Personal essays
In a world where we can tap a button and find out
Where am I
Last week I drove to Pittsburgh to pick up Maggie and Egg, her one-eyed cat.
I can get from here to there on a single charge but I can’t get back so I stopped in Cranberry, on the way, to charge back to 80% and then parked in a parking garage with slower chargers that got me the rest of the way to full.
The train wasn’t scheduled to arrive until 8 pm so I arranged to visit my friend Josh. I planned to hang out in the atrium while he finished the work he had to do and then we’d go out for coffee and dinner. It was a great visit.
“Daniel,” you say, “it sounds as if there’s a ‘but’.”
There kind of is. As I followed the directions to his new office building I realized I had no idea where it was in relation to his old office building.
It was only a mile away but I had no feel for which direction or how the two places were situated with respect to the train station.
In the old days I would have had a paper map. I would have looked up the new place and noted where it was compared to the old place and I would have planned my route.
It would have been tougher to drive. I would have kept the folded map on my lap and glanced down as I got closer to see how far it would be until I needed to turn left or right. I wouldn’t have known which lane I needed to be in and I wouldn’t be told, “go through this light and take a right at the next light.”
I love the progress of driving with Apple Maps or Google Maps - It’s so much simpler.
But we do lose something.
I don’t know where anything is anymore.
1981
Bret Easton Ellis was recently talking about why he set his book “The Shards” in the early 1980s.
In the podcast he recalls a conversation he had with Quentin Tarantino where they compared notes as Tarantino had set “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” in the 80’s.
Ellis asked, “would I rather live in 1981 or 2023?” and my mine took off in many directions.
I have so many great memories of 1981. It was the year I graduated from college. The year I first taught high school math - which I loved. The year I first worked as a professional radio DJ - which I loved.
It was a magic time filled with possibilities.
I was young - though I didn’t understand how young I was. I was starting to feel old.
In some ways I feel younger now.
I know that sounds stupid. I’m three times the age I was then with one hundred times the pains.
But I have the means and time and lack of pressure to learn and try to do anything I set my mind to.
That’s something I forget a lot.
Anyway, I hit rewind on the interview to hear Ellis answering his own question by saying he’d choose to live in “1981 in a second.”
It’s so easy to be nostalgic for that time - but given a time machine would I go back and live there?
I don’t think so.
Cell phones
In comparing their works set in the 1980s, Tarantino asks Ellis, “And wasn’t it great to write something that doesn’t have a cell phone it it?”
I get that.
A lot of devices that made stories interesting don’t hold up if you can just reach for your cell phone and send a text, check on a fact, or ask a map for directions.
Some stories don’t work in a world in which there are cameras everywhere on phones, in doorbells, and attached to building.
Dramatically I can see why it’s more interesting to write a book or movie set before we knew everything all the time.
But to live in that world?
I don’t know.
On the other hand, we don’t sit and try to remember things out anymore. We search the web or press a button in an app.
Meanwhile back in Pittsburgh
Josh and I left the coffee house and headed for dinner. We passed a Giant Eagle and suddenly I knew where I was. Last year I’d driven from his old office to this Giant Eagle to charge my car before heading home.
I know knew where we were in relation to his old office.
The pieces of Pittsburgh started to fall in place for me.
I’ll still use Apple Maps or Google Maps while I’m driving. The advantages are undeniable.
And yet, we’ve lost something.
I don’t know where anything is anymore.
Often I’m not sure where I am.
I mean, I am where I need to be - but I don’t have a sense for place the same way I used to.
It’s like calling someone on the phone. I just tap their name and the call is made.
I’m talking to the person I want to talk to - but I no longer know their number.
Maybe I need to get comfortable with a world in which I don’t need to know these things anymore.
Or maybe, like Tarentino’s movies, I should set parts of my life in a world that doesn’t rely on cell phones.
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 196. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe