Saturday, June 05, 2004
(10:53 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Wheels Within Wheels: The Dialectical Circumference of God
I have basically shifted to the computer as my primary means of communication. I still use the phone to talk to my parents, but last night I had two incoming phone calls in one day, and I realized that that was almost unprecedented in recent years.
The reasons for this shift are, in part, psychological. The deferred nature of electronic communication allows me not to feel like I am imposing on people. E-mail or instant messages sit and wait for a convenient time for the person, while the phone has to be answered right then. In addition, when I was in high school, enjoying a streak of girlfriend-having that is still unequalled, I would spend hours upon hours on the phone, dedicated to discussing absolutely everything, getting in little mini-fights and making up. My family always said they could tell when I was on the phone with my girlfriend and clicked over on the call waiting, because I sounded "dark." I don't know if "dark" was quite fair -- my family disapproved of my girlfriend and tried to put a negative spin on everything possible -- but I did definitely feel as though I was involved in something very serious and meaningful, and I didn't want to be reminded that I was still just a kid who had to take messages for his mom.
Since then, talking on the phone has usually had a certain weight to it, probably parallel to the greater "seriousness" of a letter over a phone call before the Internet Changed Everything (post topic, possibly to be taken up by à Gauche [1]: electronic communication as the dialectical unity of the letter and the phone call). I don't feel that way when people call me, since I know that not everyone has the same bizarre relationship with the phone that I do, but I always feel disproportionately stupid calling people on the phone, especially girls who might get the wrong idea. (It doesn't help that more than once, I have called a particular girl who asked me point blank, "Why are you calling me?") E-mail seems so much smoother and easier. I can feel whatever I want in the background, while never having to show my cards. I don't feel smothered, she doesn't feel smothered, and everyone involved has the universal explanation of "boredom" if they need to come up with a reason for their correspondance.
And so now, no matter what, I always feel like I need to ask permission to call someone on the phone -- anyone at all -- almost as if I need a specific invitation, "Yeah, why don't you go ahead and call me at about 7:15 on Monday...." I've asked permission on more than a few occasions, even when it was obvious that permission was unnecessary and even awkward. (The most egregious example of this was asking a girl in an IM conversation whether it was okay to call her -- when we had been officially dating for weeks.)
Maybe I should match the "Friday Afternoon Confessional" with "Saturday Morning: Memoires of My Mental Illness." Incidentally, the title has no relationship with the content of my post; it comes from a Crooked Timber comment thread, and I wagered that it would make a good title for absolutely anything. I don't think I've been proved wrong.
[1] I have set up the shortcut to Character Map with a key combination (ctrl+alt+shift+Y), so as to have instant access to the diacritical marks that I need to mention friends in my blog posts.
