Of course I'm aware that there are smart phone apps these days for everything under the sun. I'm also aware that I wouldn't like most of them, and would consider a large portion of them dispensable and maybe even hostile to the project of genuine human flourishing. Still, when I heard about the bedtime-story app (this particular one is in the planning stages) it threw me for bit of a loop, and I want to set down a few words about it, to show why it marks a sort of limit for me. It may be that I'm over-reacting. It may also be that it's almost quaint of me, to be remarking on something that's so obviously a sign of the times. But here goes anyway.
To wit, the app would involve this: a collection of stories read by some pleasant-voiced expressive elder, to be punched up for the kid at bed-time (or I suppose whenever) and maybe spiffed up on the screen with the homey picture of a fireplace crackling and acoustically heck maybe with the sound of some crickets doing their summertime chirpy thing. "Snuggle down junior! I'm a bit busy for this kind of thing, so, hope the phone will do. Oh, and while you're at it, after you're done listening, could you tuck yourself in, too?"
Of course, it's true that recordings of good voices reading good stories have been around for a long time, and that listening to a fine book read beautifully is one of the great pleasures in life. The thing that I resist here is the invasion of the recorded and the technologized into the act of nurturing. Story-time for children (especially bedtime story-time) is about intimacy and imagination, reassurance and preparation, settling in and looking forward to rest. It's about recollection of the day's activities. It's about wishes and prayers and hopes. It's about the human body's warmth. It's about song and more songs. It's about voices tuned soft and low. And actually, as I recall, at least when my father was in charge of bedtime, it involved a fair bit of roughhousing and wrestling too!
In short, bedtime's pretty much about humanity. So taking the humanity out of bedtime, and asking what might be wrong with that, is well, like taking the three bears out of the Story of the Three Bears. Um, there's no bear there.
Now I'm sure that the potential creators of this app would never claim it's about replacing the parent at bedtime. "Hey, it's just an option, and isn't it better than watching TV?" Here's the thing though. That's what they all say; they always say it's not about replacement. And hey give them credit that's what they usually sincerely mean. But then somewhere, sometime, exactly the thing they didn't mean is exactly the thing that happens. So let it be said loud and clear from this little soapbox at 9-volt Nomad. At long last, let's stop giving people a chance to be lazy and half-hearted about living their lives and about raising their kids. At long last, let's learn some discipline so that, when and where our complex machines start acting as emotional wedges, separating human from human, we see that and set them aside.
There's a wonderful book by the historian and singer-songwriter Tom Roznowski about Terra Haute, Indiana, in which he points out that around 1920 (just before radio really started to get big) in every middle class household a piano, yes a piano, was just standard equipment, and if you didn't have one, why you were probably considering getting one. And folks really knew how to play. Whole families entertained themselves for hours every week, just listening to each other play or singing along. Sure, there were professionals who knew how to play better than the average Jack or Jill or Uncle Lou or Aunt Betty. Still, that wasn't the same thing, was it? It's clear from Rosnowski's writing that he doesn't consider the changes that came over the culture after that time (in terms of our ability to entertain ourselves) as an improvement.
So, when the original production site of our entertainment becomes someplace other than home, what do we lose? Or when the ones who produce our entertainment are not in any way known to us personally, what do we lose? Or when our family members are no longer the ones we lean on for entertainment, what do we lose?
The simple answer is that we lose the opportunity to show love and to deepen our relationships. Consider first the 1920 parlor sing-along, in which family members made music communally, joining voice to voice, and telling stories and jokes between numbers. The scene isn't perfect of course. The singing is hardly professional. Disagreements break out. Maybe someone has a little too much to drink along with the songs, and ends up saying something a little too lusty to his sister-in-law. But look the scene is human. It's memorable. It's full of life and scenery. It's vivid and rich with experience and relationship.
Now compare that with typical household today, where every member has his or her own separate device in hand as a means to pass the time, and one is playing video games, another is watching a movie, another is taking in some music, another is texting a friend. Maybe these people are all physically in the same room, but are they sharing anything? Are they showing love to one another? Are they doing anything that might deserve to be written down? That might be the stuff of a story someday at a funeral or a wedding or over a glass of beer? No, everyone is in an isolated space of consciousness. A cubicle. A cell. And there is no flow between one cell and the next. How can love build from this? What sense of shared experience can be made here? What common social identity?
There's so much more to say about all this, that I have to trust to time, repetition and the ability to return to a theme which is so richly the gift of blogging, to supply me with opportunity to express what I find so wrong and dangerous about this invasion of devices into our communal lives, and with the professionalization of all our entertainment. But before I leave it for now, there's just a bit more to say.
We don't have to banish technology from our lives to be human; absolutely not. We do have to take real care though, that we do not let it intimidate us into believing:
1. That it can substitute for other people in our lives.
2. That it can serve as a substitute for us, in the lives of others.
In my opinion the best place to start practicing a skepticism of the machine, is in the area of entertainment. Never ever stop believing in your ability, dear reader, to enchant and entertain, no matter how modest you consider your abilities at the task. In the first place there are so many ways to entertain one another that involve no special skills. When we have no skills at the piano or at the bridge table, there's banter and there's craziness, and there's just plain pleasant conversation. Then too, particularly if it's family that's involved in the entertainment, there's just the simple joy of seeing those who look like you and sound like you (or who have just been given to you by circumstance and love!) doing the work of making you happy. No stranger-performer is ever going to have that power over us. And we can count on that same power when we ourselves are the ones telling the joke or telling the story or singing the song or throwing the monopoly dice in that weird spinny way we do.
Which--to bring this full circle--is why parents should never let themselves feel self-conscious about reading aloud to their children (many do!). Perfection in performance is never the goal. Sharing a story is. You're just born to be your childrens' storytellers, and your children recognize in your very face and voice, your right to enchant them.
Long live the bedtime story, voiced by the ones we know and love!
HB
Until Saturday the 28th!
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