What We Lose By Seeing

As I was watching the State of the Union address last night, I was overcome with disquiet. It wasn’t because the President and I do not share political tastes, as I was aware of that going in. What bothered me was how grossly insincere it seemed: all that clapping and standing and sitting and nodding and clapping and standing. . . it all seemed so self-congratulatory and contrived. It made me sad, actually, because instead of helping me see politics as a discourse in which I, an average American, can participate, it only served to further my opinion that politics is little more than pageantry, or a magic show where falseness and sleight of hand reigns supreme.

The President wasn’t talking to me. He was talking at his audience, putting on a visual spectacle that we’ve come to expect from such gatherings. I can’t help but wonder what it must have been like when the State of the Union address was delivered to a radio audience, who, lacking their eyes, were captivated by the content and (at least perceived) sincerity of the speech. A radio address must have been so much more intimate than what I watched last night. And that intimacy, I think, it was we lose by seeing too much.

I was a little girl when the song, “Video Killed the Radio Star” came out, and I didn’t really understand what that meant. As I mature, I am beginning to understand it much more fully. The fact that we can see is a brilliant thing, and I do not mean in any way to diminish the utility and benefit the sense of sight affords us. But the sense of sight has become so important in so many media that we lose the chance to explore the other senses, and moreover, to make an emotional connection based on the unseen, the abstract, that which is intuited. Before music videos, meaning and depth were plucked from the music: from the lyrics and the vocal inflections of the singer. Radio music was a highly personal thing: a person’s experience of a song was dependent on his own interpretation of it. But music video removed the listener from the center of the song. Music video makes one particular narrative the most important. It takes what used to be subjective and makes it objective. More than merely making the music industry about sex appeal and glamour over talent, “killing the radio star” means squeezing the soul out of music, killing the music for the listener.

Before the abundance of visual media, we used to listen. We used to imagine. We were a culture of storytellers and bards. Very little of that is preserved today. We are guided by eye candy, not substance. We depend primarily on sight not only to inform, but to entertain, even if it means the loss of intimacy.

Before the President’s speech, I caught the tail end of American Idol. Poignantly, I recall Randy Jackson saying something to a singer like, “I’m not so sure about the rest, but if I close my eyes, you’re pretty good, you can sing.” Eyes open, he wouldn’t have liked the singer: he didn’t have “the whole package”, and Randy would have been distracted by his clothing, his general appearance. But without looking, with his eyes closed, he would be able to focus on the only thing that actually matters: the quality, expression, and timbre of the voice.

I wonder what we would gain as a culture if we depended less on visual media and returned to the importance of good storytelling. Much of what I do as a designer I learned from my time as bard and storyteller. It’s very important that my graphic art tells a story; it must be more than attractive, flashy, or catchy. It has to mean something. It has to speak to my viewer intimately and truthfully. I don’t want to trick him with sleight of hand. I don’t want to bedazzle him with pageantry and ostentation. I want to win him over with the timbre of my voice. I don’t want my message to get lost in the seeing.