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| Celandine Films |
NOTHING
QUESTIONS PRIORITIES LIKE DEATH, whether impending or passed, close
or distant, singular or grouped. It sharpens up focus for a bit,
asking pointedly what actually matters. For a bit, anyway. The
duration of the effect varies as wildly as the circumstances. This
enforced clarity and reassessment could go on for months, or merely
moments. Still, when the end of all things is unambiguous, most
people will at least reconsider their activities, regardless. Like
the Moon, it is, from anyone's position, the same Moon. No way around
it. Likewise, for everybody, sooner or later, it passes.
Shortly
after David Bowie died, it occurred to me that I'd been seeing
something for quite awhile, maybe for years, without previously
noticing it, that is a note about this priorities effect. It has
become important for those who typically conduct much of their
socializing online to, in the event of a death, go online to tell
everyone they'll be offline for awhile. In the first waves of loss,
technologically based communication is one of the first things to go.
Cutting back to the most important things, they unplug. Social
media aren't top priority for their most critical human needs during
those times.
As
I said, death will have that sort of effect, wiping out all but the
most necessary functions or even thinking, but that unplugging
behavior says something about our relationship with media. Mind you,
the near parade of celebrity deaths in recent months -- weeks, even
-- was populated primarily by relatively elderly people, and their
unplugging families have been far beyond the demographic of those
grew up online, so that's likely to figure quite a bit in
prioritizing daily postings to cold shut down. I think. Maybe.
Maybe...not entirely. Now that I'm conscious of this, I'll be keeping
my eye out. The problem with that idea is someone younger would have
to die. Well, that's no good, and it brings in a whole different set
of variables, but would I likewise see their surviving relations post
up "Please respect our privacy in this difficult time. We'll be
offline for awhile" in all of their feeds? (I know,
that's what "interns" are for...) What is it about
unplugging that is, in a traumatic time, more important than staying
in touch online? What does that do or prevent that it can't by
keeping the screen lit?
Solo
theatre writer/performer Dan Hoyle -- journalistic theatre, he calls
it -- isn't nearly as old as Lemmy, Bowie, Maurice White,
Meadowlark, Haskel Wexler, Wes Craven, Christopher Lee, B. B. King,
Pratchett, Nimoy, Bob Elliott, Alan Rickman, Vilmos Zsigmond or...
(sigh).. but in his current stage show "Each And Every Thing",
he addresses our relationships with media past and present, posing
some questions via an array of characters as well as himself. There's
even a segment on a retreat in -- where else? -- Northern California
called the Digital Detox. There's acknowledgement of the awkwardness
of human interaction being offset by the handy distractions of
mobile, as well as an admittedly romantic analysis of that forum of
democratic discourse, the newspaper. Scenes in the Indian social
institution of coffeehouse present different shapes of engagement and
idleness in the noise. Is a binary on/off, plug/unplug radical switch
from one mode to the other necessary or is integration possible? Just
how should we prioritize our engagement normally?
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| Portland Center Stage |
Surely
trauma isn't the only method by which we pose such questions. The
notebook freezes, the phone bricks, the subway computer system borks,
somebody dies after a long struggle with cancer... Seems like, just
in our peripheral view, we already have some sense of what we
genuinely care about, what we seriously think is just more clickbait.
We may be our own worst trolls. Who's gotta die next before we'll starve
the troll?
