Missoula has been a place that has left me with lots of experience. These past few days I’ve been working on Veronica and fixing her EGR and PCV Valves. To uncover that this was her problem, I first had to travel through her computer: performing diagnostic tests with a paperclip. The result: Code 32…

For the record, I am not a mechanic, but I am finding, that as with everything else, it’s only ourselves standing in the way of our learning, adaptation, and fearlessness towards things we don’t understand. So into her engine I delved.

Code 32: what’s interesting about code 32 is that before you can get there you have to pass through code 12. Code 12 is a handshake code, it’s the computer telling you, “Hey, I’m Veronica’s computer, and I’m just letting you know that I’m working properly and I’m prepared to have a conversation about Veronica.” To me this is fascinating since I’m talking to my van, and as an extension, we’re all speeding around in giant computers.

When you think about it, we all spend so much of our time with computers. I know I’ve spent a lot of time in front of this computer, editing footage, sending emails, working on my website, doing press, connecting, and at the same time, disconnecting. So can you have a connection to the sacred, a connection to nature, while still immersed in the computer age?

There’s this great café here, with free wireless and a great vibe, but mostly filled with people staring into laptops. I’m one of these people. It gets to the point that a conversation can seem a crude interruption to the technological flow people are immersed in. I don’t think it’s necessarily bad, just mind-boggling to have a café where overall, there are fewer authentic conversations and people, while connected, are also at the same time so very disconnected.

In this high-speed technological reality, in the wake of so much connectivity, do we also give something up, something deeper and more innate? Do we sacrifice authenticity?

The momentum of our technological reality has us so busy that I wonder if there’s a whole other dimension going unnoticed. This is the image that I’ve been toying with, and am interested in as an artist. It’s this idea of layers, and varying levels of human existence and perspectives, in this complex and infinite natural world.

In being too busy with our lives to slow down, we fail to take notice of the plethora of layers and perspectives. In a technological reality we’re preoccupied with the usual comings and goings and the frantic pace we’ve set for ourselves. And while we ARE connected at that speed and level, how deep does our connection penetrate, and again, what are we letting pass us by?

It becomes difficult to sit back and feel a connection or see people and things with authenticity. But again, here’s the paradox, because technological reality itself also involves a certain type of connectivity and comfort, just different layers of human nature interaction.

Since leaving Canada, I’ve found myself re-immersed in a technological world, feeling both connected and disconnected at the same time. In my uncertainty and anxiety, I’ve quickly returned back to the comfort zone. Here life’s easier in the fact that I have a community and am immersed in the wonders of technology. But at the same time, there’s an intuitive feeling of loss and disconnection from myself, from my path, or from nature. I’m not quite certain what it is. But now having been inside contemporary society for this long, I’m struggling to get back out again, to get back into the silence and the authenticity of the natural world.

That’s the point, as humans we’ve arrived in a technological reality where we spend our time jumping from technological space to technological space. To settle in-between these spaces for any real length of time is to be uncomfortable, and we are all playing leap-frog together.

peace,
d