The Performance of Experience

It’s a weird thing, this compulsion to show. To prove, even, that something *happened*. Like if I don't post a picture of the sunset, did the sunset even really exist? I remember when that thought felt genuinely shocking, an almost-heretical question to ask myself. Now, it's just… background noise. A constant hum.

The Jacobs Pavilion show last weekend felt different, though. It wasn't just about the music; it was about the ritual surrounding it. Everyone recording snippets of songs, angling for the best lighting for selfies, the desperate scramble for that perfect, fleeting moment to capture and disseminate. I felt a sudden, sharp sense of… displacement. Like I was watching a play where I knew the lines but wasn't sure I understood the plot.

I’ve always been a bit of a collector. Not of things, really. More like… moments. Little fragments of feeling. I used to keep journals filled with descriptions of the light hitting the leaves in autumn, the specific smell of rain on hot pavement, the way my grandmother's hands looked when she was kneading dough. Those journals are heavy now, filled with the echoes of a life that feels both intensely vivid and strangely distant.

Now, those moments are translated into a series of fleeting images, hastily captioned and flung out into the digital void. They’re less about *experiencing* and more about *demonstrating* experience. It’s as if the act of recording somehow diminishes the original, transforming it into a commodity. The feeling itself gets flattened, stripped of its texture and nuance. The thing that made it real in the first place.

My mom, especially, gets frustrated with this. She remembers a time before everyone carried a camera, when memories were held in the mind, shared through storytelling. She calls it being “present.” I used to dismiss it as old-fashioned, a sentimental longing for a past that never really existed. But I can see her point now, particularly when she recounts stories from her childhood, stories I can’t imagine she would have felt the need to document. They simply *were*.

It’s the validation thing, isn't it? That little flicker of dopamine when someone likes a photo or comments on a post. A tiny, momentary surge of feeling seen. But is that connection? Or is it a substitute for it? I think it’s the latter. I’ve noticed that the conversations I truly value—the ones that leave me feeling genuinely understood—don't happen in comment sections. They happen in quiet moments, face to face, without the filter of a screen.

What feels most unsettling, though, is the insidious way this performance has seeped into my own sense of self. I find myself crafting narratives, curating versions of myself that are palatable to an audience I don’t even know. It's exhausting. And it's a betrayal, I think, of the younger version of myself who found joy in the simple act of *being*. The girl who wrote in journals, content to hold those moments privately.

I'm trying to shift the balance. Small things, mostly. Putting my phone away during meals. Actually looking at the trees instead of photographing them. Deliberately choosing to *listen* instead of planning what I'm going to say. It's slow, and it’s uncomfortable, like learning a new language. But there's a quiet kind of relief in it, a sense of reclaiming something lost. And maybe, just maybe, a glimpse of that original feeling. The feeling before the show began.