Breakfast with Audrey^
in its own small way, a place that is awesome and spontaneous. There is energy
there; there are layers of memory; there is a physical engagement; there is much
redundancy, and endless opportunity to clash with the wallpaper. Refrigerators
turned billboards are both common as mud and inspired. They are full of spirit and
contradiction. They do not cater to straight rows, to segregated species, or to
measured inputs. They are not, as Audrey™ well knows, simple.
Third, Audrey™ approaches family affairs as a mechanical task. She is
regularizing family relationships which are, by their very nature, dense, emotionfilled, and inefficient. It is within this matrix of affective and difficult relationships
that we become human — visible and knowable. Audrey™ does not know us, nor
does she assist us in knowing ourselves better. She caters to “busy lives,” and to all
the singular demands that pull us away from a nurturing center. It is hardly surprising
that the refrigerator as a symbol of stored and shared nourishment is found wanting.
In truth, fewer families eat together and fewer family members com e home to eat
at all. In a world where scientists must tell us that children who eat meals at home
receive better nutrition, Audrey™ becomes the tie that binds. She reminds us of
our obligations, she mediates our conversations, and conditions our interactions
and expectations. This is frightening.
And yet, Audrey™ is essentially no different from dozens of innovations we
have embraced over the past few decades to help us micro-manage our lives and
move us through our paces. We have accepted dishwashers, microwaves,
programmable coffee makers and smart cars. We are tethered to answering
machines, pagers, cell phones, and, of course, the Internet. As these global
connections deepen, time and space compress and eventually collapse. We, who
are still organic creatures, no longer permit ourselves “down time;” we override
biological rests and individual silences. We are “on call” 24 hours a day, every day
of the year. Furthermore, everything, in the best of all possible worlds, can be done
at once and everything is equally essential. We are now competitively and
compulsively multi-tasking — driving our cars, while eating our breakfasts, while
combing our hair, while conducting business and checking in with Audrey™. We
also are increasingly fearful that we will be replaced and/or left behind. A fear that,
ironically, is based in considerable truth. As we grow more mechanically discrete
and expertly detached, we also grow more interchangeable and replaceable. We
are streamlining ourselves out of existence.
In addition, any mistakes we make in this brittle, precariously balanced system
are magnified. Like dominoes, one snow storm, one car accident, one illness, one
missed meeting or payment sets off a chain of events that threatens major disruption.
This, as Dilbert tells us, is not efficiency; neither is it freedom. It is being boiled
alive one degree at a time.
Like a mirror, we have shattered into many sharp and jagged selves in an