MY ATTEMPT AT LIVING WITHOUT MODERN TECHNOLOGY

My name is Iris and I’m a techno-holic. I live in London – a city that thrives on technology more than most places on earth, working, studying and socialising through modern technology.

The day I accidently left my mobile phone at work was the trigger to my experiment. Using my home landline to call my colleague who had my phone, whose number I got off another colleague who happened to be on Skype, we were planning a meeting point for me to pick up the holy medium. Yes, it was as complicated as it sounds. “If you leave your house in seven minutes, you’ll get there at roughly the same time as me,” said the nervous colleague once we’ve decided on a spot we both knew.

This operation was detailed to military level, and that was over a mobile phone. What happens when there are more variables lost in the equation? Emails, Skype, Facebook, Messenger: could you even imagine life without it?

The ironic thing is that this is just how we used to live until not so long ago. How we did it is long forgotten, a mission impossible for some. “Horrible idea,” my 43-year-old sister emailed me, “can’t you write about something else? Are you out of ideas?”. “Impossible,” my 16-year-old niece declared, “you’re not gonna make it.” Even my friend Jo, who adores a good experiment, was willing to put her money on my cracking after two hours of daylight.   

As for my expectations, I gave it 48 hours, and I was being generous. As a foreign journalism student, with family and friends based in Israel, with whom I communicate online on a daily basis, not to mention my consistent correspondence with lecturers and potential interviewees – I am consciously throwing myself into a well of paranoia and anxiety.

I started “the cut-off” on Thursday morning, after replying all emails and letting the world know of my bold experiment (and possible insanity). I equipped myself with my old Sony Discman and picked out one CD to accompany the commute to Birkbeck’s library. Ashamed of my gigantic vintage gadget out in display in front of my fellow passengers, I hid it well in my bag and relished the shaking voices of Simon and Garfunkel as the train shook along. The cumbersome machinery did not leave my bag on the way back: I chose to listen to my carriage mates instead.

Getting home that evening, I had my dinner and was about to retire to my laptop for my studying-before-bed ritual. I swear I could feel a light shiver as I realised I couldn’t. I wanted to call one of my friends in Ealing and meet up for a late chat, so I rescued a few numbers off the prepared-in-advance hardcopy phonebook and literally picked up the receiver and dialed.

Iron Rule #1: People will generally not take late-night calls from unknown numbers. 

And so I found myself staring at non-quality television content for the remainder of the non-productive evening. 

Finally, realising I’m expecting a text from work, informing me of a pick-up time for tomorrow’s shift, I checked my mobile: crack of dawn pick-up. Disappointed in myself, I turned the phone off and started over.

The next morning was a struggle against the closest thing I know to addiction, realising I will not get my habitual dose of news and emails to go with my tea. So I managed to get to work without giving up to temptation, learning about the Japanese tsunami from horrified colleagues.

But unless I was aiming to get fired, my working day as a shift leader had to consist of not screening my manager whenever the mobile phone rang and projected the intimidating words “Omer Boss”. And, of course, the odd Google search for customers’ contact numbers. “You can’t do that,” one of my colleagues commented, justifiably. “What’s the point if you’re using it here?”

I postponed the experiment until after my usual working weekend at Heathrow had finished and started over.

Iron Rule #2: Anything relating to work will not regress 20 years with me.

On Monday I was scheduled to interview my next victim: James Sargent, a young eccentric musician. Needless to say, researching the character without going online equals no research at all. So I shamefully browsed his Myspace and Facebook profiles and gave myself one last serious take at this, starting over. Again.

After a successful technology-free day of studying at home and taking a long relaxing walk at Lammas Park, instead of my usual break of Facebook chatting and online fashion browsing, I headed for my Monday evening class. The interview was scheduled for 20 minutes later.

The commute to the meeting point, where tube delays are never strangers, raised my stress level to interfacing heart attack, as I wasn’t able to notify the young and restless musician of my possible tardiness. How did yesterday’s businessmen do it? According to my journalism teacher, Ross Biddiscombe, starting the interview on the wrong foot by being late is a suicide mission. So I chose life: I gave in and turned my mobile back on.

I know what you’re thinking: I didn’t live up to my goal. In fact, I didn’t live up to half of it. In my defense, my 16-year-old niece was surprisingly discerning: it’s impossible. I could do it, but then I’d be unemployed, isolated and most importantly – unable to practice journalism properly.

Iron Rule #3: Our world is so technologically dependent that we dread more the day our computer crashes than the death toll of a tsunami. 

MASTER OF HIS DOMAIN

This is a one man show. It’s not the best in town, but it would leave you utterly in love with a strange, charming London geek. This is James Sargent, a 21-year-old bass player who’s adopted the trendy Mark Zuckerberg speed-talking style while turning old Game Boys into synthesizers to pay for lunch.

To James, music is noise. It’s anything that makes a sound. Until he takes it apart and changes its sound. “Synthesizers are designed to make music, whereas a Game Boy was never made to play all these notes: It was made to play Super Mario. So I’m tricking it into making sound, getting a completely unique sound out of it,” he explains, while examining the potential in my digital recorder.

How does one engage in such an attempt to fiddle with music, I wondered. James was eight when he started taking stuff apart, just for fun. “I remember it clearly,” he said. “I spilled a drink over my sister’s toy, and it started making these crazy noises. I thought, I’ve gotta know how that works.”

And as James quickly found out, sugary drinks have the same effect as your thumb. “What you do is open it, find the circuit board and just rub your thumb through it, until it makes a contact with some points and changes the way it makes the sound,” to put it simply. “Then you make different interfaces on it. I used to cover them in copper foil to get certain noises. It took me three days the first time I did it, and about a half an hour now.”

From then on, James was addicted, filling his pockets with “old broken toys with five-buttoned keyboards on them”. At 14 he discovered a whole community in America as fascinated about it as he was. But it wasn’t until he met Luke, his band mate in Omega Undigital, that he started making music out of it. “We spent a lot of time listening to Daft Punk, Justice and those French electro genres. We started loving it, brought some toys around, made a drum machine and just jammed out with guitars, basses and these crazy instruments.“

Omega Undigital was James’ first electro band amongst many, until starting his current one, Overlooked, which he describes as “Led Zeppelin meets Foo Fighters, progressive grungy American”. When I asked him about the sudden change in genres, he modestly replied: “As much as I like electro music, I don’t think I’m good enough to achieve the craziness of this electro sound that’s going on in my brain.”

So at 18, inspired by Muse’s “Hysteria”, James bought the cheapest bass guitar eBay had to offer, and taught himself how to play. “My mom made me play the trumpet when I was ten, which taught me how to read music. It’s like a language: how you generate it requires different skills, where actually it’s all the same 12 notes.”

He also sings back-up vocals, plays guitar and “rules” the bongos, apparently. Not bad for a 21-year-old ex-drama student, who discovered his frustration with the education system after an A in physics and an F in arts. “The system isn’t designed for wild, crazy people like me. Getting an A in physics doesn’t mean I know anything about it.” Is this why you ruled out the theoretical way of learning instruments? “Possibly. I may have earned some deep instinctual hatred of learning,” he noted, laughing. “I teach myself. People say I can talk about stuff, and I guess there’s nothing I can’t tell you about chromatic aberration or diffraction, that I just learned off Wikipedia or asking people. If I enjoy something and I don’t understand it, I have to know everything about it, and I don’t stop researching.”

Overlooked was only created three months ago and already rehearsing a 30-minute set for a gig in New Cross Inn on April 6^th. But James seems quite blasé about it all. “I don’t think we have the determination to play Wembley. I always thought living in a mansion and having a harem of beautiful women and a swimming pool on top of a mountain top is just an added bonus,” he said. “It’s all about enjoying the music. If you have fun just getting up there and playing then that’s it, you’ve achieved nirvana.”

But what about the old drama student, who in the beginning of our interview declared his yearning to be recognised and have people applauding him, I asked, the boy who put aside his unique passion of electronic discoveries for his greater passion of performing on stage? “I always preferred being in the chorus line. I’m a nervous individual,” he bashfully admitted.

So, are you still doing it, I asked curiously about his strange hobby. “That’s the reason I bought food this week: selling one for £70,” he replied with a winning smile. “It’s fun. It’s a bit of money. Nothing’s a challenge with electronics, it’s absurdly simple. Slap Pop bass line is a challenge, that’s incredibly hard. The electronic stuff is like bread and butter. It got me into music, and now I’m just making money off it.”

The one man show, ladies and gentlemen: the autodidact electrical artist, still wiping the milk off his lips.

https://www.facebook.com/jameath