It takes life to love Life
Plus, presidential debates still suck; and a note from the founding Desert Sage
As Los Lonely Boys struck up the unmistakable guitar riff of their most familiar song, the breakout hit from 20 years ago that is often their concert finale, “Heaven,” the phones at the end of outstretched arms sprouted up faster than the Boomers and Gen-Xers who got up to dance.
Everyone is a videographer now, recording for what posterity I know not. When I am playing photographer for the Las Cruces Bulletin, I notice more and more how many pictures at public events capture people staring down at phones; and I dodge around picket fences of arms holding up phones and iPads to record an event they will now only see through a screen, even though it is happening in front of them.
The cameras on our little devices are getting better, to be sure, but there are dimensions no device will ever pick up even when you are in the VIP section and up close to the musicians. No camera sees life as our eyes do and there is no setting on your phone to pick up how much your loved one is enjoying the evening, the joy of holding hands and touching hips as you sway; of feeling the rhythm section in your rib cage; eating barbacoa prepared at a food truck with a sign that says, “fuck your diet”; picking up on the subtle, unspoken communications of masterful musicians improvising together; the quality of moonlight that shimmers and whispers to you. Your HD video is a poor shadow of your carnal experience.
The dancing space at the front of the stage was limited, and as Los Lonely Boys tied a bow on their Las Cruces show, the dancers and the filmers jockeyed for position and I rooted unabashedly for the dancers to body check the amateur documentarians, the Instagrammarians, the Facebookerati, the TikTokers.
There’s nothing wrong with snapping a picture or two – I did as much myself – or recording a half minute as a memento, but the footage is not the fruit. Tasting life next to your beloved, with friends, or happily in your own company does not actually require certification.
No tourist is under the misapprehension that there are not enough high-definition pictures of the Mona Lisa out there; it is precisely because there are so many that the Mona Lisa is a worthy object of photography. To photograph oneself with the painting is less a means of creating a souvenir than a way of registering one’s sheer thereness, one’s appropriation of that moment.
– Antón Barba-Kay, from A Web of Our Own Making (2023)
Edgar Lee Masters’ advice that “it takes life to love Life” applies to good times as much as the rest; indeed, to everything.
Our presidential debates still suck
It is a concession to marketing to call our presidential candidate forums “debates.” These spectacles were momentous in 2024, I won’t deny. From the bewildered stare that drained Joe Biden’s political support to Kamala Harris’s skillful goading of Donald Trump into unscripted kooky territory that distracted him from exploiting Harris’s vulnerabilities, yes, these forums were consequential.
But they still suck.
They suck, yet they serve their function, which is, again, marketing. These events serve for selling candidates as well as the networks hosting them (that like to remind us constantly that what they are showing us is “historic”).
Glean whatever helpful information you can from them, but that is not the priority. The moderators will not stop the candidates and insist they answer questions. This is, after all, a service to the candidates, not the rest of us.
Yet I see a potential win-win here: A way to satisfy marketing while offering voters something entertaining and edifying, a way to “sportsify” politics without necessarily dumbing them down. Not a perfect solution but an improvement. The biggest problem is that the campaign handlers would never allow it.
The form of competitive debate known as “LD” or “Lincoln-Douglas” presents candidates with a proposition – “Tariffs will hurt America more than China” or “abortion care is health care” (or murder), etc. – which they debate in brief speeches, three-minute cross-examinations, and timed rebuttals, for 30-40 minutes per proposition. A candidate might still pivot in the way we are used to seeing, but the venue would incentivize their opponent to call them out on it and outshine them, and moderators could blow a whistle and discipline the proceeding if it got off-track, if they were empowered to do so.
Ultimately, I think the networks could easily sell this kind of programming; campaigns would figure out how to prep their candidates; and there’s a good chance voters would be better served, too.
One Desert Sage to another
After last week’s introductory letter, I was delighted to hear from the founding Desert Sage, Win Mott, enjoying retirement at age 86, fully supportive of this Substack pilot and now a subscriber.
He wrote: “My personal motto for writing Desert Sage was a quote on the wall of the Hillsboro (N.M.) General Store restroom: ‘Society is like a stew: you need to stir it up occasionally or the scum will rise to the top.’ It was true in 2001 and is more true now.”
Amen.