Being Seen
The other day I was on a Zoom call.
Weren’t we all?
As we sit inside our homes inside a pandemic.
I was one of 78 people on the call,
All these eyes on me.
And I know eyes on me.
I’m an actor and I’ve stood on stage,
In front of eyes. Lots of pairs
Of eyes. Taking me in. And I love
The feeling of eye attention. It also scares me.
Being seen. Even with the trappings of a character.
But these Zooming eyes?
They were looking at themselves. Not me.
As if they were in front of a mirror,
Like the one in their bathrooms.
I heard someone say that we’re living in an
‘Attention Economy’
And that makes sense.
Giving ourselves all the attention.
The ‘look-at-me’ availability that the Web provides.
These 78 people were looking into my living room.
They’d come into my home uninvited,
And could now see me seated in my dad-chair,
With the bookshelf behind.
Intruders in my home.
I thought of going to the windows of my sunroom
And cranking open a window.
I imagined the same 78 people standing there in a cluster,
Spilling out onto 36th Street. Waiting to be invited in.
Staring at me and me back at them.
Cows in a field.