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Communication breakdown

Technological advancements lead to new ways of staying in touch, and avoiding contact

 

By Gillie Easdon

I was on the lounge chair. Scotty was on the sofa. Fritz was on the sofa too. We were at my house. Fritz is allowed on the sofa at my house, and at Scotty’s, when the roomies are out. Scotty had brought over a classic flick. Not Gone with the Wind, Psycho nor The Sound of Music . No, Scotty had rallied. He came equipped with a true comedy classic; which, in my books, is a movie I can see at the age of nine or 32, and it is still funny. Scotty brandished Mel Brook’s Young Frankenstein (“It’s Frahnken-shteen”).

A bit of wine, a bit of this a bit of that, a blanket for him, a blanket for me and a blanket for Fritz. Centralized munchies that we would both have to reach for, but I couldn’t be bothered to move my armchair. Video recorder pre-set-up by fabulous Irish flatties at that time slinging drinks at Monk’s. Water to my left, wine to my right, red fleece socks on. I was ready, Scotty was ready, Fritz was ready. Play. Volume cranked.

I revered the stark, melodramatic black and white pre-screening credit roll. It set the scene and I actually read the credits. It was a good idea. It did not taunt me with trailers of similar flicks, nor did it tell me to buy Coke. I especially appreciated that it did not present a Cole’s Notes version of the whole film, thereby annihilating any possibility of surprise in a very fruitless and irritating attempt to coax me into buying a soundtrack of the film I had yet to see.

The anticipation was palpable. Scotty, Fritz and I were transfixed. Yours truly reverted to her nine-year-old goof self and started giggling before the first syllable was uttered, even before the credits finished rolling.

Then my cell phone rang. It glowed and launched into a samba. I tilted my head, shrugged my right shoulder and pressed the red button that shut it up.

Back to Mel.

“I love call display,” I pronounced.

“Yeah, it’s great,” reaffirmed Scotty, my dear friend and neighbour.

“It takes away the surprise, but you want to know. I don’t recognize that number, I have a movie to enjoy. I am hanging with you and Fritz. It is wicked. I love having the ability to make the decision to answer the phone or not. I love technology. I can’t imagine life without it.”

“Yeah, I screen my calls all the time”, continued Scotty. “And cell phones are so small now — not like the ’80s. Those were hilarious. I like answering machines too. Remember the old ones, where you could hear the voice and then cut in if you felt like it? Those were good, but they were so big.”

We laughed. I pictured the ’80s cell phones and might have guffawed, even.

“There are still lots of those answering machines around. But when it is all inside the phone, the internal systems are just so compact, so hidden, so high-tech. I am amazed constantly. The phone rings too often and call display is the answer. Call waiting is good too. I feel weird answering a phone that can’t tell me who it is. Sometimes I just let it ring and check later. I do. Really.”

We nodded to each other, Scotty and I. Fritz was sleeping. We refocused on the castle and sank deeper in our seats, satisfied with the exchange of secrets, and confessions. Our bond of friendship had been fortified.

Then my brain took the turnoff to Tangentia.

Scotty and I don’t call each other a lot. We are neighbours. We see each other a lot. He and Fritz hang out a lot with me and my roomies. But we do call, sometimes. And we don’t have each other’s home numbers. We have our cells. With our call display. With our answering services and our beloved call waiting. And sometimes, I have to leave a message because Scotty doesn’t answer the phone.

“Sometimes, ha ha,” I offered, “I leave my phone in another room and don’t notice that there was a call when I get back ’cause I am doing something else and by the time I notice it is just too late to call.” I smile and stare carefully at something on the floor to the left.

Scotty sits up straight, “Oh, you know, that happens. You don’t always not answer because you don’t want to talk to someone. Sometimes you are at work and you leave it in your bag and forget to turn it off and the other person might think you are choosing not to answer it and you really aren’t. It is crazy how that can happen too.” Scotty nods very enthusiastically, a few times too many.

“Yeah, ’cause if that happened and, like, uh, you were calling me, it wouldn’t be because I did not want to talk to you, obviously.”

We both smile at each other, no teeth showing.

Now, to tell the truth, I am not entirely certain if that last line was Scotty’s or mine. It was our line. It was a communal line, a mutual line. Whoever said it had it reiterated before the recommended pause between social exchange had been endured. We had opened ourselves into the realm of speaking openly and honestly in the world of possible communication and now had left ourselves spread-eagled to the unnerving honesty we had relished but moments before.

Mel brought me back to the screen, away from this creepiness, away from the glaring reality of thinking that I had revealed too much.

Then we enjoyed the movie a lot. Gene Wilder’s Igor has a perpetually migrating hump, a sexy blond Transylvanian chick in the horse-drawn wagon asks if young Franken-shteen wants to “roll in the hay” and then literally rolls to and from in a pile of hay. Random horses freak out whenever the freaky Frau appears. This is a masterpiece. Young Frankenstein is silly and yet artistic. And it is also totally clean; mind-boggling. My inner and not so inner geek was satiated.

After the movie, Scotty and Fritz went home. They took the movie home with them.

My phone confession took seed in my brain for about a week. Tangentia had really blossomed into a many-splendoured town.

It was a Wednesday night, 7 p.m.-ish. Scotty and Fritz dropped by in time for dinner. I sent him back to his place to grab wine. Rose and Colleen were out burning the Monknight Oil once again. Scotty sat down on the sofa, Fritz paced for a while and then sat down and considered me with his coy German shepherd eyes.

I was roasting a fish. I poured Scotty a glass of wine, we clinked and then I returned to course number two in my dinner creation. Scotty moved to the picnic table with his wine. Fritz stayed where he was. We exchanged pleasantries, bitched about the usual and then we settled in, having completed the third proverbial circle that precedes The Evening Relax. I peeled and chopped garlic for the salad dressing.

“The other night,” I said casually, “after we talked about call display and answering machines I felt weird, sort of uneasy. I have been thinking about it for days. Well, because, we call each other, and it was, uhhh, just weird. Jesus, maybe I am just thinking too much. Again. I should work more. Do you think that’s weird?”

Scotty looked up, smiling and said, “Yeah, it was a weird shift. I thought about it too.”

Then we had a nice dinner. Thank God for Scotty.

But I kept mulling it over, even when my visa was up in Tangentia and I had to come home. There was something tugging at my brain — something about privacy and communication and control thereof. And then, it occurred to me. The word, “communication” was the rub. Communication is a misnomer for much of what we recognize as technological advances in communication. What many of these baubles effect is just the opposite. They lock it up, they hinder communication. I was reminded of an autobiography I once read of Doris Lessing, at least I am pretty sure it was hers. It was something about the radical familiar changes that occurred with the invention and proliferation of the television. Something about the end of conversation, of spontaneous song, the end of the family, in a sense. That is how I remember it. I think at the time I appreciated the concept, or the way she put it, but not necessarily the content or meaning. It was more of a comment than a lament or a complaint, if my memory serves.

Cell phones and e-mail and pagers and all the other communications tools make it easy to contact your friend, family member, work and others. They also make it easy for your friend, family member, work or others to contact you, in theory. But, with the additional features, you can intervene, delay or avoid communication at all times. You can elect to block communication with a handy feature on your communication tool. Granted, you are able to yak on the phone when you are expecting a call if you have a double line. You can also find out who just called with the cheeky *69. You can conference call, hold, even re-dial, and so much more nowadays. You can send an e-mail to some cute guy or girl by merely aiming your phone at him, I think. But in Canada, nothing yet compares with Virgin cell phones in Australia that has a special feature, where you can submit a list of numbers that you cannot dial nor receive calls from between certain late, late evening hours. No more drinking and dialing? Are you kidding? What next? But I digress.

The subtle backlash of this efficiency results in secrecy and isolation based on how you manage your communication tool. I would rather ask someone how much they weighed or how much money they made before I’d ask them how they handle their cell phones and e-mail. I would sooner ask if the PIN I did see that lady in front of me key in at the ATM, because I was bored and wanted to know how hard it would be to use someone else’s, is also her password for her Telus account, or anything else. That moment with Scotty was a gem, but even that had its own peculiar aftermath in my head, and his.

But Fritz is fine. He has been fed. He has gone for a run. He has fetched that ball as many times as Scotty will throw it. Fritz is an impeccable communicator. When he is happy, you know, when he wants attention, you know, when he needs to go out, you know. His life is simple. The only time he lies is when his face is covered with ice cream and he won’t fess up that he ate the whole tub. There is nothing covert about darling Fritz.

I screen calls, I don’t always return calls. Sometimes I don’t because I don’t have the time to have a proper chat, sometimes it is because I just don’t want to talk to that person. I do sometimes forget to call someone back, I do sometimes claim to forget to call someone back. I genuinely don’t know how to go back to the first line if I have gone to line two on my cell phone; that is true. I am suspicious of friends who are cell phone whores who neglect to answer my calls or return them for weeks.

I also know who has a computer and I don’t think it takes much to send a speedy reply, although I have a few sitting on my hotmail that I have yet to reply to because an “I’m fine, how are you?” will not suffice. And I know that a blanket YOU got my message. The blanket YOU has a flipping built-in answering service. And I know a blanket YOUR cell was on because it kept ringing, but maybe that will be the next new feature, an appear-to-have-your-cell-phone-on-when-it-is-off feature.

On MSN Messenger, you can appear to be offline, but you aren’t. When you reflect that you select who you MSN, isn’t it a little like playing God — a little eerie that you would pretend to be away? In case you don’t want to talk, but you want to know who is about, sitting in front of a computer, a pretty lame-ass voyeur. Now that is even weirder than call display.

And this is all pushing me more and more into my head, away from people, into isolation, when the point of having all these fun toys and features is to talk, to communicate, which by definition needs an exchange, needs more than one party. You cannot communicate with yourself (in the strictest sense of the etymology of the word). Now, in this age of voicemail and call display, communication should be adjusted to, maybe, mononication? Hmm, too bad there was no option for Latin at my school.

It is important to point out the inconsistencies in the perception of communication tools and the reality. Are they masquerading as bringing us all together faster and better merely as a result of sneaky marketing, or did this side-effect just sort of happen unexpectedly and now we have to deal with it? The consequences of communication management are propelling us efficiently into an unanticipated isolation. And it all started with Young Frankenstein. I can hear the horses again.

Maybe the underbelly of communication warrants more than casual observation, a simple roadside attraction in Tangentia — because it encourages and supports lying. Maybe it is the spawn of some guilt about lying or hiding who makes the grade and who does not. Who you talk to and who you don’t. If I am doing this, then chances are that at least a few others are doing it too. Hyper-efficient communication could be leading to the demise of the honest-identifying population. I never lie. I think I never lie. If I lie, it is for a damn good reason. I pride myself on this. But if I don’t return a call when I got the message, am I lying that the call occurred in the first place? An elliptical lie?

Someone once asked me how often I think about dying. I said, “never.” Then she asked why I look both ways when I cross the street, and why I lock my door and why I put my seatbelt on. It was a similar ellipsis.

Somewhere out there, there is a support group for people like me, and maybe for you, if you find this applies. A support group for people who are feeling detached from their fellow beings due to their fascination for advances in communication. But I don’t know where it is and anyways, I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m F-I-N-E. So this piece may be the stand-up-in-the-circle-we-are-all here-for-you dump. Does anyone identify with this? With the awareness of what isolation can result, could one possibly continue along the unavoidable trajectory of mass communication and unconscious isolation better equipped? Stronger? More able?

When I check who is calling, I measure the “now” that I am having, against a preconceived notion of a possible next “now” with the person on the incoming call. I weigh it up and make a decision based on the past. Now, present social trend is very much focused on the “now” — not so much in a cavalier-type of vein, but more in terms of being grounded and keeping yourself in the moment. What this era of communications has done is manifold. In some ways, it advances and supports the drive for The Now. You can opt to pull yourself from some present situation to talk to someone elsewhere, or not. The onus is on the individual. It also encases the individual in a sense of responsibility or ownership of a moment that may not be good or necessary. We have forfeited the beauty of the possible.

Suzanne, my cranio sacral/physio/healer/friend once said to me: “When you have expectations, the best you can do is live up to them.” Needless to say, the quote was in a very different context, but applicable nevertheless.

Scotty came over on Sunday. I don’t know where the girls were, but maybe Vancouver. I made dinner, Scotty went back to his place to get wine and Fritz. We did not feel like watching one of his old movies, so we made up a hit song on guitar instead. It is an incredible tune; we will see where it goes.

Mid-chorus, my cell phone rang, and launched into reggae. It probably glowed too, but the lights were on so I couldn’t tell. I saw the number. It was a number I recognized. It was someone I really wanted to talk to. I tilted my head, shrugged my shoulder and pressed the red button that shut it up.

Back to the song.

“I love call display,” I pronounced.

Scotty looked over, sighed a big “Yeahhhhhhhhhhhh” and we both collapsed laughing.

We woke Fritz up, then we went back to the song.

I stayed in Whistler that night. My visiting right to Tangentia briefly, but thankfully, suspended.



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