Rick's October Tirade
The Sensory Deprivation Blues
I'm afraid we're taking leave of our senses.
Of course, any cynic worth his bile would agree that we've been
out of our senses for decades, if not centuries. The recent orgy of
global hysteria following the sad demise of Princess Diana is just
one example. The inexplicable popularity of Demi Moore is another.
And wasn't it just yesterday that Michael Jackson, that self-made
alien, was the world's most beloved entertainer? Set him down, sans
glove, in any American high school, and within ten minutes his new
classmates would pummel him to the consistency of liverwurst. Yet
those same adolescents raised him to a pinnacle of adoration unseen
since the first incarnation of Elvis.
It goes without saying: the world is full of ample evidence that
we're out of our collective minds. And may it always be so; it keeps
a cynic secure in his chosen field.
But when I suggested that we've been taking leave of our senses,
I meant something else entirely. I was referring to those happy
anatomical receptors that connect us to the physical world. You
know: Sight. Hearing. Taste. Touch. Smell. Drinking. Irony. THOSE
senses.
And not only the senses themselves, but the wonderful SENSATIONS
that our senses project upon the inner screen of our minds. Like the
secret exhilaration of watching the first snowflakes flutter against
the somber grey of a late November landscape. Like the poignant
poetry of city streets on a rainy afternoon. Those subtle sensations
are becoming as irrelevant today as the works of Tacitus are to an
audience of Jim Carrey fans.
I can remember reading, in my first year of college, a quotation
from a letter by Keats: "O for a Life of Sensations rather than
of Thoughts!" the young poet wrote. (They used to capitalize
the Important Words back then.) At the time I suspected he was a
wimp, if not an out-and-out Tinkerbell. Now, in my riper years, I'm
inclined to agree with him.
Sensations, more than thoughts, are the marrow of life. We can
read words on a screen or a printed page, reflect on them, digest
them, and formulate our own reasoned responses. That's thinking --
and it's admirable -- but I wouldn't call it LIFE. Where's the
taste? Where's the smell? Where's the texture?
If I had to point a finger, I'd say personal computers and office
cubicles have emerged as the twin thieves of our senses. Since the
1980s, this unfortunate convergence of microchip technology and
low-budget interior design has wrenched us further than ever from
the primal world of our ancestors.
Imagine an Iroquois hunter surveying his green domain from a
rocky promontory three centuries ago, and you've imagined everything
today's cubicle warriors have forsaken: the primacy of instinct, of
the senses, of being alive in the moment. The Iroquois felt himself
merge into the trees, the brooks, the beasts he hunted. The very
rocks and mountains had souls. Everything observed was alive -- not
just the observer.
By contrast, we're barely alive ourselves as we droop over our
keyboards, content to spend our days straining our eyes... to
observe WHAT? Endless scrolls of type, rows of cartoonish icons,
mindlessly blinking cursors on pastel-colored electronic screens.
Our only tactile connection: the slick feel of the plastic keyboard
under our fingertips and the smooth plastic contours of the mouse. A
few unreal sounds: clicking, clacking, beeping, grinding,
chirruping. No taste, certainly -- although I've been tempted on
occasion to take a bite out of my mouse pad. No smells, either --
unless you thrust an angry foot through your screen. I ask you: what
kind of anemic pseudo-life is this? The average sea-cucumber has
more fun.
About a month ago at work, I had the dubious fortune to be moved
from a corner office into a cubicle. Nothing to worry about, my
superiors assured me. It was simply a matter of consolidation: all
advertising and marketing personnel were to be geographically
clustered for improved "synergy." That's fine, I thought,
but I didn't notice any executives volunteering to set up shop in
cubicles. Still, I'd give it a fair shot. After all, I was about to
experience one of the emblematic work experiences of our time. I was
being Dilbertized.
As cubicles go, mine was disarmingly attractive -- almost posh.
About half the size of my old office, it exuded an air of
understated but expensive good taste. The wall panels seemed to be
fashioned from tweed. The workstation itself was predictably
metallic but warmly hued. I even had room enough to display most of
my old personal artifacts: a four-foot-long paper model of the
Titanic, a few fake antique maps in glass frames, a couple of
advertising awards, a tropical aquarium, two panoramic views of
eighteenth-century London, an actual newspaper notice from 1860
announcing the candidacy of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin, a
Rutgers pennant, several shelves of books, a paper model of Mad King
Ludwig's castle. In short, it was almost as congenial as my old
abode, with the following exceptions: 1) no windows, 2) no door.
I had been relocated, you see, to the nerve center of the entire
building. The president's secretary peered directly at my desk
through the doorless opening of my cubicle; the president himself
enjoyed a clear line of vision; he could, if he chose to do so,
watch me clack away at my computer and play Minesweeper. If I leaned
back in my seat I could gaze into the office of the VP-Marketing,
and vice versa. Privacy was immediately relegated to the past.
Sneeze, and half a dozen voices said "Bless you." Break
wind, and your blast would be heard 'round the world. I napped only
at the extremest peril to my career.
But what irked me above all else was the loss of contact with the
outside world. I was ensconced in a totally artificial environment,
with only a few sorry houseplants to remind me of what I had left
behind. I missed the azure sky, the gathering clouds, the rain, the
snow, the blushing pinks and oranges of sunset. No more birds
swirling in flocks over the roof, no trees bending and fluttering in
the wind. This was sensory deprivation, pure and simple. If I
listened closely enough, I could hear my arteries harden.
My writing job had always been a well-balanced affair: when it
wasn't monotonous it was stressful. But at least I used to have a
room with a view. When the going got tough, I could always gaze out
the window and take a five-minute vacation.
Now I could only turn to my houseplants or those engravings of a
long-vanished London. I couldn't even watch my tropical fish; about
three weeks after being cubicled, they had mysteriously gone
belly-up -- all but the catfish. That should have told me something.
So there I was, just my catfish and me, staring at the tweed
wall-panels and overhearing the well-mannered drone of the
president's secretary on the phone. An Iroquois hunter wouldn't be
caught dead here. What was I doing in this bloodless and synthetic
place? Hey, people -- this is MY LIFE we're squandering! I want to
hear the roll of the ocean and feel the wind on my cheeks. I want to
laugh, love, play, write books, smell the mossy woods, eat roasted
meat and quaff nut-brown ale. But if I wanted to make a living, I
had to forfeit the sensations of life -- at least during daylight
hours -- 49 out of 52 weeks a year. That was the deal. I had to
choose between numbness and poverty. I chose numbness.
A few days ago, after a long and frazzling session of sensory
deprivation, I drove out to one of the resplendent parks that are my
town's best-kept secret. The sun was already low in the sky; its
golden light slanted through the willows that lined the banks of the
stream. I walked beneath the dappled green canopy and stood on a
wooden foot-bridge that crossed the stream. The sunlight illuminated
swarms of tiny insects dancing in the air, enjoying their final
revelries before the onset of frost and oblivion. The spreading
clouds turned delicate shades of peach and rose against the early
autumn sky. The stream rushed beneath my feet, tumbling swiftly over
multicolored rocks. I watched the crystalline swirls and eddies,
then, suddenly, began to HEAR. (I had been so preoccupied with the
travails of the day that I had actually heard nothing until then;
the overloaded mind has a clever way of shutting out all
nonessential stimuli.)
Now the sounds began to emerge in profusion: the song of the
stream, the crickets in the trees, flocks of starlings and jays in
euphoric arboreal conversations... and off in the distance, from
deep in the darkening woods, the muffled hoot of an owl! I was alive
in the moment; the Iroquois hunter would have been pleased. I walked
until dusk and drove home refreshed.
If you feel as if you've shared my sensory interlude, I'm glad to
have shared it with you. But remember, you've actually been looking
at mere TYPE. You've ingested yet another artificial life
experience, like a video game or a website or a yuppie sitcom or a
gated community.
Turn off your computer! Step outside. Breathe deeply. Look.
Listen. Recover your senses. Say NO to numbness!
Of course, I've just spent five hours of my life WRITING this
piece -- considerably longer, I trust, than you took to read it. So
who am I to lecture you about the perils of sensory deprivation?
It's time for me to step outside and recover MY senses! But won't
you join me?
Here's the complete archive of Rick Bayan's immortal tirades for your reading pleasure:
December 2002 — Hello, I Must Be Going
November 2002 — A Raving Moderate
August 2002 — Is Western Civilization Worth Saving?
July 2002 — To Scam or Be Scammed
June 2002 — I Read the News Today, Oh Boy
May 2002 — Speechophobia
April 2002 — Fanatics on Parade
March 2002 — The Prestige Gap: A Lament
February 2002 — On Becoming a Dullard
January 2002 — Art for Slackers
December 2001 — An Unsolicited Christmas Card
November 2001 — A Tale of Two Tribes
October 2001 — On the Fallen Towers
August 2001 — Why Do We Bother?
June 2001 — Notes from a Doomed Planet
May 2001 — The Museum of Discarded Names
April 2001 — Indecision
March 2001 — A Slight Case of Insanity
February 2001 — Letter to a Conscientious Critic
January 2001 — The Cynic's Inaugural Address
December 2000 — The 50th Tirade
November 2000 — Travel Advisory
October 2000 — Beyond Work
September 2000 — More Work
August 2000 — Work
July 2000 — The Doves' Nest
June 2000 — Great Affectations
May 2000 — Tale of a Virtual Village
April 2000 — The World Is My Obstacle Course
March 2000 — A Living Heck
February 2000 — On the Treachery
of Time
January 2000 — A Letter to the
Future
December 99 — Rare Bird
November 99 — Not Just Another
Obscure Ethnic Group
October 99 — Extinction Reconsidered
September 99 — Good Life, Bad
Life, Better Life
August 99 — Household Relics:
An Elegy
July 99 — A Meditation on Profanity
June 99 — In Praise of Sloth
May 99 — A Bug's Death
April 99 — Obligations!
March 99 — The Courage to Be Ordinary
February 99 — A Grave Story
January 99 — What's Left for
Men?
December 98 — On the Uses of
Friends
November 98 — A Cynic's Thanksgiving
October 98 — Grand Illusions
September 98 — Filth
August 98 — Will the Real God
Please Stand Up?
July 98 — Adventures in Downsizing
June 98 — Lady Longevity
May 98 — Uniquely Human, Uniquely
Clueless
April 98 — The Mathematics of Excess
March 98 — Humbuggery
February 98 — Love and the Single
Cynic
January 98 — By the Sweat of
Your Brow
December 97 — Is Suffering Unfashionable?
November 97 — The Tao of Housekeeping
October 97 — The Sensory Deprivation
Blues
September 97 — Down with Natural
Selection!
August 97 — Noise
July 97 — On Eating Our Fellow Creatures
June 97 — Trouble in Book-Land
May 97 — Interview with an Unemployable
Man
April 97 — The Cynic's Dream
March 97 — Inequalities
February 97 — Flesh and Mortality
January 97 — How to Be a Success
December 96 — Why I Can't Hate
Christmas
November 96 — How I Became a Cynic
