Rainy Day


I'm listening to Bill Laswell's album, "Psychic and UFO Revelations in the Last Days." I'm thinking about what a great lunch I had, on small purple potatoes, baby carrots -- this is starting to sound like it could trip a switch somewhere -- but I have to go on. I can't go back. There were mushrooms and zucchini and falafel and delicacies in half pint containers from the Palestinian Deli. Throw the veggies in the hot oil and sizzle them and salt and pepper them and listen to the sounds from the future, because there's no going back now.

I think about that famous painting of the circle of dancers, and it's not just one painting, it's one of many paintings of people holding hands in a circle, and I am thinking about a client, and a discussion we were having. We were talking about the possibility that at some level we are going through a major shift of consciousness because we are increasingly aware of being recorded.



"Welcome to Silencios"

Just why that makes me think of the circle of dancers I'm not sure. Maybe that's what is being lost; it is the absence of any self consciousness that is the surrender to the dance. What will it be like to surrender to the cameras, and behind them, the critics, and finally, the ratings review board?

At the conscious level the camera is in the background of the news stories and the dramas. But many of us have been in a room in a casino where we can watch anybody and zoom down on anything. We've been there in drama or documentary and we know that cameras have the neighborhood staked out. "We'd like you to reconsider your testimony that you were at your calligrapher's studio at that hour, Mr. Breedlove."

He hands over a clocked photograph isolated from a motion sensitive surveillance camera the size of a shadow, nestled under an eve. Breedlove sees that there's a whole stack of photographs under there. He starts to sweat. Trapped like a rat.

At some level we have an unconscious attitude toward the rapid establishment in urban life, especially, of the surveillance systems being put in place. In rural life or anyplace on the planet, actually, you can be focused in on by satellite cameras. Your car or your airplane can be targeted by a missile and you (and anybody unlucky enough to be close to you) can be a smoking hole in the ground if somebody gives the idea a blessing.

Everyone is aware of the cameras in the bank, but I think those are just window dressing. I think that's the surface system and there's a deep system that shows up in a different office, where they can watch anything and everything, and focus in on anything of interest. This is just standard high dollar security system installation now. So the fact is that we don't know when we're being watched by the robot.

Imagine somebody in line at the bank, he's looking around at the security cameras, casing the place. "One over there, one over there. We'll just come in masked and blast them away."

And the robot is saying, "We have a retinal scan of level three direct contact." It's programmed to read direct eye contact and react to it. There are three levels. One is considered probably accidental. Two is somebody deliberately looking at a camera. Three is somebody deliberately looking at more than one camera. Each level activates a more sophisticated look at the subject.

By the time the guy has cased the bank he's been identified and hauled in for bank robbery. The law will have to be changed to allow for pre-emptive arrest and conviction. Precedents have been set and the marketing campaign is underway. It can't be stopped. It might be driven back into hiding in corporate suites for a few years, but it never dies, because it has the blessing of the profit.

As we talked about this we were laughing about it, but we were also realizing it is true that people have begun to behave more and more like somebody is watching them. And it's not like a guilty kid looking around for hidden parents or grandparents who might be observing. This time they really are there. And you can't grow up enough to make it go away. You are beneath the eye which never blinks, and never winks.

I mentioned another woman whose description of what she is doing right now caught my attention. She said she doesn't even know what she wants to do, but that whatever it is, she doesn't want it monitored. That made me think about why it is that she feels monitored. The obvious question is, "If you're not doing anything you mind being seen doing, what do you care if you are monitored?"

But there is another question. Why should somebody else monitor you?

At the retail level it's understandable. In a parking garage it's a good idea. Traffic is getting out of control so freeways should be monitored and the worst offenders identified, and there should be some alternative to human witnesses to crime because they never remember anything acurately.

So basically the system is to create a record of criminal activity. It doesn't do any good to have a camera that isn't monitored in real time for anything else. All it does is collect evidence. If it's monitored in real time (by humans or an artificial intelligence system) then it can anticipate, presume and it can stare. It can pick somebody out of the crowd because of body language. If it can't, it will be able to in a coming upgrade.

We are on a ride. I just pulled up another Laswell album, "Hashisheen." It was the first one I bought, because it contains readings from Burroughs, and I collect them.

At the unconscious level we have all begun to realize that if we are not being monitored, it isn't because we can't be monitored. People go to work in an office and they think they can go to any web site they want and then just erase the history and keep another screen to click open if the boss comes. Good luck. The boss can have everything you do monitored and tracked, where you went how long you stayed and what you did there.

I imagine a future in which we don't even have to show up for court for internet crimes. Our internet identity will have an icon which contains all our computer history and it will be in the dock, so to speak. It can be busted down the Google placement formula, the credit card -- it's nervous system -- will be given a shock, and a warning will have to be placed on any relationship ad. Or you can be put in jail, that is, blocked off the internet behind bars with a double click lock.

And the poor body will gradually withdraw, defeated by unrelenting observation from the cold, hard eye of the camera. In the body there is a universe for every possible outcome and there are dancers holding hands in a circle, and there is a world of sensation beyond anything film can ever know, trapped in a non interpretative universe. All those swirling shades of possibility have gone away, reduced down to a single evidentiary conclusion.

"Give it up, Breedlove."

And most likely he does, finally realizing that "The Conversation" was a prophesy, and that in the geometric shadows, Gene Hackman is playing his saxaphone, and it's raining outside.

Posted: Mon - November 13, 2006 at 07:08 PM