Artsy Techie » Intimacy

I don't care where you are right now

Olivier Thereaux — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 11:43:46 +0000

I don’t care where you are right now. I really don’t.

I don’t want to stalk you, either, so knowing that you keep checking into a handful of places is not on my agenda. A few marketers may be very happy to know that, but do you really want them to know that you keep going to that lovely italian restaurant every tuesday before going to the movies?

I don’t care where you are right now, because I’m not there, and if I were, I’d want a smarter, less loud and noisy and crass way for the two of us to have a chance encounter. I don’t want to witness you flashing your underwear – repeatedly; but I do like the idea of a serendipity engine.

I want foursquare to be bought out and become semi-abandonware, and I want dopplr to thrive. Not the other way around.

Where the Children Are

Olivier Thereaux — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 23:00:26 +0000

A movie review I was recently reading stated, in a tongue-in-cheek manner, that Action movies are basically children’s movies for adults. That is to say that they are expressly designed to hit very specific pleasure centers to generate a predictable and uniform reaction..

Re-reading this review after watching Where the Wild Things Are makes me appreciate it even more. WtWTA is a honest and beautiful rendition of the joys and pain of being a child growing up. This is the movie children would make if they had a few million dollars and the talent of a Spike Jonze – instead of being usually limited to horrible crayon drawings.

Whether it is suitable for children is besides the point, the good question is whether adults can deal with it. Whether, as an adult, one is ready to open up to deep, old, primal pleasures and hurts. Wanting to be loved, wanting to be the center of attention, hating the awkward silence after a good joke, realising you are the bad guy in the story…

Life as an adult, too, is “all fun and games until someone gets hurt” – but we too often forget.

The travelers’ dream of the Big House

Olivier Thereaux — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 05:48:25 +0000

I learned a second language at age 9. A third and fourth at 13. I was not particularly fortunate, or living in a very international family or region. This was pretty much what every little European went through at the time.

Back then, we had pen-pals from England. They had a different language, a different upbringing, a different culture. They had a meal called “tea” and swear words that our America-influenced TV didn’t even know of. They were but a hundred kilometres away, and yet so alien to our adolescent eyes.

There was no clear reason why we were made into such culturally permeable youth. In the 1980s and early 1990s, “Globalisation” wasn’t even a fashionable term yet, and the concept of a “grand tour” of Europe as a way to perfect the education of the well-off was a thing of the past under our longitudes. Post world-wars European nations just happened to try to stick together for a change, and teaching kids to talk with their neighbours carried some hope of a lasting peace. To our parents’ generation, it just seemed like a good idea at the time, just like speaking mostly Spanish to my (French) best friend in high schools just sounded fun.

Fast forward a decade or two, and I’d ended up living on three distinct continents. And with a generation scattered around the globe, with friends from Oslo to Buenos Aires, from New York to Shanghai, I share a recurring dream. Not a month passes without hearing about that dream, or having it myself: living in one big house with all my friends, my family, all my loved ones.

There is no such place, and yet I have seen it, again and again. In dreams.