The Beginning

Now that the week-long project at the Meow Wolf space is over, I'm going to post the resulting time-based article in pieces, since that will work best for the blog format. I'm also not going to explain the basics again here, so if readers are confused they should go back to earlier posts. Here is the first piece:

I: The Beginning
I begin at 3:55 pm on Tuesday, June 15. Already I’m a bit blown away by the distractions I’ll be contending with here, and this is probably as mellow as it’s going to get. As I sat down to write, I note the obvious ones: pop-electronic music coming from a speaker that, unexpectedly, is three feet behind me on my left; light coming from the open garage door directly behind me, casting a somewhat irritating glare on my computer screen; my nerves, which are wired, both in positive (excited) and negative (angst) ways; people talking and calling out to one another across the space as they build their installations; briefly (thank God), a power saw; and (also briefly), one of the artists doing his best imitation of a drunken Inigo Montoya.

Almost immediately my friend Justin walks in, wandering up to me and expecting engagement. Of course I oblige. We chat for a couple of minutes. He forgot his wallet, it turns out, and is hungry. I loan him ten bucks. He asks what I’m doing. I hand him a card but refrain from explaining beyond, “It’s an art project. I’m gonna blog it.” Thankfully that satisfies him, and he moves on. Then it pretty well mellows out. Once I adjust to the new surroundings, it’s not very different from working in a coffee shop, which I do all the time.

I’ll start with what we already know about distraction. I’ve been surfing the web in search of good articles on the topic, and the basic story line that’s on everybody’s mind right now goes something like this: We’re too distracted these days. It’s the Digital Age and we’ve got information flying at us in a mess of sound bytes, emails, and headlines scrolling across screen bottoms. It comes at us so fast that we bounce around trying to keep track of it all, never really sinking in to any one topic anymore. The skill of multitasking is a prized and fabled gift. What’s funny, however, is that science shows that people are inherently pretty bad at multitasking. In fact, our new Digital Age, by preventing sustained concentration, is actually making us stupider.
It’s like we’ve all become characters in that Vonnegut story “Harrison Bergeron,” with gadgets attached to our ears that blast disruptive sounds at us every few minutes to shred whatever thought might be forming. Only this wasn’t done to us by some Handicapper General; we’ve done it to ourselves.

So, am I going to do about it? Stumped by this question, I find myself closely examining my surroundings. My desk is pressed up against some kind of Plexiglas window coated with colored paper. The paper is peeling at the edges. I’m fighting the urge to pick at it. WOAH: The music is now doing a glitch-dub thing that is out of hand. Suddenly I wonder what I was thinking to decide this was a good idea. How the hell am I going to actually write something that requires not only actual thought but creative organization? I have a hard enough time concentrating in the best of circumstances. How can I possibly do it here? I don’t even know where to begin.

Anyway. Wow, I’ve actually already lost my train of thought. And the music isn’t even disruptive right now. Oh yeah. So the solution I seem to most often come across online is that we need to remove the distractions. Resist the temptation to let them into your life. Although this makes it sound like distraction is the eighth deadly sin, it is probably the best possible advice. If you can keep distractions from physically getting too close, you don’t have to contend with them in an internal way. This is good because we know how bad people are with self-control. If you don’t hear any music, you don’t have to ignore it. If you don’t have wireless Internet, you don’t have to choose not to click on that Firefox icon. If your cell phone is turned off, you don’t have to decide not to answer, even if it’s your boyfriend. Well, I can resist my boyfriend. The one person I absolutely can’t resist answering for is my mom.

“Hey, Emily, do you want a ceiling over your cave?” calls a guy standing right directly next to me, to another artist across the room. I seem to be smack in the middle of a discussion that started a few minutes ago. Hah! I didn’t notice that at first, because I was concentrating. This is promising. I have skills.

Except that now my boyfriend has texted me a joke. I couldn’t resist checking it, and then it was funny: “Neutrogena all day projection.” Oh yes, distracting advertising. I like to think this doesn’t affect me much. I have a deep-seated dislike for the idea that people are trying to make me like something so they can separate me from my money, so I tend to look away, or change the channel, or whatever. And in Santa Fe it’s not much of an issue, unless you’re on the highway with obnoxious billboards all around. But I can only turn away if I’m conscious of the distraction. What about getting distracted without even realizing it’s happening? How often does that happen to me?

Maybe I need to make a rule against checking my texts. Maybe I need to leave my phone in the car. I consider this for only a nanosecond before I’m swept with the feeling that I couldn’t possibly do that. What if Mom calls? The chances are slim, I know, but she’s so sweet and she might need something and I might be the only person around who can help her. Maybe my sister’s at work and my aunt’s not home. My mom doesn’t have a car, or a phone. It’s my job to help take care of her. So this is my weakness—not connection to purchases, but connection to loved ones.

The thing about the way we usually think about distraction is that we tend to focus on the obvious. Like, Duh, of course we should turn off the TV if we want to get work done. TV is stupid anyway. But not everything that distracts us is stupid. In fact, on some level at least, most of it is not. Distraction is now starting to look like problem of organization—not so much about what our lives consist of, but how we arrange them.

Oh wow, bad music. “Crystal ringlets paint a picture…” What? Oh, it’s either Stevie Wonder or somebody who wants to be him. Lyrics. Listening to music with lyrics is definitely dangerous to concentration, especially for a writer: I automatically focus on the words and I can’t help it. I’ve lost my train of thought again. I really was getting onto a track worth following. And now it’s vanished. And now—I’m not kidding—we’re listening to Christian music. Horribly bad Christian music. Benji and Emily are laughing and singing along. “Oh yes, what a novelty,” says Benji after it ends.