I am visiting Germany again. (Selfie from a table in the Dallmayr Restaurant in Munich). I arrived two days ago. During my flight from America, I did things a little differently. Normally, I bring lots of reading material, and when I get tired of reading, I watch a few in-flight movies; but I didn't do any of that, this time. After supper, I just sat back and watched the "flight-tracker" on my TV screen chart the progress of the flight.
The flight-tracker does a continuous position-report, showing the plane's vector up the east coast of the United States and Canada, and from there across the Atlantic Ocean. The flight-tracker keeps a passenger up-to-date about the flight parameters—altitude, ground speed, heading, and all that. As the plane starts across the ocean, the map moves with it and highlights the geology of the ocean-floor—long lines of "sea-mounts", or extinct volcanoes, and the fantastic "Charlie Gibbs Fracture Zone", 1200 miles east of Newfoundland and 870 miles west of Portugal, running north and south between Iceland and the Azores.
No one suggested that I do nothing during the flight. I had had a long day already preparing for my trip, getting up before daylight in order to eat breakfast, close my house in Charleston, drive to the airport, and fly on to Atlanta. From there, I flew on to Germany, arriving in the darkness of the pre-Winter morning.
Sitting at breakfast at my hotel in Germany, I saw an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper titled "Ständig passiert nichts!", or "Nothing Ever Happens to Me!", by an Internet critic named Adrian Lobe. I first mentioned the article in my last post. In the article, Lobe complains that cell-phone users have let themselves become addicted to its many channels of entertainment, and can hardly tolerate not having their phone with them, at all times.
So, other travellers have rebelled against the norm and adopted the practice of doing nothing during a flight, just looking at the graphics of the flight-tracker, as I did, and charting a plane's path across the ocean. The rebels give this do-nothing approach the vulgar name "rawdogging". Lobe describes it in his article as "a conscious denial of entertainment."
After I arrived in Germany, I realized that the denial of entertainment amounted to a "Ruhepause", or respite, that unconsciously restored me, that the cell-phone's promise to entertain me is in equal measure a promise to distract me. As a writer, I have to make that distinction. On the other hand, the Ruhepause works to restore my energy and a power of expression to my writing. The mental wheels continue to turn, even while I rest up.
So that, when I sat down to lunch at the hotel in Germany, I took out my pen and paper and set to work at a relaxed and creative pace. It has to start with pen and paper. I can use a computer after I have roughed out a draft, but the process starts with a pen touching the paper. William Faulkner said something about that, and George Eliot (real name, Marian Evans) describes the process as magical: "With this drop of ink at the end of my pen, I will show you the roomy workshop of Mr. Jonathan Burge," she writes at the beginning of Adam Bede.
More than anything, the Lobe article suggests that a cell-phone user needs a proverbial red thread, a sense of intentionality, or a leit-motif, to guide his on-line searches. Frequent, unguided searches lead to diminishing returns—where the distracting aspect of the searches outweighs the entertaining aspect.
In a previous post, I took note of a quote from a novel by John le Carré. In Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, le Carré's spy-hunter George Smiley remarks,
"Each of us has only a quantum of compassion, that if we lavish our concern on every stray cat, we never get to the centre of things."
The same principal holds true for cell-phone use, that if we spend our quantum of curiosity on every stray web-site, the searches never get to the centre of anything. They never gain a sense of direction or intentionality. They only serve as a "Zeitvertreib"—to make the time pass quickly, or even worse as a "Ausgeliefertheit des Daseins"—taking a person out of himself, amounting to a "versagende Seiende"—subordinating one's individual existence to the need to entertain oneself.