I could never escape the fact
that television separated us. It divided us from each other by occupying the
space where we should have been communicating. Now, when I look back all I have
are memories of television programmes and commercials when I should remember
you. Even on those rare occasions when we did communicate to each other it was
mediated through the television; the recognition of a fictional character that
seemed to share the same values as we did, the acknowledgement of a product that
we believed would make our lives easier or the consideration of a public event
we believed would affect us in specific ways. I never turned to you and looked
you directly in the face and asked you how you were feeling or what
you were thinking, and you never did the same to me. Instead we would just
watch the television and wait for the next incident to dance on the screen that
prompted a comment or even a brief exchange, with our bodies turned away from
each other and our gaze somewhere else, usually more entertaining.
We could have gone for a walk,
had an interesting discussion, played a game or fooled around, in the real
world. We could have been living our lives instead of watching other people
live their imagined lives inside of an illuminated rectangle. We could have got
to know one another instead of getting to know the television programmes we
both liked, and watched again and again and again. It’s not coincidental that
the word television refers to an activity that is remote and detached, if
you consider that the tele- part in television means at a distance in Greek. So yes, the vision was at a distance and
remote, on the other side of the room, but for me it wasn’t only the vision that was at
a distance but also sense of self and of each other, which was enabled every time we switched the device on.
I don’t blame you for ignoring me
and I don’t blame myself for ignoring you. How could we not ignore each other
when the TV was on? I guess we had to die a little in order for the screen to
come alive. It needed something to feed off. But you weren’t the only one who
believed in television. Even my family used to use the idiot box (as it was
called then) as a means to sit with each other, converse superficially and
pretend we were communing in a familial way. It used to drive me crazy. So
crazy that I would often go to my teenage bedroom to do something else, like read,
listen to music or masturbate, just to feel alive again. But every time I stood
up to leave the family room, the place where all the furniture was organized to
face that entertaining centre of televisual attention, my parents would ask me
where I was going, as if there was nothing else to do in this world but watch
television. They were offended because I gave them the impression that I had something better
to do with my time than be with my own family when in actual fact I had
something better to do than watch television.
I should have known better
when I met you. You liked to watch television and I liked you, so, at first I
pretended to like watching it too, just so we could do something together. But
it wasn’t long before I grew to like watching that machine. It grabbed my
attention and overtook me, possessed me even, rendered me motionless and silent
on a comfortable chair. It was so powerful, so insidious and so seductive that I no longer
noticed that the television wanted to pacify me. It had pacified me so well already that I can’t even remember when I became so passive.
There’s no turning point that I can recollect, no moment when I thought to
myself, despite my former prejudices, that television seemed for the first time
to become appealing, engrossing even. I just ended up sitting obediently in
front of the screen every night until I had to go to bed. Before long I ate TV
dinners, bought TV guides and talked about TV programmes. This is where the problem between us began. When I didn’t notice the hold television had on me, and I no
longer noticed myself and I no longer noticed you.
We could have ended up transfixed
by that TV screen for the rest of lives, covered in cobwebs, dishes multiplying
in the sink, paint peeling off of the walls, furniture crumbling, bodies getting
bigger and older but the television remaining the same, always on, always
holding our attention, until we were dragged out from in front of it feet
first. But our lives didn’t develop
that way for we did have some self-control beyond the remote control. There
were times when the TV wasn’t on. But, when the television wasn’t turned on
neither were we, and not just in a sexual manner. We didn’t talk that much or do anything meaningful. We discovered that we had nothing between us but our television, so
of course we turned off when it did.
It’s strange looking back now. We didn’t meet and bond over a love of television. We didn’t
have a water-cooler moment together, at work, when all our colleagues were
discussing the shows that were broadcast the night before. We didn’t meet
through a dating website that listed the TV shows we liked on our profiles. We
didn’t bump into each other in a store where a bank of televisions transfixed
us. Our eyes didn’t meet drifting
upwards from a DVD rack stacked full of popular TV shows. There was something
that brought us together, initially, and it wasn’t a mutual interest in
whatever seemed to be entertaining the nation. The thing is, I can’t remember
what it was. All I remember is the television and the programmes and the commercials we watched together. The TV obliterated all memory of a life outside of it, both before it was
consumed and after, so the idea of us as a unit outside of the television unit became inconceivable.
But now you have gone and it is
too late to ask you how we met or decided to get together or why we couldn’t stay together. I didn’t know you and you
didn’t know me and we didn’t know one another, but we knew about television and
that was all that mattered, until it was turned off and then we were,
eventually for good.
