In Artista by Brenda Frazer - a fragment of a memoir in which Frazer, her alcoholic husband, and their baby travel through Mexico into Guatemala - she recounts sleeping in tents under bridges, asking US embassies for money, exotic dancing and relying on the kindness of strangers. Associates of the Beat generation, there is a clear privilege in their background, their nationality and their whiteness, always seeming to scrape by, but this is also a way of moving around that seems incomprehensible today.
Let me explain.
In October ‘22, I was in Venice. Visiting Murano, I, city slicker, slipped on some rocks and dropped my phone in the water. I reached immediately after it, ignoring scraped knees and wet clothes, panic overwhelming pain. Train tickets, hostel bookings, everything was on that phone. The repair shop I brought it to that evening said they would have it fixed by the following morning; a morning which turned into another hour, then a ‘why don’t you come back later,’ until I just had to be brave and venture into Venice or else lose that entire day. I had made a friend and was comforted by her presence, baffled as to how I would otherwise navigate the space around me, suddenly feeling vast and unsafe.
I wasn’t wrong to be worried - getting lost in a foreign country, potential financial losses, the inability to contact loved ones… the concerns were real. So too was the arising concern of the dependence on technology, and how quickly it could be taken. Frazer always found a safe place for her family to sleep, enough money to keep them fed, made invaluable connections along the way; I knew how to use Google Maps. Smartphone capabilities are astounding and immensely useful, when you have access to them: what happens when you don’t?
It isn’t just travel - how much of experiencing life are we shut off from by the capabilities of our phones? Do we know how to make friends, meet lovers - do we know the way to their houses or just how to Uber there? The way we take photographs, how we decide what to buy, how we pay for it. Can we recall memories without pictures, remember birthdays, anniversaries? Don’t worry, there’s an App for that. There is no need to think, because there is always someone telling you what to, what they do, how they dress, predicting trends, no need to bother finding things we might like and trying them for ourselves. Brain rot was the word of the year ‘24, one flippantly and comedically thrown around, but are we really just micro dosing cognitive atrophy - and are we happy doing it?
(Frazer is credited here as Bonnie Bremser)
Sure, there are guides on how to step back: TikTok's telling you to touch grass, media locks and settings to adjust; however, for many of us our lives have become impossibly, algorithmically entangled. Too much access to too many resources has left us with unrealistic, unnatural expectations of ourselves and our lives, while simultaneously stripping us of the ability to actualise them. Comparison has run rampant, and it’s easier to make Pinterest mood boards and consume lifestyle advice than it is to actually go out and implement change. The same can be said for activism, community, spiritual growth… Real world experiences are being replaced with online ‘connection,’ but we’re lying to ourselves if we think it adds up. Situationships are out and dating apps suck, but has the detachment of contemporary city life left us without the baseline skills to pursue an alternative?
In the early nineties, Margaret Atwood famously wrote of the “woman with a man inside watching a woman.” She said, “pretending you're unseen, pretending you have a life of your own… unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole… in your own head, if nowhere else.” Not to trivialise, but to speculate that there is, thirty years later, a new watcher, peering not through a keyhole, but a lens. Have we moved to the point where our perspectives are inextricably linked to technology - and, if so, does this added layer remove us from the scene itself? Are we peering not only at our own lives, but at the world, at life itself, through this distorted filter, so hyperaware of our existence that it’s paralysing?
Researchers at the University of Washington conducted a study into the link between social media and normative dissociation, “characterized by diminished self-awareness and reduced sense of agency.” In contrast to Atwood’s active watcher - and in the brain rot era - this suggests more than just a shifting perspective, but rather a lack thereof, exemplified in a move toward collective consciousness and away from independent, contentious thought. We look to our phones for almost all daily needs. We look at social media and dissociate. We look, but do we really? Do we have to? What do we see and when do we think? The ever-present watcher has fallen asleep.
Every few months, my best friend announces that she is going to get a flip phone. She never does, but I believe she could. She doesn’t have social media and she used to have her phone display set to black and white. Another friend of mine scrolls Tiktok in her sleep, waking up apologising for the videos she has unconsciously sent to people she vaguely knows. Last year we were all in Madrid, meeting up in Retiro Park. I knew that they were by a large glass house, the Crystal Palace, but I was having trouble finding it. With basic Spanish and good manners, I approached two older women who kindly did their best to understand and guide me. It was a lovely interaction I was anxious to have, so unfamiliar with asking strangers for help, for anything. When I got to my friends, they were nestled in a sunbeam on the grass, like an impressionist painting. If I had been too busy looking at my phone to look up, too afraid of what could happen to risk engaging with the world around, I wouldn’t have had these experiences and the insights which came with them.
(Joaquín Sorolla, 'The Siesta', 1911 © Museo Sorolla, Madrid)
As I plan my next trip, comparing flights and hostels, checking the weather, a part of me longs for the spontaneity of Artista. Brenda Frazer does not have an easy time in the memoir; she has barely any money, gets fired, finds out her visa has expired - but interspersed throughout is a wealth of experience she may otherwise have missed out on. I don’t know how I might’ve fared in her position. They say that newer generations have lost the art of small favours; we surely wouldn’t expect to be taken in by Mama Julia as Frazer and her daughter are, and maybe we wouldn't know what to do with it! But maybe the world around us has also changed, a fading photograph that can only allude to the brightness of past colours. With strikingly matter-of-fact prose, Frazer leaves the modern reader gazing at the 60’s with the tender nostalgia of an adult looking back on childhood.
Some fight against the rise of cashlessness, others buy VR headsets, and an elite few freeze their brains in anticipation of a world yet to come. One thing is clear: the choices we make regarding our interaction with the world and which lens we choose to view it through will ultimately impact how we experience it. Maybe I can’t just choose not to have a phone, but, little by little, maybe I can disengage from habitual behaviours that reinforce dependence where there should be instinct, knowledge and human interaction. Even if it makes some things harder, I would rather be taken out of my ‘comfort zone’ than live a life defined by, and restricted to, comfort. Maybe even, in doing so, in taking a step back from the highly-saturated deluge of images and information, turning my gaze elsewhere, I’ll find once more the bright colours of my past.
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