I don’t always want a rearview mirror

This is so creepy to me in so many ways that I’m not sure where to start: an NYU artist has had a camera surgically implanted in his head.

There’s a reason that the expression “eyes in the back of your head” is almost never on anyone’s “ten reasons I love you” list. In a metaphorical as well as literal sense, standing behind someone is sometimes the only privacy some of us have from each other in the moment. If you are not looking at me now, I don’t necessarily want you to see me later. Imagine how this man’s family and friends and colleagues now have to redefine their own sense of privacy.

And there’s a psychological piece of this for me, too. I’m not a big believer in living in the past. There are plenty of things that are large in my memory. I mine my own experience for writing, and to discover my own personal plot line, and as a way of sharing/showing myself to people whom I want to know me. But I do not live in my own rearview mirror. And I do not understand how this man will make art from his minute-by-minute “behind me” experience of a year. Perhaps that’s just my failure of imagination. But there are some things that I don’t want to see, and I think this might just be one of them.

I would certainly take him off my party list (raises internal eyebrow at the potential horror of “RearCam Guest”…)

Enjoy your day.