Highlighter is green on your paper
Her bright eyes to my right stare into her device
Both transfixed in time, focused on something seemingly unreal on this London tube train – one studying abstract networks & the other, playing games. As I ponder the topic of abstract networks, I begin to realize the irony of the situation – for these ideas are so far away, they are not actually in this space with us – but merely an illusion. An abstract idea we tune into through a physical medium:
A textbook and a phone,
To take away our attention,
From the now.
Even as I write this, the greater irony is, I’m on my phone.
I am herded onto the lift, pressed up against strangers, going up to Covent Garden.
It suddenly occurs to me, that as an artist, to capture that which intrigues me, I must also take myself out of the present moment.
To an abstract place, only I know until I am bumped back down to this realm of existence.
I can see their eyes watching me, perhaps silently judging “those millennials – always on their phone these days”…merely to pull out their phone as soon as they exit the station.
You see – my distraction, distracts you from being present. We are like dominos taking cues from each other for what to do next. If only dominos were leaning instead of falling, then perhaps one could stand for all the rest…
And so we all carry on, seemingly present yet so far away from this reality, that we have altered the spaces in which we think we exist and those in which we actually do.
Can we all bump each other back down into the now?
Can one person teach the rest to stand?
All it takes is one.