During a pivotal scene in Jean-Pierre Melville’s masterful film Le Samouraï, Alain Delon prances across a nightclub, doing his best to look inconspicuous. He pulls his lapel tight, gazes downward, and moves fast. We don’t know what’s coming—although it is clear that Delon has an objective and that he wants to avoid witnesses. He crosses the nightclub in just a few moments, and this curious setup compels the audience to lean closer, to concentrate, to anticipate the catalytic event that’s sure to arrive. We are watching stylish, lively Paris, where the tables are packed and the customers are spirited, where there’s a steady flow of drinks and a background hum of conversation. And this scene is the axis on which the entire film revolves, as several people in the nightclub end up as witnesses to Delon’s crime. One man notices his hat, another notices that he’s tall, someone else remembers his gait. The question is whether any truth can be found in the recollections of a shadow that pranced across a busy nightclub. One woman does see him clearly, she looks right into his eyes, yet she affirms to the police that he couldn’t possibly be the culprit—adding a second mystery atop this mystery. But with such a stylish hat and perfectly tailored suit, I think that I might also forgive the occasional murder.
The nightclub does convey trendy, sophisticated 1960s Paris, and accomplishes the goal of enticing the audience, showing fashionable people in fashionable clothes having fashionable conversations while a fashionable band plays on a stage. When I rewatched the film recently, I couldn’t help but notice how, in some ways, this 1960s scene appeared secluded, as an ecosystem of private conversations without any distractions that was completely detached from the rest of the world. Delon walks past a number of tables—and, at each, the conversation is animated, vibrant, with every person in the nightclub appearing to, well, be very much present in the nightclub. For the film’s purposes, it was necessary to have these customers as potential witnesses, observant and alert and creditable, so of course that’s the dynamic in the room. But that isn’t the only distinction when a contemporary viewer watches this scene, especially when a contemporary viewer starts to wonder about how this same environment would appear in contemporary life, in a world where, it must be admitted, the typical person is a lot less present and focused and aware of the moment.
Eyewitness testimony is notoriously horrendous and basically useless when it comes to these situations, although I wonder whether the typical person today—arguably more inattentive, arguably more scattered, inarguably more preoccupied—would even hear the gunshot, let alone discern the jacket color of a man who takes a swift walk across a crowded room. I’m aware of the precarious nature of my position at this point, and I do hear the ice cracking as I walk across this partially frozen lake, while I add myself to the endless list of people who have complained about the times, wanting to stop the noise or to get the kids off the grass or to halt the latest technology. Regardless of whether you think the current environment is better or worse on this point, however, I think the very nature of attention is undeniably different: you’ll struggle to find a nightclub, or a café, or a restaurant, where everybody has both their mind and their body in the same place.
My favorite example of the tendency to complain about the latest technology goes back a few millennium, with a peeved, disgruntled Socrates opposing an Athenian system of education that focused on writing and reading rather than oral teaching because he believed that books would degrade the capacity of children’s memory. Of course a point can be true but not conclusive, and that’s probably the case with this example. I imagine that stressing your mind to recall long passages without the assistance of paper will, in fact, help you to recall those passages better, in a way that’s no different from the truth that practicing mathematics without a calculator will improve your proficiency at calculating figures in your mind. Even though there are lessons in both of those examples, they don’t necessarily mean that you want to toss away your paper and calculator—it simply means that there are tradeoffs. I’m certainly glad that Plato ignored Socrates’ admonition against writing, as that’s the only reason that I’ve been able to read Socratic dialogues, though I almost certainly have less fluidity in recalling and employing those dialogues because I’ve read rather than imprinted them into my mind as lyrical poetry. On balance that’s probably better, but it is absolutely a tradeoff, with some benefits and some costs.
And we’ve stumbled into a similar tradeoff in just the recent past, not really as a decision, but more as an inexorable lurch forward in how we interact with the world that surrounds us, which certainly makes me doubt that anybody would be able to witness Alain Delon racing through a nightclub unless his visage appears first on a tiny screen. It isn’t controversial to claim that life is more fragmented, distracted, even interrupted than it was in the past, and there’s certainly some benefits to the technologies that permit these changes, as they can plausibly bring connection, interaction, the ability to learn and grow and reach others in ways that were simply unimaginable a few years ago. But these utterly monumental changes to how we meet the world do make the nightclub scene in Le Samouraï appear so peculiar, in how a large crowd existed as its own ecosystem, without any contact with the rest of the world, with everybody existing very much in the room where they happen to be and not absorbed by a technology that links them to a different location—a state that seems like the only possibility, until you realize that it is suddenly, after hundreds of thousands of years, no longer true.
A simple question—is something on your mind?—used to be a commonplace phrase. Obviously you’ll still hear those words today, but my memory of just the recent past is that those words once came with a slightly different valence. While talking with a close friend, sharing a coffee or dinner, it was clear when something seemed absent, when one person looked a bit amiss. A feeling, one that’s almost inarticulable, but that comes from spotting that someone is distracted or preoccupied. Now it doesn’t exactly require a luddite to notice that, really, just about everyone is trapped by perpetual distraction and absenteeism in the contemporary world. Like a crowded and disordered kitchen where multiple chefs are barking various orders and making a hodgepodge of dishes, we live amid a barrage of alerts and buzzes and rings, forever taking us from one place and linking us with another place. We’re almost to the point of feeling disquiet in those rare moments when the person across the table occupies the moment in which they happen to be existing.
There’s nothing grand about claiming that concentration is one secret to life. That focusing on the moment in which you’re living is where you’ll experience the most fulfillment, however joyful or painful or banal or ecstatic or humdrum that particular moment feels. If you’ve expended a little effort to examine the contents of your own mind, or been taught to consider this truth, then you might end up believing that part of what’s so exciting about danger or intensity or extreme situations for some people is how the rest of existence collapses from view, so that when someone is skydiving or flying at supersonic speeds or skiing down a mountain or in the final leg of a marathon, nothing exists beyond that omnipresent sensation. And you might eventually end up believing that the extreme nature of the act isn’t what’s important, that the distinction actually comes from your perceptions rather than the act, so that the same overwhelming, relentless feeling of presence can emerge, with enough concentration, from enjoying a cup of coffee or from simply looking into the distance. Here’s a simple test: in the best moments of your life, regardless of what that means for you, you probably weren’t thinking about the other moments of your life.
Although I do want to avoid slipping into meretricious notions about existence, into the silly romantic belief that a more primitive state was better, it is tricky to reconcile the idea that attending to the present moment is fundamental to fulfillment with the fact that we’ve never been more distracted. If you do decide to venture across town with your head up—you strange, otherworldly creature—you might observe, peculiarly, that you’re the only person who is present. Perhaps you’ll happen to see other people, a large group crossing the street, someone sitting on a bench, but you’ll most likely be the only person living in the same place where your feet are standing. Perhaps that’s just fine, perhaps contemporary habits are even better than the alternatives—and I certainly appreciate and use the latest technologies—but it does make me wonder about the consequences. I’m left with the peculiarity of noticing that attention is so essential to life while also noticing that it is so easily tossed away. Annoyingly, in the contemporary world, if you’re Alain Delon, most people won’t even notice your trendy hat and tailored suit, which should itself be a crime. Even more annoyingly, of course, if you do happen to commit a stylish murder in the back of a Parisian nightclub, the witnesses won’t even need to rely on their degraded Socratic memory, as they’ll be primed to record the act.
You’re so good at tackling popular topics in your own idiosyncratic and philosophical manner, I just adore it. Also I was just thinking today how even without my phone, my mind pulls me from experiencing the pure moment, but the difference is that without my phone, I’m aware of my distance from the present, but when I’m on my phone I’d never notice.
Just today I published an essay titled, "When Did It All Get So Complicated," so I'm afraid I'm guilty of pining about the simpler past and complaining about today's distracting technology. But there is an upside. I enjoy street photography, capturing candid moments of life. And because most everyone is staring at their smart phones these days, it's easier than ever to snap photos without being noticed.