I missed experiencing of Angelic Daughter’s high school graduation, because I was too enmeshed in trying to record a video of her walk across the outdoor stage to see it live. I got the video, but I didn’t get the memory.
I learned a lesson that day.
Last Thursday, I took Angelic Daughter to a holiday light installation at the Chicago Botanic Garden. They offer a group of artists the opportunity to create works in lights throughout the garden. Guests can walk through a laser light show of spinning green dots against mature evergreen trees, a tunnel of multi-colored light strips, hanging down from above light those flaps of fabric at a car wash, or past a huge ring holding lit torches, gleaming over an array of torches spread over the ground in front of it.
There were lights shaped like spring blossoms encrusting the limbs of dormant crabtrees, and giant water lilies of light reflecting their colors in the calm of the man-made lake beneath them that you could see as you crossed a bridge over the water. There was a sea of lights on a hill that in the spring will be covered with crocuses, and a “laser lake” show as you crossed another bridge, circling back through the garden toward the grand finale: an arched “light “cathedral” forming a quasi-spiritual place as you pass through back toward where you entered the show.
I remember all these installations vividly, primarily because I wasn’t trying to capture them on the non-optimal camera in my phone (ok, I did take one or two shots of us passing through the light cathedral) or because I either liked or hated the music that was playing alongside each installation (Charlie Brown, yes, but voulez vous couche avec moi, at Christmastitme? seriously?)
But alas, I fear that 75% of other attendees, who spent their entire walk around the illuminated garden with the gaze fixed intently on their phones, won’t remember a darn thing about the experience of walking through the light show. They’ll have to check their phones to see what they came to see.
I chose a later entry time this year specifically to avoid pedestrian traffic jams of baby carriages. Unfortunately, those jams where supplanted by bottlenecks of people trying to capture dancing laser dots on their phones. Many of the attendees seemed like 20-30 somethings, and they were intent on taking couple-selfies in front of just about everything, in addition to taking one (or six) inside the selfie frame the garden had set up. One young man walked by holding his phone out in front of him, filming his entire walk through, as if seeing the show through the lens of his phone’s camera was somehow preferable to seeing it with his own eyes.
We have become people who don’t trust the power of our own senses to gather experience, or the power of our brains to remember sounds, sights, and sensations. These little rectangles of technology have sucked the sentience right out of our brains, until we can’t rely on anything but a video seen on social media, or a blurry photo that never could have captured what those laser dots really looked like to the naked eye.
How sad.
But no amount of tsk-tsking or bemoaning will change anyone else’s behavior. The only thing I can do is buy tickets for an even later entry next year, where I hope there will be fewer phone-camera addicts gumming up the works.
Or, just decide to enjoy the very slow stroll through a logjam of strollers, admiring oblivious sleeping infants or dazzled toddlers as we go. Either way, I’ll come home with the memory of enchantment that can be woven from lights in the darkness.
I hope you had, are having, or are starting to have, a restful, enjoyable, and above all, memorable holiday season, and I wish us all a New Year of peace, compassion, and love.
until then, I remain,
your trying-to-make-the-best-of-it-while-weaving-my-way-past-hypnotized-phone-photographers-leading-Angelic-Daughter-on-toward-the-next-glowing-light,
Ridiculouswoman
I saw a ‘joke’ Christmas card online with the entire family looking down at their phones and the tag was Merry Christmas from the Smith family. Sadly true, this filter of digital life held in our hands preventing us from trusting the experience we are having in the moment will be enough. Perhaps we have forgotten how to be empty enough to be receptive to the possible deep fulfillment of our own everyday lives. My grandsons four and two saw a display of lights in their downtown. My daughter took one photo and the look of wonder and joy on their faces lit up my world. If used sparingly, the technology is amazing. Sparingly, to share with a distant grandmother, is a gift.
The Chicago Botanical Gardens Lightshow was truly awesome. I know, because I watched it from the comfort of my apartment in Pennsylvania, compliments of YouTube videos. LOL. One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor. You enjoyed the live experience unencumbered by the little rectangle of technology. Others enjoy photographing everything, and some people like me enjoy the vicarious experience of video teleportation to the event via technology without having to travel.
How we enjoy something is not nearly as important as actually enjoying something. Like they say, “Whatever floats your boat.” So, I am grateful for both your words and their pictures. I enjoyed both. I only draw the line at seeing all their pictures of their meals in restaurants. The technology hasn’t advanced enough for my taste buds to be able to enjoy those, yet.
Ell said, and a good reminder that some folks need the video to enjoy the experience at all! I just hope your videographer didn’t run over a child or put a foot wrong through a railing over the water in their efforts to capture the light installations!
I just watched the regular videos…I didn’t look for a blooper video, but I might have enjoyed that too.
that’s supposed to to say “well said…”