The Artist D — Screening

There has been something really bothering me lately. It’s the invention of the screen. Not the airport kind! I’m talking about the monitors on our walls, in our briefcases and our pockets. We live in a world of screens and while I can’t seem to look away I also can’t take it anymore!

Remember when we went to the optometrist and they would ask how much time do you spend looking at a computer screen per day? It was a feeling of shame when the amount of hours spent exceeded any of the options available. Do they even ask that anymore? If they do it’s certainly not a feeling of shame, but the exact opposite. People who look at monitors for less than two hours per day are probably frowned on in the 21^st Century.

I get up every morning and turn on the computer. I go into work for ten hours a day and work by staring at a computer screen. I go to lunch and have to monitor work via my big screen smart phone. I come home and eat dinner while playing a movie or documentary on the flat screen. I then sit on the couch with my laptop working on the things I am famous for. When I crawl into bed I have to take one last look at the screen on my phone to make sure the alarm is set. This therefore inevitably has me looking at it again when the alarm goes off first thing in the morning. First thing I see when I wake, last thing I see before I sleep. What has become of me?

I imagine I am so bothered by the haunting of the screen because I am now at a point where I can’t get away from it. I do take an hour of my day to exercise, but even then I’m checking the screen on my iPod. I love reading books, but don’t have much time to do so because of all the time I spend with my life in computers. And this disgust I have developed for the screen is what keeps me from purchasing one of those fancy book reader tablet gadgets. It’s far less about the nostalgia some people have about holding a book and turning pages. Oh no, for me it’s a battle that they aren’t going to turn the only remaining thing I do into a screen!

Being the Internet’s First Superstar I am a little bit ahead of my time developing the disgust of this brand of technology. Unlike some older people of our generation I have woken up to turn on a computer screen since I was at least twelve years old. For those who aren’t keeping track that is about twenty years worth of screen staring. I’d have to say the advances of turning the telephone into a complete pocket computer (therefore not really a phone anymore) has filled in the gaps adding to the insanity. Now everyone has a computer in their pocket and if not they have a notebook-size computer in their purse.

At least I used to leave the house and not be able to get to a computer. Traveling across the country for my first time I didn’t have a laptop or even a phone. I spent nights in hotel rooms reading books and I had to wait until arriving at my destination before knowing what was going on online. Can you imagine the torture and anxiety that would produce today? Some people wouldn’t have a clue what to do with themselves. They’d go out of their mind without knowing if an email was waiting or god forbid they miss what Aunt Susie posted on Facebook.

I can’t get away from it! It almost feels like a drug that society isn’t letting me put down. I don’t have a choice. I should say, I’m having a hard time making any other choice. My work in the arts has deadlines that must be met. The day jobs of today stress an unspoken “stay connected or get lost” policy. Then to nicely fill in the cracks between desktop to laptop the phone is always going off with this or that to look at.

As I look around I don’t see many people have much of an alternative. In fact no one seems to mind. Those who have overdosed on screens appear to be perfectly OK with it. They lay in bed touching their phone and doing everything they do all day long. Nobody takes a break from it. It’s akin to city burn out where you just get so exhausted from the constant noise and neon lights. Some people can dig it, but some people (like me) just don’t live like that for extended periods of life.

I don’t know about you but it’s starting to repulse me. This only pushes me further into retirement to a small cabin with a garden. Gardens don’t have screens in them, do they? The delight I will take one day of smashing my phone on a rock. To one day minimize my screen-time to a certain area of my cabin and not have it follow me around like a sick puppy. I hope I live to see it and the screen doesn’t kill me before I get there.

The Artist D is executive editor of Fourculture Magazine. He is also unearthing the underground as host of The Fabulous D Show every Sunday night at 7 PM EST at TheArtistD.com 

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Category: Transgender Body & Soul, Transgender Opinion