A Talker in the City
Clyde Haberman's NYC column in yesterday's New York Times dials up one of my biggest pet peeves: cell-phone conversations on the street.
I admit!: I speak on my cell phone on the street--but not gleefully. If I can find a pay phone to lean into, all the better. I miss pay phones (especially the old ones with the doors). Privacy in the middle of potential bedlam is very relaxing.
The column is full of interviews with MacArthur "genius" award-winners, all of them extolling the virtues of being disconnected. According to them, it allows for reflection, for rumination, and for dreamcasting.
Agreed.
I think, too, it allows for an experience that is hard to come by--namely, the experience of walking in one of the world's major cities, and certainly in America's greatest pedestrian one. To be talking into a cell phone (I prefer the yellow banana) is to be somewhere else mentally, which is to say: to be a pod person.
Certainly I'm a pod person when I'm walking and talking into my little phone, invisible rays bouncing all around me. I walk and don't appreciate the sidewalk under my feet, generally view the scene before and around me as a giant sensoround video screen, and try not to get hit by a car.
The column also discusses the iPod as disconnector. This reminded me of how years ago, I plugged into my Walkman. It didn't last long. I missed out on the city, and so I missed the city despite walking around in it. There's a lot to miss. The eyeballs can listen and the ears can see. Conversation happens bodily, not just orally. I like the way people carve highway lanes into the sidewalks at rush hours.
The city has a lot to say. It's a call I don't want to miss.
I admit!: I speak on my cell phone on the street--but not gleefully. If I can find a pay phone to lean into, all the better. I miss pay phones (especially the old ones with the doors). Privacy in the middle of potential bedlam is very relaxing.
The column is full of interviews with MacArthur "genius" award-winners, all of them extolling the virtues of being disconnected. According to them, it allows for reflection, for rumination, and for dreamcasting.
Agreed.
I think, too, it allows for an experience that is hard to come by--namely, the experience of walking in one of the world's major cities, and certainly in America's greatest pedestrian one. To be talking into a cell phone (I prefer the yellow banana) is to be somewhere else mentally, which is to say: to be a pod person.
Certainly I'm a pod person when I'm walking and talking into my little phone, invisible rays bouncing all around me. I walk and don't appreciate the sidewalk under my feet, generally view the scene before and around me as a giant sensoround video screen, and try not to get hit by a car.
The column also discusses the iPod as disconnector. This reminded me of how years ago, I plugged into my Walkman. It didn't last long. I missed out on the city, and so I missed the city despite walking around in it. There's a lot to miss. The eyeballs can listen and the ears can see. Conversation happens bodily, not just orally. I like the way people carve highway lanes into the sidewalks at rush hours.
The city has a lot to say. It's a call I don't want to miss.
posted by Elizabeth Manus at 12:01 AM
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