JUST WATCH

From the camera's vantage point, I can see the tops and backs of people’s heads. As is her habit, my friend Linda sits in the second pew from the altar. Although the camera presents a somewhat blurry image of those down in front, I know it is Linda, who is fairly tall and has long brown wavy hair. Because of the blur, I take the triangular shape of her head and hair for a Christmas tree until the congregation stands to sing a hymn and I can see her green patterned coat. I can also hear her voice soaring through the singing. I wonder if she can feel me watching her, hundreds of miles away in Massachusetts.

I opened Zoom late, coming in during the sermon. I look at the spot where I I usually sit when my husband Dan and I visit New York at Easter to see our old friends. No one is sitting there. Sometimes, I tell Linda I saw her in church, describing her coat or dress. Weird…The world has become so damn weird!

When my dad was transferred from NYC to Maryland, in 1962, I was prevented from entering my progressive, arts-oriented high school in Merrick, Long Island. Instead, I attended a high school with a choir so awful I quit, an art teacher who threw a wooden drawing board down the stairwell at me, and no drama department or creative writing program. I didn’t get to study any of the things I needed to fulfill my dream of being a Broadway performer.

My fellow students were nice but artistically unsophisticated; we did not share the same interests. There were no cell phones or computers and long-distance calls were expensive. I cried and drank at home and spent my time writing letters to my friends back home in NY.

I pretended that my friends were next door, in my grandmother’s bedroom; I just couldn’t see or hear them. Letters arrived from Merrick full of details about the choir winning competitions, the musicals and plays everyone was involved in; trips into the City to visit the Guggenheim or the Met. I imagined everything I was missing so clearly that it was as if I were still there, or watching from out of my body…

My three years of intense magical thinking may have helped my creativity when I finally became an artist in my late 20’s, a singer/songwriter in my 30’s, learned to play harp in my 40’s, became a writer in my 50’s and a storyteller in my 60’s. It did not, however, prepare me for the digital age. Having always been intensively curious, I was astounded to find that all those years I was trying to get my life back, playing catch-up studying art, music, drama, dance and writing, alone in a studio, someone or something had created a databank where one can find answers to just about any question one could ask. 

This was incredible! But after learning to use a cell phone and computer with the greatest difficulty, I began suspecting that the internet was part of a diabolical plot to lure humanity into expecting to get something for nothing. One no longer required a dictionary or thesaurus, or books in a library. With a few clicks (or worse yet, speaking to your device, which answers with its humanoid voice) you are instantly gratified. It was, I realized, a lot like my old fantasized room full of friends behind my grandmother’s door. Everything had been somehow squeezed into a thing called The Internet. While I was busy working in music, art and dance studios, the world had become a Grimms Fairy Tale, where the hero(ine) is granted one wish and has only to say the magic password to have their fondest desires fulfilled. 

So, you may ask, what’s not to love about that? 

First of all, this type of fairy tale never ends well for the protagonist. They always blow it by becoming greedy, requiring more and more of what it is they seek, without considering the consequences. Secondly, conducting relationships with people online only is not healthy: they aren’t there. People act differently in person than they do online. We may not like to remember that we are animals; that we need to use our senses to perceive things correctly, but it’s true. Thirdly, I don’t want to cede my creative powers over to a machine. Homo Sapiens are human because we create; when we stop creating we become something else. I am not denying the good parts of having instant information at one’s fingertips. But we need to take a much more serious look at what happens when we repeat that magic password too frequently.

Finally, while it’s cool to be able to attend a church service in Manhattan and see my friend Linda, even when I’m not there or take her for a Christmas tree, I wonder who else is being watched by someone not present, (maybe not even human)!