Something that I have – through experience – thought myself:
Multitasking is bad for you {from CNN, from Hivelogic}:
“Compared with those who rarely used more than one type of media at a time, heavy multitaskers had slower response times, most often because they were more easily distracted by irrelevant information, and because they retained that useless information in their short-term memory.”
I do think there are those who are quite adept, perhaps genetically wired for an adroitness, at this this mode of thought + action. I mean, we all can do it to greater and lesser degrees, and Katya’s generation seems to be conditioned to prefer it (though I am not convinced that this is *not* to their detriment(1)); I have known people who live in this postmodern, fractured state of mind and make enviable progress – reJon comes to mind. But I mostly think about Schopenhauer’s essay on noise – not due to the noise itself (for noise, I do love), but rather the ‘diamond’ mind, which when cut into bits by an interruption loses its value.
This may come as a surprise to anyone who has cared enough to track my progression as an artist and musician, and the things I have espoused previously. I have been influenced by Cage, by chance, by Rauschenberg’s being the writing on the wall ethos. I have created free-for-all structures for art, I have spoken of chaos as other people would of ‘freedom’(2). These things have always held an amazing intellectual appeal to me. However- gemini that I am- I think my deepest connections are to the Beuyses of this world – those who are, to use a word I am not even sure is a word, the mythopoetic ones.
Ah, too much there to get into now. But let’s bring this back to the beginning:
I have noticed, personally and with many others I have observed quietly or not so quietly, that our constant state of task-bombardment is like an itchy pox: irritating, unfulfilling, unfulfillable. It’s like being trapped in the shallow end of life. Itchy :) I have read previous studies that track the amount of time it takes for a person, once interrupted, to return to their previous task/thought- approximately 15 min., if memory serves me. Given the schizophrenic nature of most of our day jobs, this adds up quickly.
I think about watching my lovely daughter, Gen Y through and through, sitting in front of the television, chatting/listening/looking up tattoo designs, while texting on her phone, and ostensibly keeping track of the convoluted plot line of Lost(3).
I am not saying that this ruins us as human beings, not at all. We’ve proven our adaptability and miraculous natures over and over again, and we still find ways of keeping all our shit together. But I wonder if we- all of us beneath the enfilade (self-imposed, or no)- might be more, with the ancient art of focus.
Lord, sometimes I sound just like someone I never thought I’d be, when I was younger.
1: Sorry for the double negative.
2: My notion of freedom is very much in the American Transcendental tradition. This has been pointed out to me several times
3: One of the shows in modern television that seems to inspire a sorta of hi-pitched, screaming
Beatlemania in my daughter.
