See For Yourself

I am looking for a word to describe an experience I have from time to time. Here’s the experience: I’ll find myself happily tuned in to the latest YETI Presents film, watching some hero of the outdoors do his or her thing. Say it’s JT Van Zandt fishing the Texas coast for example. The hour is daybreak and we, the audience, are in the boat with JT looking for the telltale ripple of tailing redfish. It’s one of the great sights in fishing, these briny behemoths nosing through the mud in shallow water such that their tales break the surface behind them like a flag blowing in the breeze. The honest redfish can be snuck up on and can’t resist a well-plunked clouser minnow. Of course, the film obliges us a perfect cast and the reel zips merrily. The fish is caught. Cutaway to a rosette spoonbill and a slow motion shot of water brimming off the prow of JT’s handmade boat. Then the video fades to black, the spell breaks and instead of the contented smile I wore while watching, a hollow sort of sadness grows in my gut. 

Why is that?

Well, certainly it’s partly because I’m not fishing for reds today. Instead, I’m delaying dish duty and bed time. But that’s not all of it. 

What YETI and so many others have figured out is how to make films that totally immerse the viewer. The visuals are stunning, but also handheld. You can see the boat rock. The story is aspirational yet approachable. It’s usually made to look as if the entire adventure happens in a day. The sounds effects are beyond real life, bordering on ASMR. All this combines to create a heck of a viewing experience. I can almost taste the salty Gulf, so why am I sad?

Here’s where the word I’m seeking comes into focus: Voyeurism. I do a Webster’s word search. What does that actually define as?

Voyeurism (n) the practice of obtaining sexual gratification from observing others

Ahh, that’s why they call it fish porn! Because watching it takes your brain on a trip. It taps the audience’s pleasure centers so effectively as to remove the perception of watching. For a moment I am not at home, but instead there on the boat with JT. This is clicking into place now, explaining the hollow sadness I feel watching the YETI credits. It mirrors the experience of watching porn. Escape without effort followed by emptiness.

If you’ll allow me, let’s loosen the definition of voyeurism for a second. Beyond strictly sexual pleasure, let’s pretend voyeurism includes any form of second-hand escapism; Anything I get pleasure from watching someone else do through a screen. 

I watch Nancy Birtwhistle bake. I watch Liverpool play soccer. I watch Boygenius and Zach Bryan put out low-budget music videos. I watch Taylor Collins seed his fields. I watch Monty Don garden. I watch JT Van Zandt fish. 

None of these things are inherently wrong. One of the most useful tools of social media is that I can learn how to stake beans from a master gardener like Monty Don. But too often the watching leads to more watching instead of leading to my actually doing the thing. Monty is the clouser minnow. I bite like the honest redfish. But inside the plump minnow lies the hook.

What I’m getting to is that voyeurism is a simulation. My brain can be tricked into believing that by watching more YETI films I am experiencing more of the outdoors. And granted, nature films can take my brain under the sea or into a volcano, but I worry that I conflate watching with actually doing.

A YouTuber I love (oh the irony) is Beau Miles from Australia. Beau is a wry optimist, reader of the classics, and just generally a guy I’d like to grab a beer with. He wrote his doctorate on Sea Kayaking and the Phenomenology of Lived Experience. What that higher-ed lingo basically translates to is this: How do we make meaning from paddling a kayak across the ocean for a few days? Or more generally: What does it mean when we do stuff?

Now, I didn’t read Beau’s thesis. But what I gather from the abstract is this: That beyond lessons learned and memories made, the act of actually existing in a kayak in the ocean and paddling for days on end writes its meaning indelibly into our bodies and brains, changing us physically and psychologically. And to take it even farther, the act of truthfully experiencing the real world cannot help but align ourselves more fully with the character of that world. 

When I watch JT fish online, my brain may be transported but my body is not. This dissection leaves me aching. Speaking of aching, try doing a real thing. Try going fishing. Try towing a boat to the water, dealing with parking and docking, reading tides and weather, tying a variety of knots, searching for fish, being hot, spooking a fish, cussing, taking a leak off a boat, trying again, casting better, actually catching one, letting it go, driving home listening to Robert Earl sing about Corpus Cristi Bay and feeling kin to it. 

The real world demands payment to participate in it’s glory; a payment unfelt by the voyeuristic audience member. That payment consists of the sweat of effort, the accumulation of experience, and the good humor to put up with a curveball or two. 

**

Kate and I live on what used to be a little county road. Today, people drive pretty fast on it so I decided to put up a wire fence to protect my little kids from traffic. My neighbor, who is 85 years-old and grew up farming, offered to help me seeing as he owns a tractor with an auger and I needed to dig holes to set my fence post in. I gladly agreed thinking: This is going to be a breeze! Three sweaty days later, blistered and caked in clay mud, we are finally one hole away from mission accomplished. We’ve hit another rock with the auger, which means I need to use a steel bar to bash the rock into pieces by hand. Before we do that, we decide to take a water break in the shade. I’m aching. I’m content. I’m also a bit worried for my neighbors health in the heat. I apologize to him again. Sorry this is taking so long Johnnie. I had no idea how much time this would take. He takes a sip of his water and says simply, Don’t you worry one bit about it. Time is all I’ve got. I knew what I was getting into. This is just how things go.

**

The enclosed sticker in my reminder to participate in life first hand, where possible to see things for myself, and to know and align myself with the real world. 

Miss you harry