TRANSCRIPT
I would like to explore the human tendency to make things more complicated, and in so doing, to screw them up. Two examples popped into my head when I thought about making this video, and both relate to making this video.
The first is how I’ve been filming for a couple of weeks in this new environment, outside on the edge of a forest. Because where I’m living inside, it’s complicated. There’s too many people there; it’s noisy. So I came outside. Well, the first time I came outside, I brought the chair that I’m sitting in, I brought the camera sitting on a tripod that it’s on, and I brought the microphone. And that’s all I brought. And in a way, it was very, very simple. I just came out, set it all down in some random spot that seemed good enough, and pressed record.
Well, that was the first time. Now it’s about the 10th or 15th time that I’ve come out here to record outside, and I noticed progressively I’m bringing more and more stuff with me. In part, it’s to quell my own anxiety. I’ve made some mistakes, or I might make some mistakes. Like one time, one of the first things I started bringing is a little bit of chocolate with me because sometimes I notice I’ll record like three videos in one sitting, and sometimes after the first or second one, I’ll get hungry. My brain doesn’t work so well.
Okay, so I brought some chocolate. But then I noticed sometimes a little bit of chocolate is on my tooth. That ruined one whole video that I had to cancel out. So now I found where I’m staying, there was a little handheld mirror. I bring that out, so before I record a video, I look and I check my teeth to make sure there’s no chocolate in them. Well, that’s two things I’m bringing now.
Well, then I realized sometimes after I eat chocolate, also my throat gets, oh, and I’m coughing, and sometimes it doesn’t feel so good. So now I bring a little thing of water so I can drink water. And you can see these are my little toys that I bring along for doing this. Oh, and here’s the chocolate also. Chocolate that was a gift, by the way. This is fancy chocolate, Brooklyn-born chocolate.
Well, then I realized sometimes after two or three videos, I can’t remember exactly what the subject I was going to talk about was. I can’t keep it all in my mind, so I bring my phone. So now I can check, and I have little reminders of what I was going to say and maybe even a little outline. I don’t even use it that much, but I bring it all along. Well, I also, of course, have to bring my glasses because I’m blind without them. So I have a little pile of stuff.
Then I realized sometimes it’s a little windy out here, and maybe it’s going to screw up the microphone. So I bring a little, you can hear it, click, click, a little microphone cover to block the wind. Well, then what happens, how it screws things up is I get out here, and I find myself with so many things, and I get anxious. And sometimes I forget one of the things, and I have to walk all the way back to the house and get it, or I forget to put it on. And then right in the middle of a video, I don’t really even need this microphone cover; it’s not windy enough, but it’s quelling my anxiety. And I realize halfway through I forgot to put it on, or should I have eaten before? Oh my gosh, should I have drunk water before? It’s like so many complicated things.
What I realized the first couple of times I came out here and I had nothing, it all worked fine. But now it’s like this whole thing, and my pockets are full of stuff. Oh, I ran out of battery juice once. Now that was a bad thing, so now I carry also an extra battery, and I charge my first battery before I come. I make sure it’s all charged, but I’m carrying an extra battery. Well, I have one video that I made, click, click, click, you can hear me because I’m moving a lot. You can hear the battery clicking against the side of the chair, a battery I don’t even need. Also, I’m carrying so many things, sometimes the water was a little open, and it spilled all over my phone, and I had to dry my phone off. That was complicated. Also, now I bring paper towels also in case I have to dry something.
Well, anyways, what happens is there’s so many moving parts that I can sometimes literally just forget the importance of the subject matter that I’m talking about. My brain is all over the place, and that can screw things up and make the videos worse. And then I go back in time, and I think of early videos that I recorded. I remember I did a video I think it’s called a critique of psychotherapy. I didn’t even sit in a chair; I just sat on the floor in front of the couch, and I just turned the camera on, and the angle’s all weird, and it probably was too close. I had none of this stuff, didn’t worry about my hair, didn’t worry about anything, just sort of did the talk. And you know what? It turned out fine. And I think a lot of times if I just keep it really, really simple, recording and in life, things work out better.
Then there’s another thing, another example I have, and that is the computer by which I use to edit. I have a Macintosh computer, a little Mac computer. Well, what I’ve noticed is this fancy new Mac I got, I put as much money as I could possibly afford into getting a nice computer that goes faster and all this. I compared it to the computer that I got 11 years ago because for a long time I was using a computer that was, well, very, very old, and it got slow. But what I noticed is the old computer I had, in many ways, which was a lot less expensive, was better.
Now this new computer, it’s so complicated. It’s got so many moving parts and software inside, and everything is so complicated that it doesn’t work right. The search function doesn’t work right, and some of the programs, they crash all the time. And you think, wait a second, it’s such a more, it’s like five, ten times more powerful than my last computer. You’d think it would work better, but often it works worse. And I think it’s probably true of the Apple engineers; they were trying to make it so perfect, so complicated, so many different things that you can do with this computer that there ended up being tons of glitches in it.
Well, now to take a step back to think about humanity, the human life, how complicated modern human life has become, especially in countries like America, Europe, first world countries. Well, what I think about sometimes is people have so many moving parts in their lives. They have such an urge to have so many things, to have every single detail lined up so they can have comfort in every area, so they can push away their anxiety and their stress and their distractions, that they end up having so much stuff that that in itself becomes a problem. Taken to the extreme, it’s hoarding, having so much clutter and knickknacks and stuff and extra plastic jars and cases and tops and every single medicine you could possibly think of and every single thing from the pharmacy.
And I go to the opposite extreme. I think of five years ago when I was living for a fairly short while in rural Kenya, and I had a chance to live with a Maasai family. The Maasai being African herders, cow herders, people who maybe historically, even now to some degree, would literally fight lions with spears. Well, I lived with a family for a short while, and I saw what they had in a little hut that they built themselves with a mud floor, little baby goats living inside the hut with us, the whole family in there, tiny little thing, no stove, no complicated having to go out and get propane and pay for gas and making sure everything was lined up in all the pipes. No, just living with a very simple one, maybe two pots, simple food. And what I thought when I saw these people is some of them got really old; they maybe had a life expectancy that will be greater.
Than mine or people in my family, they ate a very simple, simple diet. I remember talking to some of the older people and having people translate for me. I was saying this old man, who is 85 years old, has lived his entire life eating three things. That was like his entire life—eating three things. What three things? They said cow milk, cow blood, maybe some cow meat thrown in there occasionally if they had to slaughter a cow. But they said also wild herbs from the area, just things that he picked. Those are the three things he ate: milk, blood, and herbs.
And I looked at the guy. He’s 85 or so years old, he’s in great shape, his brain is good, he can still walk 10 miles if he wants. And I think of like, God, the absolute radical complexity of what people are eating in America and all the pills they’re taking, and vitamin supplements, and protein powders, and protein shakes, and 10 different kinds of meat, and 20 different kinds of cheese, and dairy and gluten free, and dairy free, and soy free, and peanut free. And you look at them and it’s like they’re much less healthy.
So I think on a lot of levels, it’s like it’s just a reminder for me, Daniel, just keep it simple. Or as I heard once upon a time in different programs and groups that I’ve been a part of: K-I-S-S, kiss—keep it simple, stupid. It’s like, Daniel, just chill out, keep it nice and simple.