Writer Night

On the Idea of Multiliving

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The mapmakers were so good they created a paper map of the world that matched it exactly in one-to-one scale. They duplicated the world, covering it up. So it goes in “Of Exactitude in Science,” a little story written by the Argentinean author Jorge Luis Borges in 1946. And so it goes with life today. Two worlds exist on top of each other — one where we interact physically, actually, and one were we do so digitally.

Something similar happens in Charlie Kauffman’s 2008 film “Synecdoche, New York.” Here, a death-fearing theater director creates a play much like Borges’s map in an impossibly enormous warehouse. His endless show — with sets and actors and even actors playing the actors — is created to scale with his real life. By doing this, he’s trying to make multiple versions of his life as a way to create more life. He isn’t content with multitasking. He’s multiliving.

That’s what goes on with Second Life — an interactive, massively multiplayer virtual world created to replicate our real one (complete with jobs, stores and relationships). And, when you think about it, multiliving is one of the main functions of all the user-generated-content sites on the Web.

You only live twice
Seeing things with our eyes isn’t enough. We take a picture with our phones and upload it to Flickr for all to see. Thinking things with our brains isn’t enough. We tell our friends on Facebook what’s on our mind right now. Living life isn’t enough. We Tweet so everybody knows exactly what we just did.

Alternative realities aren’t new to the modern world. As soon as we had the time and inclination to stop simply surviving and tell stories, read books, view photographs, talk on the telephone, watch movies or play Super Nintendo, we were stepping away from the real and into a place where people can be little gods.

But, until recently, most of us had no part in shaping these realities. We were passively part of a one-way flow of entertainment. We couldn’t socialize with the regulars at Cheers. We simply tried to forget about our real lives for half an hour and watch these people in their pretend lives — complete with a laugh track and commercial breaks.

It’s time that you love
I sympathize with Caden Cotard, the main character in “Synecdoche, New York.” I like to multilive. And I’m fully aware that I do it as a vain attempt to try to fend off my own mortality, to hang onto time, precious time, in whatever virtual or actual ways I can. I’m not old, but I’m getting there. We all are.

So, between everything else I do, I multilive by documenting life — creating another version of it that goes out to whoever happens to see it. Most of what I do is “cover” a trip to the Saraga International Market or The Big Donut with updates and pictures uploaded to Facebook.

It’s all really addictive. I rarely stop fiddling with my phone when I’m out — taking and uploading pictures on Facebook and Flickr, checking in on Foursquare, scanning my nine email accounts or messing with GPS tracker programs that map my every move.

I remember answering machines
All of this multiliving sort of snuck up on me. Fifteen years ago I didn’t have a cell phone or Internet access at home. Fifteen years ago, I mostly lived in the real world and interacted with people in real life. I was far less popular when being a friend meant that you had to actually be around me and I had to be around you. Instead of the 600 Facebook friends have now, I had a handful of friends who I would really do stuff with.

With no cell phone, people who wanted to let me know something would call and leave me a message on my answering machine. It had a cassette tape in it and it would pile message after message on top of each other — erasing and recording, erasing and recording. Usually, when I got home, I would go straight for the answering machine to see who had called. Maybe the red light would be blinking. Somebody called me in the last eight hours and had something to say!

Now we don’t even have a home phone, let alone an answering machine. And the red light is a tiny number in my email inbox or on the Facebook homepage. It is a voicemail or missed call blinking on my cell phone. It is the dozens of Tweets from people I know and don’t know telling me what they ate for lunch (I had carrots on my salad!) or a play-by-play account of “The Bachelor.”

A dose of actual reality
I recently left my laptop and phone at home before setting out with my wife and kids to stay a few days in Golconda — a fading, little city along the Ohio River in Southern Illinois. This was a getaway trip. And what I got away from most was multiliving.

When we first arrived and decided to take a little time to do nothing, I felt like I’d just stepped off a treadmill after running all day. My body was still. But my multiliving brain was still moving and moving.

I wanted to tell everyone about the really cool historic cottage we were staying in right on the river. I wanted to upload pictures of the giant barges floating past into the sunset. But I couldn’t. So only we knew what was happening in our lives at that moment. Only we sat there, sipping hot tea and talking to each other. Later, only we played cards with the kids and listened to the birds and went hiking in the hills and explored the other little towns.

Sure, we got lost in the country without having the option of using my phone’s GPS and had to drive around until we found a town. Sure we saw and experienced lots of things that would have been nice to preserve with pictures. But, we lived a little actually. We lived one life at a time, if only for a while. And it was good.

In the end of Borges’s “Of Exactitude in Science,” people get bored with the enormous and cumbersome map and leave it to be destroyed by the elements. Soon, only fragments remain here and there flapping in the desert breeze. Will the same thing happen to Twitter someday? Will we leave Facebook behind like a pile of virtual junk?

Only time will tell.

10 ways to live a more actually

1. Buy a watch and use it instead of looking constantly at your cell phone. This will keep you from obsessing about checking your text messages, email, Facebook mobile or voicemail messages. Plus you’ll be doing the watch-making industry a favor. Watch sales are in the tank.
2. Search for the quietest place you can find to sit there for a bit each day. You might call it meditation or you might just call it stopping.
3. Do something really fun and don’t document it at all. Let those moments belong only to the people who were actually there.
4. Choose to turn off the computer and phone at a certain time on certain nights. Don’t put it in sleep mode. Shut it down. I’ve found that this helps me get to sleep at a reasonable hour.
5. Read books that make you think. Read the newspaper in print form.
6. Write your thoughts in a little notebook and keep them to yourself.
7. Write notes on paper and leave them for somebody you really like or love to find in person.
8. Send a friend a postcard in the mail for no reason.
9. Walk instead of driving. Nothing makes life more real than actually touching the earth with your feet.
10. Really pay attention to the world. Smell it. Taste it. Look at it. Listen to it.

ByJim Walker

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