What Is Watching You
Drama, thriller, comedy or news, content relates to the hardwired models in our head. We give meaning to perceptions by fitting them in the frame of these models. Of all sense perceptions, vision is the most impactful. The constant competition, in the real estate of visual cortex to capture larger space[i] (creating models) in our brain, between different sensory inputs is something we don’t sense but live on. And when those senses inundate…we adapt. Our mind is astonishingly malleable. However, that adaptation comes at the cost of the some of the most important faculties: open awareness, focus, and hence will.
As a creative writer I have written and edited screenplays. To me the script is a creation, an opus, an art but to a viewer it has no meaning. It has no meaning because meaning has already been provided as a descriptive narrative. To my viewers my creation is only an option. How do I make the viewers feel the presence of the art that I have created? Do I write in a way or produce in a way that my viewers get hooked to the show? The answer is easy — no. I want them to give it a meaning of their own; different meanings that comes from the beauty of different perceptions. It’s perfectly fine to have my opus as an option and watch when they want to. However, when they watch, I want them to ‘watch’, not be watched.
I am what I consume. What-I-am occupies most of what’s out there. Sitting on a couch, watching our favourite show, we can soar in a world that is different from the one we live in. We cannot breathe in this created world but we can sense. What we can sense is there. What’s in our head is may be called unreal but it holds equal power over us as what we call real. This thought can be considered healthy if we can stay in the real world while drifting away in the mere tangible one. We know how to be in the both worlds simultaneously. We all have the capability what we don’t have is the will to do it or rather the reminder to do it. It’s not easy because the other world is not out there but in here.
‘Watch, not to be watched.’ But be watched by whom? Let me answer this by asking a question. Where do you think is the screen that you are watching? Your answer can be — the device — precisely! But let’s give it another try. It’s absolutely okay, or perhaps better, if you cannot answer. I only want you to think. You may not define this ‘who’ but you’ll know. Is it me, my mind, myself? Defining it is not important, comprehending is. Tts only natural to comprehend this ‘who’. Natural not easy.
The models I talked about in the first paragraph are supple to an extent we cannot fathom. Any model inside us can be modified, replaced or completely dissolved by, well, putting effort. This effort is mental. Beware, we have models that fit mental effort in the frame of useless effort. The feedback of non-physical effort is always perceived wrongly. When we watch the content the very same mental model activates an inactivity mode to induce a sense of comfort. This sense of comfort is a delusion.
I want my viewers (and readers) to put this effort. I know it’s too much to ask but more than any time before we need it now. We need the effort to watch the reality; the effort to see the fluidity and not the deluded solidity of content (also, ideas, concepts and perceptions). With this effort, which can be defined as using intelligence, the content will have a shared meaning. And sharing meaning is what I do as a writer.
[i] David Eagleman, “Livewired” , August 2020
