ongoing exercise to improve their photograph skills; similarly, I use Twitter and my 3BT updates as writing exercises. And wanting to share the pretty, the funny, the momentous with other people who can’t be there is admirable – but it does come at a cost. As soon as you reach for your camera, you are no longer in the moment, not fully anyway. This distance can be useful as (iirc) Sontag mentions in relation to war photography but when it’s at a party or enjoying a walk, it just disrupts the mindfulness of the moment. For as long as I can remember, I’ve used humour & cynicism (and teetotalism, heh) to avoid losing myself in the moment and now it seems I’m reacquiring more tools to aid my remove. So what can I do to stop it? Let the excuses begin: I’m finding 3BT a depression-busting exercise – forcing myself to focus on positive things for a change. I could stop Twittering but I use Twitter to provide myself with office banter when I’m working at home, for news, for meeting new people I’d otherwise never meet – particularly not with my real-life super shyness.
One idea I’ve had is to do something, participate in something interesting every day and consciously not Tweet/3BT it, not take a photo of it, not text John or Katherine going “ooh” – but I don’t know if that’s enough because I already do it quite a bit (for example, when we were in Madrid in November, I took exactly one photograph and hardly posted to Twitter at all, and, on a more day to day level, I frequently censor myself from tweeting about having a really, really good wee etc).
So what to do. what to do…
This random brain spew brought to you by strong, sugared tea and a morning of book-keeping.
12/1/2010 at 6:27 pm
So massively true dude.
I removed myself from Twitter and from the bloggersphere precisely as I was composing postings on an hourly basis and thinking, ‘Well, that would make a good Tweet’. I was also getting massive inferiority complexes from the fact that I could not think of something witty and ‘spontaneous’ to post. I’d prefer to live through something, cherish it, then remember it instead of committing it to binary.
Frankly, life is way too short and I value my privacy far too much as well. Hurrah for digital blackout!