How I got my creativity back

[Addison]

Nick Stephenson

We’ve all seen it. At the station platform, in the car, on the sofa, in the cinema, even just walking around. Sometimes while they’re driving (although they know they’re not supposed to), sometimes when they’re talking, sometimes when eating, drinking, or making sweet, sweet love. Occasionally, I’ve even seen children doing it.

It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that a person in possession of free time and nothing to talk about must be in want of a smartphone. And you’ll see it everywhere – faces jammed into their tiny little LCD miracle-screens, soaking in all the tiny urls, tweets, micro blogs, and video that their little pixels can muster, eyes down and feet front, plodding on, and on, and on in a silent march toward wherever their GPS programme is telling them to go, a flashing red dot on a map of lines, blipping slowly towards wherever the hell it was they were supposed to be, but they forgot because their calendar app didn’t work properly and now they’re late – cursing themselves for not buying the latest model with the better 4G connection. That’s all my life needs, just one more G, and maybe I’d be on time for once.

And then you forget how to smalltalk. Run into someone in the waiting room, or wait in line for a movie, and there’s no need to smile politely and feign conversation anymore – no need for the “uh huh” or “sure” that used to come so easily, or the “how’s the weather” lines that were always so well rehearsed. You pull out a phone and browse away, comfortable and secure in the knowledge that this is now The Done Thing and nobody will take offence, even if it was kind old Grandma Betty that brought you along to see the damn film in the first place, and she’s still trying to find her way around the typewriter she bought a few decades earlier… she says she’s got the hang of it now. But when she asks if you want any popcorn, sonny, and am I paying attention?

Actually, no – I’m checking out the Rotten Tomatoes reviews for the movie and have already decided I’m not going to enjoy it, because someone at the Wall Street Journal said it was puerile, and I clicked the “like” button so now I’m kinda committed. Can’t show my Facebook followers any weakness. No Grandma Betty, I don’t want any popcorn, can’t you see I’m busy? She smiles a little and buys herself a bag of mints, the ones with the rustling wrappers that cause so much tutting and tsking from the other movie-goers. And I can tell who they are, the ones making faces, because the glow of their cell phone screens lights them up like a Christmas tree, and the whole theatre is just a constellation of tiny pricks of light, and now the movie’s starting and someone’s ring tone is playing.

The movie wasn’t great, but I had some interesting emails to read, so I didn’t mind. I think it was something to do with The Human Condition, or something – the movie, I mean, not the emails – and Tom Hanks was in it quite a lot.

I used to walk everywhere with my earbuds jammed in, streaming megabits of ones and zeros that all jumbled up together to form some kind of tune that kept me in step, the pace pace pace of the three four tempo, rushing me to my destination, making me wish I was in the car so I could sing along a little, and why aren’t I there yet? Now, it’s like sensory deprivation.

. . .

Six months ago I accidentally broke my smart phone and switched to an ancient Nokia I found stuffed in a drawer. I still haven’t switched back.

http://noorosha.com/how-i-got-my-creativity-back/