Days of the Virus: Ceci ñ'est pas une ami

Like most of us who, in our social isolation/quarantine, are fortunate enough to have the household infrastructure to do so, I have been spending a lot more time on videochat than I normally would.  Much of this is professional:  my psychotherapy practice is now exclusively online, so I'm spending as much as six hours a day looking at the faces of my patients as they manifest on my computer screen.  Talks with family and friends are also limited to phone or video; no in-person connections allowed, let alone hugs, yet, it's still better than nothing.

Patients, friends, and family alike have almost universally emphasized how much better videoconferences are than talking on the phone (one-on-one or in groups).  I agree:  the screen often quickly melts away in the same way it does in a movie theater and one becomes immersed in the interaction with the person.  The mediating machinery disappears, leaving our perception filled with only the parts that represent the Other.

From time to time, though, this suspension of reality is interrupted.  Sometimes it's due to glitchiness in the system; I've frequently been reminded of what "long distance" telephone calls were like when I was small, with the routine salutations of "Can you hear me okay? -- I can hear you fine" or talking about the quality of the connection with the same casualness one might take discussing the weather.  Today, bandwidth and software issues in videochat have replaced copper wire and exchange switch problems from the days when Ma Bell was queen.

But technical challenges are not the only interruptions to the illusion.  I've been increasingly aware of a kind of uncanny-valley-ness to videochat.  I can, without prompt or warning, become profoundly aware that I am looking at a shimmering constellation of pixels carefully arranged to resemble my interlocutor, a two-dimensional simulacrum composed of 1s and 0s, teleported electronically into my monitor, my own personal Truman Show-reality that I am expected (and choose) to interact with.  I can, for moments, feel profoundly self-conscious talking to a picture on a screen that, bizarrely, appears to respond to my responses to it.  I feel hyperaware of the Magritte-ness of the proxy with which (with whom?) I am interacting:  "This is not a friend" my heart tells me and I am afraid, fearful that I've been duped, that what I trusted to be real is a lie, and perhaps a malicious one.

Fortunately, I can also recognize the moments for what they are, paradoxes of perception, the irony of knowing that the image is false but also knowing that it represents something real.  I ground myself in the trust that my friend or patient is real, sitting somewhere in their own bubble of isolation, the camera in their machine capturing and communicating their visage across cables of wonder to the magic mirror into which I gaze; it isn't actually them, but it's enough to reassure me that they are there and hopefully vice versa.  After a few more moments, the illusion reseats itself and I can again interact as if the person were here with me and feel the intimacy we share, attenuated though it might be by the media through which it is exchanged.

I am grateful to live with others, sharing our isolation.  Walking away from my computer and being able to kiss my wife, to hold my mother's hand, reassure me that they are real, that this is real, that I am real.  It seems that it would be terribly easy to lose grasp of reality if I had no confidants but pixels.