I cast, therefore I am. Sitting in a motel room, luxuriating in a televisual bounty supplied by Netflix, I had successfully completed a minor technological task and, as a result, felt as though I ought to be awarded a Nobel prize. It’s alarming how little it takes to make me feel utterly elated when travelling – every win, no matter how minor – feels like a triumph not only for me but for humanity more generally, whilst every false start and fumbling failure feels like catastrophe. Such is life on the road.
Sitting on the motel bed, it became apparent that my entertainment options were as limited as the tiny container of UHT milk in the minifridge. Unless, of course, I succeeded in streaming something from my mobile phone. This felt, if not like the cutting edge, then close enough to the cutting edge to come within stepping distance of the safety barrier, necessitating my being ushered to take a step backwards by someone in an ill-fitting uniform. Suffice to say, I could now see the cutting edge from a relatively safe position…
I followed the instructions. I blinked a lot. I accessed parts of my vocabulary that for reasons owing mostly to taste rarely see the light of day. I trained my camera over a QR code and opened a link and, before I knew it, there was a circle spinning that indicated, unequivocally, that something was happening. It wasn’t clear precisely what that was, but when it comes to anything remotely technological, something is a lot better than nothing.
And then it happened. The streaming service on my phone appeared, as if by magic, on the television screen in my room. The fact that I yelled ‘abracadabra’ and waved my hands around made it all the more mystical, to say nothing of the fact that I was wearing my work cape at the time.
I’ve never been technologically minded. Rather, I’ve been predisposed to delegation, gladly relying on any one of my brothers and sisters who, without exception, are of a far more practical bent. But in a motel room in regional Victoria, there’s no sibling to delegate to. I’m not sure what the block is, but when faced by the unfamiliar, I’m always worried about what will happen if I can’t figure it out. (The answer, almost always, is not very much; but that doesn’t stop me from worrying).
But my fear of failure makes success both unexpected and all the sweeter. The simple act of casting a streaming service from my phone to a TV screen felt like an achievement on par with reattaching a severed limb using nothing but string and a knitting needle or parallel parking under pressure. For a brief moment, I genuinely felt like the smartest person alive. Or, at any rate, the smartest person in the room. That I was the only person in the room is a minor detail.
More than that, I felt whole. I felt an enormous sense of wellbeing. I felt happy. ‘I cast, therefore I am’, I whispered to myself. Of course, ‘I cast, therefore I am’ is not how the original quotation ran. Rather, it was ‘I think, therefore I am’, which René Descartes apparently said whilst he was reverse parking his Corolla on a lightning trip to Southland. But I feel as though René would approve of my remodelled version of his quote. That’s because René and I have tonnes in common.
René Descartes was a French philosopher, scientist and mathematician who, in addition to spitting out catchy phrases that look great on a coffee cup, is widely credited with having invented the mullet. Business at the front, party at the bank and philosophy hovering somewhere above the ears, René was the envy of his peers and a big inspiration to my high school classmates. It was for this reason that I ‘rocked a René’ mullet between the years 1986 and 1989.
Of course, it’s worth noting that René Descartes died whilst travelling for work. But, to the best of my knowledge, it wasn’t the result of a motel streaming incident as he tried to binge old episodes of ‘Schitts Creek’. Rather, he caught pneumonia after giving lessons at five o’clock in the morning to a disinterested monarch in a draughty castle.
It’s a shame. When René Descartes fell off the perch, he was one of the most revered thinkers in the world. And yet, when he became ill, he decided his best option was to avoid medicine and to bleed himself three times a day. He thought, therefore he was, but not for very much longer as it turns out.
Sitting on my motel bed, I searched for a documentary on the life of Descartes but had to settle for an episode of Dawson’s Creek instead. As I sat there, marvelling at the adventures of Dawson, Pacey and Joey, I began to think that I should be willing to try new things more often and to be a little less afraid at the prospect of failure. ‘I try, therefore I am’ might well be my new motto. I also decided that I might try and grow a mullet in honour of René Descartes. He’d like that.