I never really trusted the idea of Caller Identification.
Telecommunication is founded on the concept that a spatial distance
maintains an anonymity between the sender and addressee, and Caller Identification was serving to shatter that anonymity with which I had grown so comfortable. The unfamiliar caller had become commonplace, familiar. Now, Caller Identification was exposing the caller. No longer did I feel safely hidden while placing a call. I was now responsible for my utterances over the telephone line by virtue of the fact that it would be entirely possible that the addressee of my message had immediate access to my name and telephone number. The dynamics of the phone call had shifted completely: the caller had moved from a position of voyeur to that of exhibitionist.
Of course, one can only lament the loss of the prank call for so
long. I realized that the only way to regain my lost power was through a technological advance that would place me on a level playing field with those to whom I had felt a lack. I purchased a Caller Identification box as well as a voice-mail messaging system. I would now have command of the very knowledge that had previously left me vulnerable. Once again I was the voyeur, with the caller being exposed before I even picked up the phone; if I even exercised the choice to answer the call. I was empowered once again, this time on the receiving end of a telephone line.
Once you posses a Caller Identification box, it is difficult to
fathom what life must have been like without it. I no longer need to pick up calls that are obviously intended for my roommate. I can avoid untimely or uncomfortable conversation by choosing not to pick-up. If a caller chooses not to leave a voice-mail message, I still know that he or she called. Caller Identification also gives me extra precious moments to mentally prepare for a conversation by giving me the caller's name that I can usually associate with a particular topic, attitude, or at least an appropriate dialect.
To answer the phone without first consulting the Caller
Identification box no longer seemed to be a viable option. The
information provided by the box was simply too valuable to do without. The Caller Identification box is analogous to a speaker's note cards: without an outline of the subject matter, the speaker can lose his train of thought, becoming speechless or perhaps unaware of a structure that would focus his speech into a coherent whole. His speech would be characterized by a chain of seemingly unrelated signifiers, or boundless digressions that never seem to support an encompassing idea....
When I was in elementary school, I would frequently wake at night
screaming from a horrible nightmare. In this recurring dream, I would go to school in the dead of a Minnesota winter. Like many children my age I would be covered in a layer of protective winter clothing: a cotton ski mask over my face, gloves, boots, and a one-piece "snowmobile suit" that was very fashionable in rural Minnesota at the time. But once I got to my classroom and began to shed my outer layer, I began to realize with horror that I was wearing nothing beneath my outer shell. I had neglected to dress myself beyond the outer protective layer.
There I was in my classroom unprepared, naked and exposed before
my peers and my teacher. I stood paralyzed, not only was I unable to
move, but unable to speak. The usual process of symbolizing an experience into a word was not functioning. I could not distance myself from this horrible predicament by simply explaining to the others that I had forgotten to get dressed. The immediacy of the others' collective gaze petrified me. The usual staging of a self-presentation was stripped from me. The experience was somehow too real; they were too close. I was stripped and exposed. I had no words. I tried to scream but there was no air to vibrate my vocal cords. Finally panic and terror erupted into a scream as air rushed from my lungs. I was awake in my bedroom. My parents would rush in to see what was the matter.
Today I have a different dream that is very similar. I dream that I am awakened from peaceful sleep by the sound of the telephone ringing. The cordless phone is on my night stand and I simply answer the call without getting out of bed to check the Caller Identification. I hear a man's voice. He is speaking coherently, but I can never make out his words. Like a student who has fallen helplessly behind in a class, I can never quite catch up to what this man is saying. I do not know who he is or what he wants. He is not a foreigner, the structure of his words and sentences are familiar. But, the words just echo through my head without ever attaching to a referent; they have no meaning.
Then the man pauses. He is waiting for input, perhaps a reply. I
feel the anxiety building in my stomach as I slowly open my mouth to form a word. But I have nothing to say. Once again, I have no words. I am exposed, completely unprepared for a social interaction with this man. The moment of silence between us has grown unbearable. I want him to speak again just to end the silence, but he does not. The pressure is on me. His silence is an expectation on me to play my part. I can feel his presence on the other side of the line, silently examining me: a silent gaze via the telephone line penetrating my body and my mind. My lack of words destroys my privacy, I can not defend myself. I am unable to verbally present an appropriate image of myself for this man. Instead, he looks directly into me. I lay in bed holding the phone, my mouth open to form that first word that never comes to me, experiencing the terrifying
silence of inadequacy. The ringing of a telephone saves me.
This time I really do wake to the sound of the cordless on my bedstand. I pick up the phone to answer. But I am still haunted by the sound of the unidentified man's voice and the ensuing silence. I
contemplate just staying in bed, letting the call go and checking my
Caller Identification later. But I hate to miss a call, and nothing
disturbs me more than finding an "anonymous" call on the ID box without ever finding out who called. I realize that I now have precious few moments before my voice mail will pick up the call. If I want to answer, I must act now. I jump out of bed and run to the Caller Identification box. The box informs me that the caller is Patrick Tillmann, an acquaintance from my college days currently residing in Chicago. I feel comfortable answering this call. Tillmann is a familiar voice and I find myself frequently entertained by his conversation. A call from Tillmann this early in the morning surely signifies a message of great amusement or importance.
However, I am too late. My greeting (I always greet callers by a
proper name rather than with a hello, just to let them know that I know in advance who is calling) is answered with only a dial tone. My voice-mail messaging system has picked up the call. As I head back to bed, I dial my secret code that will enable me to listen to Tillmann's message. My expectations are high, as Tillmann would never call this early unless it was something good. The connection is poor. Tillmann's voice sounds distant and I must go through an internal process of filtering out accompanying static and other similar noises to hear him. Beyond these inconveniences however, his message is quite clear: "I ingested my piss."
I am not sure how I am to take this message. What is the meaning
of sampling one's own urine? Has Tillmann been reduced to drinking his own piss after perhaps feeling that all venues for a thrill in his life have been exhausted? Granted post-collegiate life has a tendency to become rather monotonous, but this is perhaps an all-time low for my friend Patrick Tillmann. However, perhaps I am not giving Mr. Tillmann enough credit. Surely there could be something more to the experience of urine sampling than I am currently suggesting.
I think of the word urine. I know that the word dates back to
Middle English, at which time it was borrowed from the French. Back then, the French were actually capable of successful military operations, conquering what would later be known as England. It is only natural, then, that some of the culture and language of the French would be assimilated by the conquered English. Something more striking is revealed, however, when I probe my mind for the words from which the French derived the concept of urine. Naturally, for the origin of a word of a romantic language we look to Latin. The Latin word for urine is urina, similar to the Latin urinari, which suggests a dive or plunge under water. It is, of course, typical to find such a similarity among languages of the same family. However, the Greek word, not part of the Latin derived romantic languages, for urine is ourein. The similarities are striking. I have never researched the relationship between the Latin
urina and the Greek ourein. It is quite possible that the Romans simply borrowed the term from the Greeks. What is clear, however, is that many cultures throughout a very long period of time have been using very similar words for urine.
As I lay in bed the cognates float around in my head in no particular order: urina, urine, and ourein. Words dealing with bodily functions, nature, and other subject matter that have a constant presence and importance across cultures have a tendency to remain relatively
constant over time. Tillmann may be on to something here, perhaps he is drawing my attention to a matter of great significance. I do not really know how urinari, taking a plunge under water, is related to the yellowish liquid that the body discharges as waste. Perhaps though, as we move further back in time, there is less of a distinction between matters of nature, such as a body of water; and matters of the human body, such as the water-like substance flowing from the genitals. I am reminded that in the not so distant past, communities would obtain their drinking water from the very source that was used for urination.
Here I have stumbled upon the dichotomy that humankind has been
struggling with since the birth of verbal communication: Nature vs.
Culture. How do we reconcile the fact that we piss and shit (we are
animals), yet we posses intelligence and are ashamed of these very primal functions. This nature/culture dichotomy has been played out in narrative since at least the Greeks. I am speaking here, of course, of Oedipus. This narrative has been picked up by thinkers throughout history, most recently by the psychoanalysts. The most basic distinction between humans and animals, the foundation for culture, is the incest taboo. The psychoanalysts would have us believe that a child must go through his own personal Oedipus narrative in order to get past the primal drive of parental consummation in order to become a member of culture or society. This sexual drive is suppressed by the father-figure who introduces the word "no."
In this way, certain laws are internalized that allow us to break away from the life of animals in nature and enter the world of culture. And this process of Oedipalization, is extended to exclude from our lives the processes of nature that do not seem worthy of our position in culture. This is how we would distinguish between more advanced or civilized cultures and a more primitive culture. In an advanced culture, we can control our sexual drive; we do not sleep with our mothers. By extension, other bodily functions are controlled as well. Urine is seen as an abject reminder of our primal bodily functions. We dispose of our urine and keep quiet about it. We no longer drink directly from the same water source in which we piss. And we certainly do not purposely and directly consume our own urine!
Perhaps this is the very point that Tillmann is attempting to make.
Perhaps we have gone too far in the name of culture and have lost track of who we are. Tillmann -- feeling lost in our high-tech, information over-loaded, post-industrial, post-modern culture -- has found a way of sampling a taste of where we came from. He has made an attempt to get back to our roots in nature. He is not suggesting that we abandon the lessons of Oedipus and ask our parents or siblings out for a date. He is simply suggesting that in this world that is increasingly becoming our own construction, let us not forget the side of us that is nature. The human body is the last refuge of a production of nature in our lives, and one product is our tangy, sweet urine. Perhaps by sampling our own urine we can be reminded that a proper balance is necessary for happiness. With this reminder, we can work to incorporate nature in the workings of technology and our high-tech culture.
This contemplation brings peace to my mind as I lay in bed. Tillmann has definitely embarked upon a noble cause. I pick up the phone and dial his number. He must have stepped out, because I get his answering machine. At this moment I do not fear the telephone. I do not fear social interaction at all. Though I have not sampled my own urine, this contemplation of the idea has made me realize that even if I am exposed in a moment of communication breakdown and another man sees me at this moment, what he will see is simply man stripped of his own constructions. His examining gaze will not dominate me. In my silence, he will recognize himself, his primal roots. At this moment when the construction of verbal communication breaks down, we can all join hands and celebrate in silent unity our bond in nature.
I hear the beep of Tillmann's answering machine. Never before have the words come so easily: "I applaud your move to sample urine!"
