An idiot of jetskis and the desire to avoid ego-screaming

In an essay Umberto Eco wrote in 1982[i] he carefully outlined the challenges of making a map of the empire on a scale of 1:1. Setting out criteria to constrain the enterprise (for example, the map couldn’t simply be a plaster cast laid over the top of the empire it depicted as this would make the project “…not cartography, but rather the packaging or paving of the empire…”), he goes on to show that it is an impossibility. And worse, if you could achieve the impossible map you would have succeeded in eliminating the empire itself. The map becomes the empire.[ii]

I read this essay many years ago[iii] and I’ve used it often to bemoan the penchant in this world for filming our lives. This takes a little explanation. Eco’s essay is funny. He floats possibilities like a map raised up on stilts to faithfully reflect the topography below, or a transparent and permeable map that one could move through, all of which he dismisses as not being faithful to the enterprise. You just can’t make a map of the world (or any section of it) on a scale of 1:1. But more than that, why would you? What would the point be to the whole absurd exercise? What would it mean if you succeeded?

I feel the same way about the taking of photographs and worse than that, the filming of our lives. My wife and I did this to be sure, as all new parents have, dutifully filming our child’s first steps and other cute things (never the screaming fits, the tantrums played out on shopping center floors, the projectile vomiting of mushed peas – never these things). And I’m sure we must have watched some of them, perhaps even subjected friends (did they remain friends afterwards?) and relatives to them as well. But ultimately, what for? Are we just so many dogs pissing on so many lampposts to mark that we were here? Tagging trains with illegible nicknames so the world knows we exist?

My absurd question to parallel Eco’s map, is what would we do with a complete video archive of our lives? To watch it, we would need another lifetime.[iv] Of course the density of videos of your children are proportionate to their cuteness (which diminishes with time) and their willingness to oblige (which hits a wall in the teenage years). So we’re not really at any risk of collecting such a video archive. But I think it’s still worth asking why we bother filming what we do.[v]

I watched a couple recently film what seemed to me to be the most pointless life episode. At a lake in Ontario (talk about my privileged position in life) the adult male got out in an old but a sporty boat, one hand on the wheel and the other holding a camera. His partner hopped on a jetski and off they went. Why the fuck would you film such a thing? Films necessitate an audience. In what world would it seem even remotely entertaining to watch someone else jetski? And if you are watching it yourself, be careful not to fall face first into the pond Narcissus.

In 1986 a sociologist by the name of Orin Klapp[vi] suggested that we might be facing an epidemic of boredom. He cast it as an information processing problem. When things are monotonous – that is, nothing changes moment to moment, we get bored. But equally, when there is such a massive amount of information it becomes an impossible challenge to figure out what is signal and what is noise. Boredom is the end result either way.

What some of us do next according to Klapp, is “ego-scream”. Try our best to shout louder above the noise in the hopes that someone realizes we are here. He made this claim – and introduced what I think is an awesome and prescient term: “ego-screaming” – in the era of tight denim, ghetto blasters, pagers and the, at the time ubiquitous, Sony Walkman! With all of that replaced with facebook, twitter, intagram and snapchat, constantly beeping at us from our smartphones it’s hardly surprising that ego screaming is out of control. It is as though we have repurposed Descartes to become “I post, therefore I am.” Or given my complaint here, “I record my life, therefore I am.”

But there is a consequence to all this ego-screaming. We lose touch with what is happening around us. So concerned about how we look, how many likes we get and how many followers we have, we fail to lift our heads up from our phones and calmly glance around.

Back to the lake. My extended family enjoys the woods around our cottage (the dogs love chasing chipmunks to no avail) and we covet the chance to sail whenever we can, or to kayak around two nearby islands (it’s about a 5 km trek and depending on the current, it can be a tough slog). On the sail boat you’re trying to harness the wind, to read it off the water and wrangle your craft as best you can. Not to get anywhere, but just to enjoy the doing of it. The kayak (or canoe) is much more gentle, giving you time to cast your eyes about and if you can ignore the monstrous cottages (with boathouses bigger than my house) you can appreciate the beauty of it.

But the guy on the jetski? He only cares about going fast and doing doughnuts in front of other people’s cottages. Can you imagine if it were the norm that people drove their muscle cars to other people’s neighbourhoods, did loud doughnuts, just for shits and giggles, right in front of your house and then left? With impunity? And if someone else can film it while you do it, so much the better!  

This feels (and is) a little meandering. I’m trying to link the desire to ego-scream with our blind penchant for stuff to provide us with thrills. And then to criticize it all by saying we film ourselves playing with our stuff like greedy little narcissists. It’s sickening.

And the thing about jetskis is that you often see them out in twos and threes. While paddling a kayak one day I had five jetskiers round the point of island and head for me – felt like I was in the midst of some bad mix of Mad Max Fury Road and Waterworld. All of which prompted the need to come up with a word for a group of jetskiers. A murder of crows (cool, although some contest this is the plural for crows), a parliament of owls (how appropriate – sort of). And now, an idiot of jetskis.

Particularly the idiot filming his girlfriend on her jetski. He’s making a record of his life that if it were to be watched would require another life. One entirely taken up with passive, sedentary video watching. Imagining the joy of life others have led. If you could do it, like Eco’s map, your life would cease to exist – the watching of your life would become the life. It’s absurd, and maybe I am being harsh. But I would much prefer to simply do my life, leave what’s done in the past and look forward to the next time I can sail.

[i] The essay was published in the following collection: Eco, U. (1995). How to Travel with a Salmon: And Other Essays. HMH.

[ii] The artist Sarah Morowitz gives it a good try: http://saramorawetz.com/1to1

[iii] Along with other gems in How to travel with a salmon & Other essays, like “How to recognize a porn movie.” Turns out, if it takes too long to move from one scene to the next, you’re watching porn!

[iv] Kenneth Goldsmith , an American poet and critic, once detailed the minutiae of his bodily experiences for a given day before transcribing it into what I can only assume is an unreadable trip through boredom (Goldsmith, K. (1994). Fidget. Coach House Books).

[v] Full disclosure, I recently started using Twitter (and will undoubtedly tweet that this blog is ready for no one to read) and have posted a video of my dog on there.  I am not immune to the critiques that follow.

[vi] Klapp, O. E. (1986). Overload and boredom: Essays on the quality of life in the information society. Greenwood Publishing Group Inc..