This present age is something else.
I open my phone and RFK Jr. is flexing and telling me that vaccines will give me leprosy. Mike Tyson is in his late 50’s and throwing punches on Netflix. This last election was a cage match devoid of substantive content. Each post has to up the last post to get more attention and I think that passes as free journalism. Shut it off, please. Unsubscribe.
I remember sitting at the dining room table in my father’s house. Being 14 or 15 or 16. Or 17 or 18. Or 19, 20, or 21. It took me some time to move out.
I’d make a cup of coffee. Nothing fancy. Folger’s, probably. I’d grab the paper from the front steps. I’d glance at the headlines on the front page. Maybe read a story or two. Skim the variety section. Scour the box scores. Finish with the comics. Pour another cup of coffee and go about my late 90’s day. Twenty minutes was more than enough.
Now, if we let it, and most of us let it, the words and images flow over us all the time. It’s too much.
***
I’m not active on social media.
I follow Vikings and Twins beat reporters on Twitter. Pay attention to trades and rumors of trades. But then the other content infiltrates. Vote this way. Vote that way. These people eat cats. Those people eat dogs. In the past, the rich and powerful had to flood the streets with pamphlets. Now they use algorithms and apps to flood our eyes with an endless stream of this, that, or the other thing. Clockwork Orange.
That’s a couple of strange links I’ve embedded in this blog. I’m not saying our phones compel us to participate in the torture scene from Clockwork Orange. I’m not saying they don’t, either. I don’t know what I’m saying. I never do. I just keep working with words. Casting them onto the page. Playing with them. It’s all improv, baby. One endless riff that I can’t or won’t contain.
That’s probably why I’m so bad at social media. I have nothing to sell. Nothing to convince anybody of. I’m just doing what Kurt Vonnegut told us we ought to do: using words to help get through this thing, whatever the hell it is.
***
I don’t know that my phone helps me get through this thing, whatever the hell it is. Sure, I like instant access to my friends and family. I text my wife 2,000,000 times a day. And it is kind of cool to stay in touch with people all over the country (and sometimes the world) through Facebook, Instagram, whatever. But is it worth the cost? The endless stream of this, that, and the other thing that assaults my mind and, perhaps, my soul? RFK Jr. is shirtless, flexing, drinking raw milk, and trashing hundreds if not thousands of years of scientific convention in the name of accumulating power and influence. In the name of another wild statement that tops the last wild statement.
Heightening is a term in improv. Essentially, it is when any offer in a scene -physical, verbal, emotional, whatever – is exaggerated. Eventually, when an improviser or group heighten something to its extreme it is no longer sustainable and the scene ends and moves onto something new. Editing is crucial in improv. Editing a heightened moment is usually accompanied by laughter or some felt experience of rising energy by the audience. We enjoy the edit because what came before was too much. The heightened moment is only enjoyable because the improvisers cut the tension with an edit.
Somebody needs to edit our reality right now. It feels heightened to a ridiculous, raw-milk-drinking extreme. If somebody clapped, and started a new scene, I would laugh about this current moment. Sadly, I’m not sure anybody who is enjoying the fruits of the labor to one-up the last post is willing to edit this moment, even for the good of humanity.
Lord, this present age is something else.
Samuel Jaye Tanner 