From time to time, after browsing the internet, that is, looking at email, some news sites, social networks, I feel very tired. It takes some time for me to realize that the two things are related and that much of the fatigue of everyday life is the effect of overstimulation, saturation resulting from the volume of information and the profusion of images with which we constantly deal. News, videos, photos, podcasts, controversies, memes, criticisms, opinions, ideas...
The internet is a virtual space, so its relationship with time and space is quite unique. If it is accessed in the morning, if it is accessed in the early morning, it remains "alive", the material continues to accumulate in the timeline . Timeline, but a very peculiar time, which is not regulated by the sun, by the marking of days and nights, by a routine in which one wakes up and sleeps. There, time seems to be an infinite time, without demarcations or borders.
It is not by chance that the term "FOMO" was coined, fear of missing out, than could be translated as the "fear of missing something". This feeling causes anxiety in so many people, making it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to distance themselves from their cell phone, for example. It only takes short breaks, short moments of waiting, to automatically pick up the cell phone and "roll" the timeline, ad aeternum.
There is a fear of missing out on something from this virtually endless amount of content. For some time now, the term "content" has gained a lot of space; we have the "content producers". Many people have been forced not only to consume (and this verb seems to me appropriate for the discussion) content, but also to "produce content". Whatever your profession, you need to "produce content," especially on social media.
Right from the start, I think of "content" as something that is relevant, that has some importance, that arouses interest. Then, in a brief research, I am reminded that content is that which takes up space in something, such as the contents of a box. In this way, it can be said that there are contents and contents. With what content do we choose to fill our box?
I think then about the importance of knowing how to use space and time, calculating down to the millimeter how to use them. After all, time and space are scarce, you need to know how to use them wisely. However, then it seems to me that you fall into that "FOMO", into that fear of losing. And, look, aren't we losing all the time? By choosing something, aren't we also leaving everything else behind?
My memory catches in its archive two famous texts by Freud, Mourning and melancholy and Transience who deal, each in their own way, with loss. But today I don't want the saturation of content and information, I want to rest from it. Thus, I turn to poetry and music, because, as Freud rightly reminds us, writers are always ahead of us in the knowledge of the human soul.
I remember the famous poem "The Art of Loosing", by Elizabeth Bishop:
The art of losing is no mystery;
So many things contain the accident in them
To lose them, that losing is nothing serious.
Lose a little bit each day. Accept, austere,
The key lost, the hour wasted foolishly.
The art of losing is no mystery.
Then lose faster, with more criteria:
Places, names, the subsequent scale
Of the trip not made. None of this is serious.
I lost my Mom's watch. Oh! And I don't even want to
Remember the loss of three excellent houses.
The art of losing is no mystery.
I lost two beautiful cities. And an empire
Which was mine, two rivers, and one more continent.
I miss them. But it's nothing serious.
- Even losing you (the voice, the ethereal laughter
that I love) doesn't change anything. For it is evident
that the art of losing is not a mystery
as much as it seems (Write!) very serious.
(translation by Paulo Henriques Britto)
I still remember Silence by Jorge Drexler, from which I transcribe the translation:
Everybody's trying to sell you something
Trying to buy it
Wanting to put you in your melodrama
Your karma, your bed, your leap to fame
Your brief moment of glory
Your two megabytes of memory
Upload to your cloud
Like a price that goes up
To show you then
Like a banner
I find nothing more valuable than giving it
Nothing more elegant
That this moment
Of silence
Silence
The vertical index between the mouth and the nose
The echo in the cathedral
The breeze on the vine
Let's get into the sound till the last second
Let's pay attention to the gesture of the nurse photo
And when the noise saturates the antenna again
And a mermaid breaks the night, inclement
We won't find anything more relevant
What to say to the mind
Stop
Silence
Silence
Kiss me now
Before you say something completely inappropriate
Don't waste a good time
To remain silent
Silence
And when the noise saturates the antenna again
And a mermaid breaks the night, inclement
We won't find anything more relevant
What to say to the mind
Stop
Silence
Silence
(...)
Silence
Knowing how to waste time wisely. Knowing how to waste time with more criteria. Knowing how to be silent in the face of the incessant noise of the internet. Knowing how to stop in front of the images and flashes that come to us violent and demanding, calling us to live a life without time and space, a virtual life. If time and space seem scarce to us, they are also what guide us in life.
