Laughter Lines
Tex Wise
I closed the tab on my computer, and all the noise suddenly deafened like a strike of lighting. There’s apprehension about reopening the tab, but I certainly couldn’t watch that video right now. I relaxed my face and unfurled the corners of my mouth as I sank back into my chair. The cursor waits attentively over the YouTube icon. Was it already resting there, or had I unconsciously moved it there? I opened it, and the bright display of video thumbnails littered the desktop screen, faces old and new stared back at me. A palate cleanser, that's what I needed—something to put me at ease after what I watched. I scroll for a while, unable to find anything that stands out among the collage of images. Choice paralysis? Or simply delaying where I knew I would go—my hand hovered over the mouse, feeling acutely how it fitted around the small plastic device.
I clicked on my ‘Liked videos’. My own digital growth rings, cultivating my knowledge from where I was to where I am now. I scrolled down. Down. Down. Down. I am at the beginning of the playlist. I’m 12 again. Thinking about what I needed to eat for dinner and how much money I have for the week ahead are distant nightmares. I clicked on a ‘Try Not To Laugh Challenge’ video, circa 2016. When Trump was elected, I was asking where to buy a skateboard, being told I should join a theatre troupe. The video flies by. Back when ads weren’t incentivised and content was delivered in fast, short bursts. It was the best of times. The video ends, and there's another one exactly like it. Then another. And another and then—no, something else comes on.
It’s a similar video. People are shown in their ‘face cams’, crying with laughter as they react to the game they are playing. They laugh and I do too, in a hair-trigger reaction.
A laugh begins in me, but then I look at their faces. Suddenly Time catches up, and the swift backhand of clarity str, leaving me reeling and nauseated again. Who must I have been to have enjoyed these insufferable idiots? Those faces, once familiar and unknowable, are now devoid of joy—discovering who they actually were, I couldn’t go back to them. And I am back here again, disgusted at my past self for falling at the feet of celebrities and performers who were, in reality, awful. Unforgivable. All humanity is gone from them, said the nameless voices echoing from the glistening void. They lied to us with their candid attitude and broad smiles. I cringe again, feeling my face contort and flare with embarrassment. I closed the tab, but I didn't feel relieved. It didn’t change anything.
I click out of the video and put on another one. It started midway, picking up from where I had left it years ago. The video resumes with a man trying to hold in laughter as he watches a short compilation of a car salesman dressed as a wrestling star, but only his disconnected breaths can be heard. The sheer absurdity of it sends me into a fit of hysteria. A staple of those bygone days—droves of YouTube playlists curated to ‘guarantee you piss with laughter’. I try to stifle my laughter, as per the rules, but my giggling alone sends me to the floor. Each intake is perfectly cut out of context, devoid of any words or meanings as he flails between each breath. And then it’s done. I’ve had enough of the internet today—enough of the ‘computer’ internet. I fall into bed and pick up my phone. Faces rush by like a stream of water, and I control the flow.
I miss Vine. Those short videos that lack any context but more than made up for it in amusement. Back then, everything was funny and abstracted. You didn’t need to know any better.
***
My friend goes to exclaim ‘penis’, but a sudden wave of nausea causes her to falter. I stop to go and support her, looking for somewhere to rest in the ‘National Gallery of Victoria’—or the NGV as everyone commonly refers to it. I quietly trail her through the space, silently mouthing the word ‘penis’ as we tread the last stretch of the gallery. My friend beside me exclaims ‘penis’ through gritted teeth and exits a room with home appliances attached to the wall. Architecture surrounds the walls as well as pictures of former RMIT students dancing on campus. I laugh at the Time that’s passed, mistaking these people for others who I’ve seen.
‘Let’s find someplace to sit down.’
Passing into the next area, a video of two horses trying to mate. Beside it is a smaller, darker room than the one we are in. Entering the room, we lower onto the bench before us. We sit down and catch a breath, sharing critiques on the pieces that we’ve seen thus far—but then a video projects onto the wall. The face presented in front of us isn’t immediately familiar; his mouth contorting as he takes in breath but never says anything. Images rush by of him in exotic environments beside animals. As I lean in closer, I am suddenly hit with a wave of realisation, this handsome face quickly growing in age and steadily becoming more discernible. The ageing face of the English broadcaster Sir David Attenborough portrays little to no emotion as the features alternate. Each face is cut short right before saying something, switching abruptly to the next clip of him. No discernible words leave his mouth, only his gesticulations are given prominence in the snippets stitched together.
I laugh dryly as I watch the waning man, his breath noticeably amplified as I examine the elderly historian. And then, just as quickly as it started, it ends. I turn to my friend, looking groggily at the screen.
‘Do you know who that was?’
‘Hmm–what?’
‘Oh, nothing. Have you got some water on you?’
‘Oh, yeah. Penis.’
I left the gallery after seeing those pieces, relieved and underwhelmed that it was over so soon. I examine my scrappy notes on my way through the city, walking back to the St Vincent tram stop, displeased with my lack of sophistication.
As the carriage approaches, I walk in and take a seat at the front of the tram. It moves silently forward, halting momentarily to open its doors to no-one. I stare off into the middle distance—the world around me becomes an afterthought. I look beside me at my phone, catching the gaze of someone else. Sitting two seats across from me was a familiar stranger. Familiar due to having gone to the same primary school as me, a Time so far behind me that it feels painful to summon. Strange, in that it has been 12 years since we last spoke.
I get off the tram, shrinking at the idea of being perceived, and known.
***
Since that day, I’ve gone back to the darkroom to be face-to-face with Sir Attenborough. The walls of the space are dark and bare and when you sit on the bench, the space itself seems to blend into one formless space. All the surfaces are connected when you’re seated—only the light from the video reaches you. When you’re there, the outside world is just as distant as it is unknowable. It’s just you, the bench and Attenborough. You're with him as he becomes more grey-haired and less hearty. There are more breaths in his senior years and more instances of him being more measured and expressive. When I am there in the room, I am usually alone and I begin to laugh at the video.
I laugh the more I think about the piece, some strange humour resounding in me. I’d imagine that most people would look at this and feel some remorse and resignation, perhaps anger at the slow creep of Time. But not me. I can’t exactly place why I feel this, though I have a theory, one I am not too proud of.
The word ‘schadenfreude’ is a marvellous invention; a sensation I am certain most people feel, however ashamed they are to admit it. I feel something akin to that when I look at the piece, a realisation of my own mortality in that moment. When I see the ages of this man pass by me with as much ease as placing a coffee order, I am caught in the realisation of my own mortality. My own Time spent on this earth. And I think it’s funny, I find the rapid passage of David Attenborough’s lifetime to be humorous, but not amusing. I see the change in his appearance and feel somehow more grounded in my own body at that moment, deriving not enjoyment from the piece, but some meditation on my own transience.
Often, more often than I’d like to admit, I get the sense that I don’t have control over my life. Depersonalisation and Derealisation are pretty common feelings among people my age, or so I tell myself. Sometimes, when I wake up, I feel this persisting ‘disembodied’ feeling as I go about my morning, the sense that I am not really myself. In any other case, I am certain I’d wince at the prospect of ageing and my own agency rapidly evaporating as Time rushes by. But in the presence of the piece, I am struck with a peculiar gratitude for the moments I have and how I’ve spent them. Not all actions I’ve taken were honourable, but it brought me here. Every scrape on my knees has reinforced my resistance to falling—the more you fall, the better you learn to bounce. For that alone I respect Time. I delight in the gratitude of my own youth in the presence of Attenborough’s advancing age.
***
I have to ask myself, what was Layla thinking when she made this? Her page on the NGV website highlights a desire to explore ‘transformation and mortality within contemporary media culture. Layla clearly made this nearly 6-minute video from a point of wanting to highlight the form of nature documentaries and post-colonialism. Layla video tells a story about the longstanding legacy of Sir Attenborough and his extensive efforts at discussing the natural world. But what I saw from this piece could not be further from the desired aim. I came to this video from the perspective of seeing it as commentary on internet ‘meme’ culture. More so, I saw this as an example of how people communicate larger ideas using contemporary media, similar to YouTube and Vine. My own gravitation to the work initially was how it reminded me of old types of YouTube content, like ‘Try Not to Laugh Challenges’, something the early days of the internet had in droves. I found the video amusing because of how it reminded of YouTube trends that were popular in the past.
I look back at those videos—some of them from creators that make my stomach turn when I think of them, and some that make me feel wistful—aware of the person I was then, and who I am now. I miss the person I was, without any doubt, but the idea of discovering who I might become is too compelling to linger in the past.
***
I remember talking to my Year 12 English teacher after she waxed on insistently about her old school crushes while trying to tell the class how to properly cite articles arguing against Freud. She said something along the lines of, ‘sorry guys, I’ve gotten myself turned around thinking about these old geezers.’ After the class, I went up to her to indulge her weird tangent before mentioning my own admiration for a much younger and handsome David Attenborough. I actually remember how her face scrunched up, possibly not seeing the effort to try and connect to her own weird tangent. I walked out of the classroom, going about my day with a strange unease in the failure to connect with what I thought was funny and casual conversation. Looking back, hindsight being a useful teacher, I am more at ease with who I was. I might cringe at who I was, but those moments inform me who I am. I am not entirely unknown to myself.
“I am cringe, but I am free.”