Six Degrees of Separation

When I arrived at Times Square, tired and slightly jet lagged, it was already 11:30. I expected an electric atmosphere of excitement, or at the very least interest. What I found instead has stuck in my memory permanently. The signs, and the billboards, and the smells and most of all the New Year's Ball stood above the crowd in the manner of ethereal deities. Elevated, indifferent, regal.

But it was what they lacked, reverence, which so amazed me. The crowd standing before them was bathed in the pale, unearthly glow of their screens. They were transfixed by Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter. I pushed my way through the unresisting spectators, a ghost among the dead. And so, I was engaged with the business of parting the sea as the countdown to midnight began. But, I never made it to the front of the mob. Instead, I was frozen with the sudden realization that as much as half the crowd was recording the countdown with their phones.

There was something so fascinating, so emblematic about that act:placing a literal screen between themselves and reality. It was and is an image I return to, over and over again, at times until it drives me to the brink of madness, until I want to reach into the memory, screaming at the onlookers, "Put those damned things away!"

There are countless parallels I encounter in daily life, and each one brings me straight back to Times Square.

By the time the countdown had reached "7" I had found my way up to the fence which separated the public from the Ball and the stage upon which the signers performed.

The guards, theoretically on duty, had their heads bowed, as if in prayer and supplication to the device in their hands.

They ignored me as I climbed over the fence. They ignored me as I climbed onto the stage and they ignored me as I took the microphone.

"Guess who showed up?" I thundered into the mic. "It's the belle of the ball!"

I pointed to the ball, now at the final second before coming to rest.

Their necks remained bent as the aura of the screen swallowed my declaration.

"Not one laugh? Not one of you bitches is gonna laugh?" I shouted, verging on incoherence.

Not a peep. A deep panic gripped my throat and squeezed my chest. I collapsed onto my hands and knees, breathing heavily as I realized something horrific. I was Macbeth's "poor player", literally strutting and fretting my hour upon the stage. It was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. But it didn't, in the end, at least not to me, signify nothing.