This weekend, in the middle of my normally boring chunk of New Jersey, the Union County Music Fest was in town shaking things up and definitely keeping the neighbors awake. The normally expansive and green fields of Oak Ridge Park in Clark, NJ - a converted golf course - were filled with booming stages, carnival rides, greasy foods and more teens and middle-aged women dancing together than you'll ever see again.
After catching the last chunk of Keeping Riley (a surprisingly good local band... moreso live than their recordings) and OK Go, my buddy and I wandered over to the Hell on Wheels BMX section. A modest crowd gathered to watch two guys do some sweet jumps... and possibly contort their bodies in unthinkable ways in an unplanned crash landing. From the trailer, a mulleted man did his best to charge up the crowd, promising that we'd be stupefied and electrified, that these young men would defy death and risk serious personal injury to entertain us like we'd never been entertained before.
The bassline from the Propellerhead's Spybreak! (you know, the song playing in the Matrix when Neo shoots up the lobby and does some sweet slow-mo cartwheels) kicks in and picks up our pulses. We all wait, anxious to see a man fly. He pedals. He speeds up. He hits the ramp, jumps through the air, spinning his body and machine a perfect 360 degrees, and lands. He nails it! The crowd is... completely unimpressed? Huh?
No one - including myself - was impressed. This young daredevil just pushed the boundaries of what a human body is capable of right before our very eyes, yet we were unmoved. We halfheartedly clapped in between hiding our yawns. After five or six tricks, the show was over and the small throng of spectators dispersed, presumably to watch Train's set, but hopefully to do something better with their lives.
As I walked away, I could help but think, That should have been really impressive. I mean, that guy was like twenty feet in the air and even jumped over his own father's head. Why wasn't I amazed? Why was the crowd not dazzled and starry-eyed by this spectacle? I realized why almost immediately: we had all seen it already. Even though this was my first time seeing professional BMX trickers in person, my years of watching the X-games as a kid had ruined the punch line for me.
Now what if I had never seen that before on TV? Imagine if there was no TV. What if the highest I'd ever seen someone take a bicycle was my friend Paul doing a three inch bunny hop, an impressive feat for a layperson? I would have shat myself. Sure, I would have heard stories about these crazy people who throw their bodies around on two-wheeled pedal-powered vehicles and I may have even seen a photo or two; but to be fifteen feet from a man who dared to so blatantly defy physical limitations surely would have left me with a hefty load of fear/excitement infused shite in my manties.
I don't want to say technology is bad; it's not. In fact, it is @#$!ing awesome. But, we human beings are not always the wisest, most prudent creatures. I saw about 18 kids walking with their faces buried into their phones; I was tempted to trip every one of them and then blame them for not looking where they were going. My dad says, "Why go to a baseball game when I can watch it here on my flatscreen HD TV?" I know we like having things and having these things NOW - especially when these things are the newest, high-tech goodies that promise to enrich our lives - but maybe we don't deserve such instant gratification. Maybe all this access to information and entertainment, when overused, leaves us numbed and unable to be impressed, even when we're watching a man fly.
Well said. This post reminded me of Einstein - he said "he who can no longer pause to stand in wonder and rapt in awe is as good as dead; his eyes are closed." Having been raised without tv, I've always been pretty easily impressed. Still, I find that there are whole days, even weeks, when I have been so preoccupied, and distracted by stupid things, that I miss the beauty and awesomeness of the simple things.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your post - its a great reminder to open my eyes.
There is an ad in spanish tv nowdays... tells the story of this man that goes with his little boy to all the football matches of the team they support. As the kid grows up, they still go on with their healthy and lovely routine, following their team wherever they go.
ReplyDeleteBut the man becames old, he can barely stand up from his couch. So when the next match comes, he says to his son "Let's go to the stadium". But the son, that now is a man, understands that his old father can't really make it to the stadium, he is too old. In fact, the old man is just saying that to keep pleasing his son, what a cute and responsible old man. So the son says "No dad, let's bring the stadium home", and he turns on his fucking huge and fucking flat HD TV 1080 pp. What a lazy prick.
Fuck that a thousand times. I hate that fucking ad.
High tech is not supposed to be a substitute for living a real life, I guess. Is like watching Good Fellas in spanish :)
Welcome back, bro, it's always a pleasure to read you. Hope everything is going fine around there.
Take care,
El marica de tu amigo español.