Legacy
In the beginning, it was often wrong. Thinking that the fridge was significant, that we would want to remember how the asphalt roadway distorted in the sun. It would focus on a random face in the crowd, the cashier who rang up our medications, and ignore our husbands, children, ailing grandparents.
Don’t get me wrong — it was still amazing. When the concept videos for Lenses came out, they felt like a bluff. Having a movie of your own life, taken from your perspective? By a contact lens? I can still feel the way my eyes rolled back then, blissfully unaware that they would soon be well-acquainted with this technology.
It only took five years from when Lenses were first announced to when they infiltrated every storefront. Winking models, the tell-tale iridescent sheen of their irises, seducing you with the idea of your own documentary. In the past, only remarkable people had documentaries made about them; now, you can have the charisma of a pothole and still be able to reflect on your stale, inconsequential life. A videographer, director, and editor all in one concave piece of silicon.
As I stir my morning coffee, I hear a small, metallic ringing. Distinct, but not unpleasant. An alert that what I’m witnessing is about to be captured.
I flick my wrist absentmindedly, opting out of it this time, and accidentally sending a drop of decaf onto my white blouse. Sighing, I watch as the liquid spreads, reaching its filigree hands into each fiber.
Here’s your shot, I think to my Lens. It can’t hear me. We only communicate in sounds and hand gestures, a frail attempt at maintaining privacy. One that’s about as successful as the gaps between American bathroom stalls.
I leave the rest of the cup behind. A small whirlpool is still trapped inside.
My hands are dry, I realize as I pass the stained shirt to the dry-cleaning attendant. He’s ringing me up and I’m lost in the cracks of my own skin, how it looks like my hand was made by a failing ceramics student. No glaze and all texture.
An outstretched palm gently interrupts me, my eyes jumping back up to an oddly familiar face. “Sorry”, as I fumble for my credit card, a relic of the past that’s going to be banned next month anyway. The man grunts a bit, perhaps exhausted from the banality of this overcast Tuesday, from this beige storefront that has become his documentary’s main set.
While he’s distracted, I study his features, trying to determine which of them is causing my déjà vu. Nothing comes to mind except a sudden ring. Jolted and slightly embarrassed, I flick my hand from behind my purse, dismissing the alarm. He glances up, unaware that my Lens almost recorded him.
Remembering this makes me blush on my way home. Even though I don’t consciously choose what videos are taken, the software does pick up when I’m more visually engaged than usual. The first prototypes only took into account the surroundings themselves, objectively measuring the aesthetic value of a shot, from lighting to contrast to composition. The result was a lot of dappled sunlight on counters, water swirling down drains, even the occasional unkempt sheen of fingerprints on glass.
Realizing how impersonal each “movie” was becoming, they started requesting access to our biometric sensors. Any change to our heart rate, pupil dilation, or even facial expression could trigger a video. (After the accidental recording of too many private moments, they incorporated the notification ring and opt-out hand motion.)
And it worked, for a while. People were happy with how passionate their lives appeared, since only the stimulating events were being captured. No more playful sunlight. The peaceful moments, the mundane majority of our lives was thereafter deemed obsolete.
Having suffered with generalized anxiety for most of my life, I was offered to test a beta version of the Lens’ Serenity™ option. A softer view of the world, they told me. Less adrenaline. Quieter. Now that I think of it, this morning was the first time in years that my Lens cast a coffee cup as the lead role.
My eyes close, the last month playing in the darkness like a sleepy matinee.
Maybe we aren’t meant to remember everything. Maybe casting our lives in digital resin has given us the false impression that we too, are preserved.
Our legacies aren’t a new obsession. We’ve written them into fireside stories, into oil on canvas, and now into a server in some impoverished country we’ve never visited and never will. Millions of Lenses have been sold on this false promise of a legacy.
I keep a portrait of my great-grandmother on my desk. She lives in my periphery, her neighbors my pens and one unlit lavender candle. When I do look directly at her, I don’t have any emotions. I don’t recognize my eyes in hers, though that’s the reason I was given the portrait at all.
Is this legacy? Your great-grandchild reserving desktop real estate for a picture of you in your twenties? We look at each other and there is only apathy.
Meanwhile, I see my late father in everything. In the cornflower blue of dishwasher tablets, in the eyes of people that will never meet him, in the eyes of those that have and can’t forget. I see his absence in the months after his funeral, my Lens and I both limited to my bed. Those are the scenes that we don’t show in the final cut. We edit them out of the compilations that we post online, treating our most poignant moments like kitchen scraps — asparagus ends, bitter and unpalatable. Trash.
Maybe one day, my granddaughter’s son will watch my movie while he drinks his morning coffee. Maybe he keeps it on in the background at his job, my life his white noise. Maybe he has his favorite episodes, moments he returns to for solace. Which will those be? My occasional self-portrait in a window reflection? His mother as a child? My father as a voicemail on repeat?
If this is the closest that I have to a legacy, I will be happy.
