INDEX#1 – Flattening

Introduction

There have been many side-effects to our recent ‘Shelter In Place’ most of which are uncomfortable or debilitating. But taking time to observe more deeply there’s a smell of familiarity to staying in a single place for a long time. 

I noticed this first within the second week of isolation, many people commented that they had no idea what time it was, or in-fact what day it was. I stood outside in the sunshine while I pondered this thought and observed nature. For the first time in a while I began to notice the minute fluctuations in spring. I noticed the plump pre-bud nodes on my peach tree, the doves in the garden. It seemed as if I could actually see nature unfolding in every second. Yet, I couldn’t tell what day it was.

This new flattening of time felt familiar. I grew up spending summers on a farm in Launceston Cornwall. We spent enough time there to begin to align with the farming calendar. We saw the sun each morning, saw animals wake up and feed. We knew when to gather eggs, when to water the fields. The entire day was full of necessary interaction with nature. Leaving the farm, I always felt sad. Not because I was returning to school, nor returning to the city, but mostly because I saw every day unfold as it was.

Of course it’s easy to romanticize farming, especially as a kid from the city, but I’d felt this kind of flattening once before. I’ve only ever been in a serious car accident once. I was turning left at an intersection in San Francisco, the light changed to amber as I was waiting at the junction and as I began to turn a car crossed the junction and hit the side of my vehicle squarely. I was about to be T-Boned. 

At this moment, I noticed everything about my car, I could see the dust slowly floating inside the car, the color of the car heading toward me, the face of the lady driving, the sun hitting the shop windows opposite. This moment lasted forever. Jonathan Glazer captured this feeling supremely well in the film he made about Michael Jordan https://www.academyfilms.com/portfolio/nike-frozen-moment

This slowing of time happens in moments when we are forced to reappraise our surroundings. Either because of impending danger like the car crash or because of a lack of change in context. This happens because moments of stress trigger the hippocampus within our brain. This fear response forces the brain to rewrite the ‘invariant memory’ of our surroundings and replace it with the actual surroundings. This slowing or flattening is our brain reducing the context of cognition to what is most important in the immediacy of now. In this moment we see everything as it is.

Being able to see everything as it is is truly the hidden gift of any stress response. Reappraisal is infinitely hard from the confines of our own invariant memory of the surrounding world. That world, the invariant world, never changes and we are conditioned to all its aspects of sameness. But, this world, the variant world, is in perpetual flux and we can take in all of its wonder and difference. 

It’s imperative that at this precise moment we form new opinions about what is and what isn’t. Take note to make new plans on how to exist and prosper. The world is momentarily flat, and we can choose what comes next. 

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A New Wave

Flattening is a wave. As we see any event unfold, its scale becomes more and more apparent. The pre-event rollercoaster shuffles and agitates our existing normal. As we reluctantly consider change we attempt to carry on. 

The peak of the wave, ‘peak destruction; is chaos. We are forced to let go of the past, unable to hold all the pieces together as we struggle for new information. But there is a point when we are momentarily weightless, at the crest of the wave with a rare and omnipotent view of our own context, just like climbing a tree within a dense forest to view the route home. 

We are at the crest of this reappraisal, momentarily weightless. 

This weightlessness seems to have two distinct states; One personal, local and profound. The other social, shared and objective. Making predictions at the crest of reappraisal seems pointless because what comes next – the crash of the new – will change everything. But just sharing what you can see right now is important, as long as it is understood that it is only ever a personal vista.

From where I sit, I can see six peaks crumbling in the distance:

PEAK 1
Celebrity is replaced by Commonality – The peak of Celebrity.

As a family we’ve always watched Jimmy Fallon as a special late night treat for the kids.

The familiarity of the show was like a warm fire, gentle, flickering, repeating infinitely. Now, watching Jimmy’s heroic effort to continue the show from home is the opposite. We can see celebrity cracking, the carefully edited mass projected image is replaced by commonality. Jimmy’s fantastic home, with its slides and never ending rooms has become a metaphor for our anxious state, full of disconnected, unfamiliar voids and tunnels. We feel and empathize with Jimmy and his family but also notice the struggles and interruptions. It is no less heartwarming but somehow his celebrity has been replaced by a level of everydayness obscured by misunderstanding and complexity. 

John Krasinski in his show ‘ Some Good News’ by contrast subjugates his friends and their celebrity by embracing commonality. He refers to both the heroes of the front line and the celebrities he knows from his personal social network as friends. Then he unites them in a low-fi, self edited wonder smash. Everyone is on the same level, Robert De Niro comments on the weather, Lin-Manuel Miranda calls in to a Zoom. In SGN we see the veneer of celebrity for what it is, momentary. Celebrities are able to emancipate themselves from the confines of their curated image and everyday people are celebrated for actual heroic efforts. 

PEAK 2
Spectacle is replaced by Normalcy – The peak of Spectacle.

Guy Debord said in his book ‘Société Spectacle’ that within a Society obsessed by Spectacle nothing is real unless it is spectacular. But what happens when observed reality is more spectacular than any spectacle we’ve witnessed. And what happens when our personal and local reality is entirely mundane. 

Watching our doctors and nurses fight the outcome of the pandemic has created some of the most harrowing and personal images. The scarred faces and exhausted eyes of those who have witnessed continual inevitable death. But, what we see in these images isn’t presented as spectacular, just a window into the everydayness of a Doctor’s or Nurse's life. These images are remarkably similar to those of the great war photographer Don McCullin. He photographed the everydayness of war, the factualness of each effort, the normalcy of the participants. The spectacle reduced to the mundanity of the everyday.

Our own mundanity is temporarily interrupted by each walk beyond the confines of home. Leaving the safety of a shelter was once momentous for our distant ancestors who also feared unknown, unseen predators. But for us, the feeling of consequence is entirely new. Our outside world, manicured and made safe by telegraph poles, paving and signage now feels strange and unnerving. The normalcy of stepping outside is an act of defiance, an expression of freedom more spectacular than any rally, military parade or advertising stunt foretold by Debord. 

Debord said “The spectacle is the nightmare of imprisoned modern society which ultimately expresses nothing more than its desire to sleep.” and maybe, just maybe we’ve woken up and stumbled sleepily into Normalcy, rubbing our eyes in the brightness of the every-day.

PEAK 3
Entertainment is replaced by Dialog.  – The Peak of Entertainment.

Everything is a zoom. School is a zoom. Work is a zoom. Drinks with Friends are a Zoom. But when we turn on the TV we’re confronted by the one-sidedness of the screen. Show’s try desperately to invite spectators in, inciting hashtags, memes and sharing snippets. But all of these devices are a time shifted monolog, because the dialog never happens between the owner of the show and contributors.

It is interesting to note that TV is making its way across the network divide to the social channels it once used to promote itself. We’ve mentioned Some Good News, but that’s just an adapted monolog. But one notable example of the new kind of social entertainment is D-Nice’s quarantine party on instagram. D-Nice managed to capture dialog DJing, where the party goers are able to respond and interact directly with the DJ. This is of course in stark contrast to the normal stage upon which DJ’s are placed in clubs and festivals. A perfect example of this being deadmau5, his almost dictatorship position on stage even obscures his face – this image is the epitome of monolog. 

D-Nice has opened the door to Dialog mass communication. Where party-goer, celebrities and DJ rub shoulders and dance together, The DJ returning to the roots, becoming part of the society they want to entertain.

PEAK 4
Consumption is replaced by Production. The Peak of Mass Consumption.

Living in Holland I was always surprised by the general knowledge of the populous. Not only could most people speak two or three languages, everyone, I mean everyone has an opinion on Art and Craft. 

I learned later that this was because of the way that craft-making was included in general society. The dutch are makers, they literally made the land in which they by reclaiming it from the sea. 

One great example of dutch craft obsession is Delft. Delft, the spiritual home of Delftware, is full of experts in Ceramics. Delftware, the migrant born earthenware imported by Belgian refugees from conflict became popular at the exact time of decline of the brewing industries. The brewers left vast warehouses which became the home of artisans producing ceramics. This happened at the time when Holland was at the peak of its colonial power and through the merchant fleet pottery from all over the world flooded Europe. The artisans of Delft imitated and perfected Chinese and Japanese techniques and flooded the international market with new Dutch Pottery. This industry employed most of the populous hence everyone in Holland has their own lineage of makers.

We’re experiencing a resurgence in making, but it’s not a new phenomenon. Making has been championed by TechShop, Makers Fairs and Craft Unions for over thirty years. But the Shelter In Place, with its opened flattened time and the lack of local commerce is amplifying the wave. 

We now have more time to make. DIY stores are full, people self re-landscaping gardens. Self made bread is replacing cats on instagram, stores are emptied of yeast. Sewist’s across the world responding to mask and PPE shortages. Sewing machines are back firmly on the dining room table.

Dig a little deeper and the paraphernalia once reserved for growing illegal weed is being deployed to grow food. Hydroponics is mainstream, Iron Ox, Aero Farm. Plenty receiving $200 million from Amazon. Now every house can grow some of what they need, in fact it is becoming a necessity for those in deeper poverty to grow and make most of what they need, Ron Finley, the master gardener championed this in Compton, bringing people out of poverty one plant at a time.

People are realizing the ultimate expression of survival is to make something for themselves. The creative class is everyone, as it once was before industrialization and mass production. This resurgence is growing a new cultural language shared by the masses and along with it an understanding and appreciation for the quality of all craft and artistry.

PEAK 5
Observation is replaced by Involvement. The Peak of Observation.

News used to be somewhere else. A window into other worlds where stuff happened, where protests and upheaval presented spectacular moments for us to consume. 

Local networks like Next Door, or culturally local networks like Reddit bring news closer, curated by people like you, or people near you, local subjects that invite debate, necessitate involvement rather than observation. 

Most recently, we have become the news. Each one of us is a statistic of those infected, recovered or immune. We all practice social distancing, rather than read about communities practicing social distancing. We all value the efficacy of hand washing rather than watch surgeons wash their hands effectively. We are all involved in the mass narrative, so-much-so that observing it seems pointless. We are entirely active. 

We no longer read the report cards of our children, we write them. Teachers have become the support teachers for parents. We learn how our children learn. We are the cook, the teacher, the organizer, the reader, the doctor, the hospital, the tech-support and the psychologists to ourselves. It is speculated that 2020 will bring the largest voter turn-out in history, this in the context of one of the largest and most contagious viruses known to man. 

In the protests against the Murder of George Floyd, we no longer gift the power of the politic to the politicians, we no longer gift the power of civility to the police. We are fully participating in the story of our own life. 

PEAK 6
Government is replaced by Self Governance. The Peak of Government.

Far-right commentators predicted the collapse of Government well before the pandemic. These survivalists prepared to seize the eventual vacuum of power and become the New World Order. In reality though, the people have responded to the lack of Governance by self governing, pulling together in communities to help those less well-off. Yes there have been armed invasions of Government buildings by armed militia, but this has largely been an infant tantrum of those who miss-predicted the future. There’s no vacuum of power – the people can govern themselves.

In place of centralized Government, local governance has been more able to respond to the local needs of citizens. Communities are using the existing network of go-fund-me’s and parent-squares to coordinate actions. Local law enforcement are excelling on social networks to provide moment-to-moment feedback. State leader’s like Gavin Newsom and Andrew Cuomo have provided calm authority in defiance of a President's directives. Local states like Maryland have employed the National guard to defend the procurement of PPE from seizure by the federal government.

Our local people are acting presidentially, our President is acting like an ill-informed local. Defunding the Police. Forcing constitutional change. The removal of confederate statues. All examples of the will of the people to self govern.  

But this is only America. What is happening across the World? Modern tools like ‘Social Glass’ have anticipated the need for a more responsive system of governance, primarily because the founder Paola Santana grew up where she had direct experience of the struggle between central government and local governance. Bringing normal inter-social tools like ecommerce, shared communication and content creation may change the nature of how we all interact with the body politic.

With the right tools and accountability it may actually be possible to create a ‘constitutional utility’ governance for the people by the people.

Un-concluding

None of the above is entirely true. None of the above is entirely untrue. Maybe it is both true and untrue at once (Flattening). But if we believe in the tendency of molecules to return to a settled state, the world will try to pop back into pre-pandemic form. If it does it willl be forever creased like the pages that make up this book (a codex). 

If we embrace for a moment longer this flattened state (scroll) we will collectively benefit from the disarrangement. A societal lack of a linear past, present and future will inevitably lead to a feeling of chaos. If we embrace the chaos – we may well imagine a new, more malleable reality. More navigable, more searchable, more dimensional, more rearrangeable, more accessible, more re-editable. (some kind of spatial hypertext). 

This may lead to new levels of interaction: reforming constitutions, reframing countries, melting borders, inspiring new forms of trade. And this level of interaction would leave a trail, a new kind of ever-growing, ever shifting library. A library of what’s happening right now from all perspectives, all at once. An Index of everything. An index of everything and how it is important right now.