The book is real, the beach is real, the wind is real, the sound is real. Your thoughts are your own.
Before the pandemic I tried to hit the gym several days a week, whether I was at home or out on the road. Now I run or set workout goals at home. I'm not always successful, of course, but I make a strong effort. While traveling I try to make sure that whatever hotel I'm in has a place for me to get some sort of workout. If I'm somewhere way off the beaten track without a gym, I’ll go running as if it were an adventure.
My reasons for this are all the obvious ones, the typical ones, but that's not what I'm writing about today. I'm writing about one thing I don't do when I work out: I don't bring my cell phone.
This sometimes drives my friends and family crazy, but the reason it drives them crazy is precisely the reason I don't bring it. When I'm working out I want to hear the thoughts speaking inside my own head. Sometimes I simply want to empty my head altogether. When I’m working out, I want to be in the real world, in real life, without so much as even the temptation to translocate myself with some sort of device.
Fear not: I’m a geek just like you. I surf the web, just like you. I blog and tweet and spend plenty of time on the phone, on Twitter, on Teams and FaceTime. My heart rate jumps like a Jack Russell terrier at the latest camera and computer announcement, and I’m attached to certain aspects of the media world like DC press photographers on a White House driveway stakeout.
But when I disconnect I actually like to pull the plug.
So much of everything these days takes place in virtual spaces. Some people think that carpenters and bricklayers live more in the physical world than animators and filmmakers. That's probably true to some extent, but there aren't many modern builders who can function without a smart phone or checking their email or browsing the web. The communities we maintain, professional and personal, all depend on devices to act as our intermediaries. As a result, we often miss the trees under which we’re standing for shade, hoping that the lower light will help us see our glowing screen.
I miss the trees sometimes. I miss shaking hands with people by means of introduction. I miss holding pieces of paper when I’m reading. I would be foolishly dismissive if I asserted that it isn’t possible to be genuinely creative without an electronic portal. After all, that’s the way I make a living! But then again, I kind of believe it’s true, at least if taken to extremes. Sights, sounds, relationships: we’re hardwired by millions of years of evolution to respond to the reality of place and personality. We smell things on the wind; we hear the flow of water or the rush of traffic on our periphery and those sounds inform us about reality. As someone who creates for a living, I don’t want to draw entirely from abstractions about the world to create new realities. I want to draw from the real world in order to create abstractions. What’s more, I believe this thought can apply to everyone, no matter what you do for a living. As long as real life proceeds in the realm of atoms and time, it’s vital to remember that no kind of electronic interface can replicate what we experience with our own senses.