There is So Much Focus on You, There is So Much Attention Paid You

I left Spencer’s and Charles’s apartment, and I started walking straight down North Ave. towards the Starbucks I planned to meet with Jeanne at at 2:00. It was 1:50. Do you know how far it is to walk from Bucktown to Lincoln Park via North Ave.? It is longer than a ten minute walk, I assure you. If you are amongst the briskest of walkers, it takes at least twenty minutes. Now then, I am a very brisk walker, and it took me twenty-five minutes, but I must admit that I tarried along the bridge there, and I looked at the building across the river on the right, and I took out my digital camera to click out an image. I pondered the thought that, were I to have a Pentax, or some other professional camera with undeveloped film inside, I would not have taken this picture. The disposability of superfluous imagery in a media-saturated culture. There would be far too many other, more personal images to capture. This building, while in my estimation an architectural marvel, did not care about me. It would not be able to see the picture I took of it later and say, “Wow, that’s a really good picture. Could you e-mail it to me?” And no, it would not be possible to e-mail anything that was a genuine hard copy, without first a scan, and a scan would be such a waste of space, and a perversion of the original form. No, it would be better to duplicate it first, and then send through the mail. But I could not afford to be so sentimental as to send a building the picture I had taken of it. No, I took the picture, and maybe I would save it later and put it up on my computer desktop background, but it was not a picture destined for personal deliberation. Other people might see it and say, “Wow, that’s a really good picture.” And they might ask where it was from, and I would tell them, but beyond that the picture would have no personal significance towards me. All I would be able to lay claim to, in order to impress them, was, “I live near there,” and just maybe a glimmer of nostalgia would flutter across their mind and they might be happy for me, that I had such a nice view. For a nice view would be an enviable quality, not one to begrudge.
At 2 I walked into the Old Town Starbucks and I saw Jeanne sitting by herself at a table near the door. She stood up and we got into line together. I ordered a Caramel Macchiatto and she ordered a Café Latte. We started our conversation while in line.
“When will I know if I have to be embarrassed about this or not?” she asked me.
“I’ll contact you via e-mail if there’s any chance that these transcripts might enter the public sphere.”
“It’s a really weird thing you did,” she said, unclipping the tiny microphone from the inside of her sweater.
“I think it’s totally revolutionary.” I said.
“People don’t want to know how other people really talk. People want to see their personal fantasies magically projected onto the page.” She suggested.
“Yeah but what are you going to get out of a fantasy?” I asked her, “What’s something new that a fantasy is going to teach you?”
“Escape. Forgetting about working.”
“Whatever the case, I’m glad you participated. I think yours will be one of the most identifiable stories of all”
“Were you able to hear them as this week was happening?” she asked me.
“Yes, it’s true. I had a state-of-the-art digital audio receptor which allowed me to listen in on all of your conversations as they were happening in real time. I sat in a van on Damen Ave.”
“So, you’re basically just a perverted voyeur. Great. I gave the most embarrassing details of my life to a pervert. Great.”
“Hey! Don’t call me that! This is all done with an eye towards progressive social change. I realize what I am doing may seem a bit perverted, but you have to understand, people are never going to change unless they see themselves objectively. By doing a piece featuring people the readers recognize as themselves, they are allowed to experience different variations on their modes of being, while still getting a sense of their personal philosophy as a fictional replica.”
“Whatever, I think you expect too much out of people.”
“People are a lot smarter than they let on.”
The barista put my Caramel Macchiato on the countertop and I took it and said thank you. I took a sip from it.
“The idea is kind of messed up,” I admitted, “But I think the content outweighs the conceit. You can say the idea is corny, or boring, but I really think people are going to respond to it. I mean, you said yourself, earlier on in the week, that you didn’t know how to be normal. Wouldn’t you be interested in reading a direct documentation of other people’s lives? Don’t you think you could learn new things about yourself? Don’t you think it would help us all realize how much more intimately connected we are? That inside our cars, in traffic, we feel the same things?”
Jeanne’s Café Latte was the next drink up on the counter. She took it and said thank you and took a sip from it.
“I know how to be normal,” Jeanne began, “You keep nothing secret. You tell everything to everyone who cares to consider it important. For people that don’t care about hearing every single detail of your life, you don’t need them because they’ll never care about understanding you. For everyone else, for everyone that you tell everything to, you keep in touch with them as often as you feel lonely. You find someone who likes to spend time with you more than anyone else, and you hope to find someone that you like more than anyone else, and you just pray that it’s the same level of dedication to each other. How often that last part happens is outside of my range, but that, for me at least, is the definition of how to be normal.”
I took another sip. “Look I need to get going. I have a very busy day ahead of me, what with collecting everyone’s microphones and minidisks and all. I have two questions to ask of you.”
“Go ahead.”
“One: is it okay with you if I still include you in this failed experiment?”
“Yes. Why do you call it failed though?”
“Because you’re right. I’m basically just a perverted voyeur. People will have as much contempt for the thing I’ve done as they do for the whole of the reality TV spectrum. But two: do you know where I can find Marcus?”
“We’re going to a zine release party and reading and open mic at the Hungry Brain tonight. Around 9:00. Don’t you have his number? I mean, wouldn’t he give it to you if he were participating in this experiment?”
“He was paranoid. He didn’t want to give out his number.”
“But he wanted everyone to know every word he said.”
“Makes a lot of sense, right?”
“No,” Jeanne brushed some of her hair to the side, “That is just like him.”
“Well, I guess I’ll see you later on then,” I said, getting up from my chair.
Unfortunately, I was caught off-guard by Missy’s entrance into the same coffee shop Jeanne and I had planned to meet at. I do not know if this entrance was premeditated or not, but I said, “Hi! Kill two birds with one stone!” and laughed.