Heads Up!

I was recently walking on a college campus in the lingering warmth of a pre-dusk Indian summer evening and noticed how the edges of everything seemed to soften in the sun's late-day glow. The moment felt like neither summer nor autumn - it seemed to be the best of both seasons.  Students were emerging from their late day classes and I wondered if they noticed the glimmering sight in front of them as what Jon Stewart might characterize as a "moment of Zen." 

 

The first few people were walking briskly, heads down, texting.  Then a couple passed me, each talking on their respective phones, heads down.  Two coeds came next, heads down, texting and holding a conversation (the skill sets involved here impressed me mightily).  I began to count how many people I walked past who were on their phones and stopped at fourteen. No one - not one soul - was looking up.  Now the students were emerging from classes that run two-and-a half hours long so being incommunicado for that period of time has its drawbacks.  I understand that people were plugging back into their non-academic lives. I do the same thing. 

When we use the phrase "to give someone a heads up" it's a physical direction for a non-physical action.  It invokes the physical act of actually looking up and being aware but it is for something not at all physical.  Its counterpart -"heads down" - prompts me to recall first grade when my teacher would instruct us to rest our heads on our desks as sort of timeout. On that warm September evening I wanted to announce a heads up to all the heads down.  In the age of instant communication, are we ironically missing what is going on around us?


Last Saturday, when Delta Airlines Flight 4951 from Atlanta made an emergency landing at New York's Kennedy International Airport, two young passengers decided to video their view of the harrowing landing using their phones.  In that moment of "will we make or not?" the two men chose to be uber-aware of their surroundings and capture it with seemingly little regard to the possible outcome. On one of the videos, the flight attendant's persistent and commanding reiteration of "Heads Down! Stay Down!" made me almost want to comply with the direction as I sat at my desk watching. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMaps7aBI6E


For forty-five seconds the flight attendant barks that dual command fifteen times - yet the amateur videographer continues to secure the view from the jet window of the sparking wing as it scrapes the runway. As the plane successfully lands without incident and the cabin erupts into applause, I clapped along and then thought "what were these guys thinking?"  This is an awareness that boggles my mind!


In her Salon.com article, Mary Elizabeth Williams suggests the pair of twenty-somethings were simply following a generation's ingrained need to get the image.  She writes, "Perhaps part of the explanation for (their) choice is that they belong to a generation accustomed to regular self-documentation. There's an entire population that photographs and tweets whatever is on the dinner plate in front of them. A plane crash? That's considerably more interesting." http://www.salon.com/life/internet_culture/index.html?story=/mwt/feature/2010/09/28/delta_flight_4951_video

Are we ever, really living in the moment? When we are documenting the moment, does that diminish the experience even just a hair because we are thinking about how it will look or sound instead of being completely immersed in it?  Did the Delta passengers who had their heads down have the full experience of uncertainty as they considered a possible fiery landing while the passenger taking the video experienced a sliver of distraction in his need to get the images on his phone? In my final moments, do I want to be thinking of how this will possibly look to the folks at home?


When Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger miraculously landed his jetliner in New York City's Hudson River in January 2009, I don't recall seeing any videos taken from inside the plane. Having never (and hopefully will never) had the experience of a crash or near-crash landing, I can only speculate on the reasons why no one inside the aircraft taped a passenger's-eye view of the watery landing.  I feel certain all of those passengers were most definitely living in that moment. 

Twitter's website proclaims that its social networking and micro blogging service "is without a doubt the best way to share and discover what is happening right now." To somewhat paraphrase actress Betty White, I am not on 'The Twitter,' but the pull and tug of documenting what is "right now" keeps me guessing how we can be here and now if we are doing something that puts a sort of thin scrim between what is happening and recording it for posterity.

Kodak's tagline "Share Moments. Share Life." is one I have bought into for much of my life.  Taking photographs, keeping mementos, documenting the breadth of experiences with family and friends has been an activity I have happily embraced.  I wonder now, though, how much I may have missed because I was too busy capturing the moment?  Each 'miss' is probably slight but add up a lifetime of pointing and shooting images from innumerable moments and it gives me pause. 

Wartime photographers deal with this on such searingly dramatic level.  When faced with a situation in which human suffering screams for help and the photographer continues to capture the images, where is the line drawn between being in the moment and being a human being? 
 

My late summer stroll along a college campus walkway certainly did not bring up images of wartime photography, but it did raise the simpler question - are we replacing the experience of real moments with a seemingly insatiable appetite for documenting them?  Are we truly looking at what is right in front of us?  Heads up everyone-what do you see?