“Johnny Can’t Read (I Am Johnny)”
About halfway through a scene I’m working on in class my partner has a hefty monologue. During our first presentation of this scene, as the monologue started, my mind drifted off, thinking about unsent emails, whether I’d brought my umbrella, and where I might get a bite to eat later. I had a couple of minutes, so might as well put the time to good use, right? And I was pretty sure my cue line would snap me back into the moment.
All joking aside, I am appalled at how short my attention span has become, and wonder if I were doing “Nicholas Nickleby” whether I would be tweeting from the wings. Even writing these few lines, I’ve stopped to change my music, glance over at my email, and figure out how which train I need to take to get to my next appointment. (Happily, I have a solid meditative practice and was able to “observe” my thoughts without getting to wrapped up in the them, and I did, in fact, return to the scene in time.)
In college I was capable of reading an entire book in a single sitting if it was as short as, say, “The Trial” or in two days if it was a little thicker like, say, “Moby Dick.” I read “Martin Eden” on an overnight train from Palermo to Rome. I used to write for hours uninterrupted and kept a journal that routinely had ten page entries, written by hand in my blessed Mead notebooks.
Those days are gone. Today I spend my waking hours fending off feeds and posts, sifting through an avalanche of garbage in search of some relevant information, and deleting emails with the headline, “This is so funny!” (I don’t care who you are, I’m not looking at it, so stop sending them.)
There’s a real professional consequence to this phenomenon for all us, but those who work, in part, in the memorization business are disproportionately affected. And I’m concerned that I might reach a point where I’ll need cue cards or a live feed in my ear to get me through a performance. We laugh now…
Information is wonderful, and technology has the potential to democratize the world, but this incessant overload is unhealthy. And yes, I am aware of the irony of blogging about this, so insert your sardonic snicker here. In the meantime, I’ll be trying to read more than five pages without getting bored… or following that link… or checking my google reader… or downloading that album… or all at the same time…
For the Mineralava Musings, this is Edoardo Ballerini.