Falling Man to Falling Man

 From our earlier age, turned in memory and anecdote as might wood, as might metal, our age before instant, constant, always on-line, in an era which seems so close and so far. So far away, with its analogue shadow, with its urgent need to play catch-up, desperate to watch again and over again the images you could not request on demand over-and over again with such urgency as now. Did you see the first plane...did you see the second plane...did you see the Pentagon...can you bring up the BBC, CNN, why is this egg-timer going around and around, turning on its axis...of dial-up...Did you have to cover yourself in confusion, uncertainty, something detached, by way of listening only by BBC Radio 4, with their improvised running commentary, unprepared for something constantly referred to as unprecedented, something beyond training, something beyond worse case scenario, and something unreal, if you could only hear on the radio an unreal event occurring in  real time, in an age which could not provide full screen, full colour, live-tweet, rapid reaction fundamental always on-line ever-present digital realness. Did you see...

...the first plane. Did you hear? Did you see? Who showed you? Back then, which seems recent, and which is not, the age without viral videos, and meme generators. And yes, ITN News really did use an Enya track as background music, for maudlin greatest hits coverage of what you may have missed, which ultimately did create memes of its own, rapidly catching up to the digital disconnect. Did you see...the papers...snowfall of brick and glass and paperwork, snowfall of clothes, carpet, light fixtures, snowfall of shirts, ties, shows...snowfall of early 2000s flip-phones...and snowfall of actual people...Did you see...how the camera crews had no instinct to avoid...being a part of it...New York...New York...unprepared for an event which broke our comprehension of live-news, of what could be observed, of trying to avoid the snowfall of...office life...turning into...death on the 6 O'clock...cameras observing what might be...glass, chrome, carpet, filing cabinet, window, frame, ID card...the mundane stationery of office life....early 2000s mobile phones were not smart enough to create memes, viral videos, snapshots, reels, and reels, and reels, and reels of...constant on-line...commentary on what you must have seen in the digital real....real....realness...Did you see...

...the falling man? Falling Man. Falling Man. Now with context. Now with a frame. Now in monochrome, afforded dignity of one form or other. From our earlier age. Still in the shadow of nineties analogue attitude. Film crews must have targeted the snowfall of the mundane turned tragic and horrendous and it's beyond belief...film crews must have realised....the snowfall was an ugly reality...of something unreal...death on the...New York...of the...being a part of it...if you could turn away from an early, panicked, uncertain, unsure form of 24-hour news, unaware how easily captured the snowfall was, cascading in ugly unreal realness...cutting from sky to floor, from pavement to the space beyond the sky...Did you see....the papers...those which reproduced....Falling Man. The Falling Man as headline, as caption, as indicator of how beyond we had crossed, pushed even, from news we could observe, to graphic horror, without preparing us, without being made prepared, without granting permission. First plane, second plane, did you stay up for...the reality of one passenger plane being dissolved, in real time, without censorship, without censure, on live television whether we wanted to have permission granted or not...Did you....automatically enter the 21st century through the constantly repeating highlights real of constant death...and repeated on the wheel...wheel...wheel of television news eager to repeat....repeat...repeat....the snowfall of mundane office life turned into....viral before viral, meme before meme, constant death before...the horror show of...a highlights package to an Enya song...Did you see....

...did you flick through the Sundays? One of each. Rush at the newsagent. Rush at Smiths. Rush at Morrisons. This one has a lot more colour. This one has a pull-out. This one has black-and-white ones. The impact, already reduced to a T-shirt logo, a summary, an icon. The collapse, already reduced to jpegs, littered with red circles, suggesting conspiracy, encouraging lies, spreading innuendo. The snowfall. The dust-clouds. The race for decent photographs of this new, unreal, real, digital world of constant atrocity, forever analysed, fast-forwarding without permission into an age of terror. Did you see...Falling Man. Constant, captioned, analysed, whether you wanted to see him or not. The parallel lines, suggesting the US Flag, and the man, in free-fall, in death, in life, in the last tragic freeze-frame of our early 2000s life, in one blink of an analogue era, the last great time of innocence...The rush of being comfortable with...never seeing...not wanting to see...an age where, just about, there was a gap between observing and creating conspiracy theories...the man in repose...whose image would be controversial eventually...in our new confusion, in our new age, out beyond the shadow of the 1990s, recent and distant, recent and alien, now that we live only around and around in our digital age...the age of The Impact, the First Tower, the highlights reel, the slow-mo reverential in repose as the man is framed by his own national flag, in steel, in glass, in chrome, his office clothes now his snowfall. Did you see...

...the year 2021? Are you living it, or observing it, from distance, from arm's reach, from the constant on-line, digital, never ending, always sharing, liking, reliving, re-live, re-live, constant always on-, hyper-reality of this age of virus, viral videos, millionaires being created by snapshot videos of a type, all written with a cynical language of wry know-it-all captioning for the office world who feed and re-feed and refresh and re-fresh the ever present digital unreality, as distant from the early 2000s as we are from the 2050s as we are from Duck Dodgers in the 241/2 Century!! And now we...scroll....and now we...flick...and although we did channel hop, with the early 2000s attempt at multi-channel television and 24-hour news, we now sit at arm's length from constant, ever-present, never-ending, news and news and news, and constant reaction, reaction, reaction...And now we...thumb....at arm's length...and we thumb...disinterested....and now we prefer....greatest hits radio....to constant constant constant....news...live-news, feedback into....live news...which feedsback into...live news which demands our attention to constant...video...video...video....and we are detach ourselves from....death, destruction, floods, panic, anger, hunger, blood, guts, gore....and we detach ourselves starting with...our thumbs....and the constant constant constant...always emotional, angry, high-tension, high-pressure 24-hour....scroll, scroll, scroll....and we are distant from the....news....as we are from....experts.....and we are constantly reminded of....virus, viral, virulent....scroll, scroll, scroll....And we ask ourselves, did you read, did you share, did you like, did you.....see....

...the year 2021 introduced us to....something familiar....after a year of....a difficult age....unprecedented...if you could stop the....constant indicators, in graph-form, in table-form, the morbid Eurovision-style voting tables, each country gaining more illnesses by the thousands, by the millions, the nations united in a perverse race to....the bottom....graphs spaghetti-style, worm-style, columns of death reaching into....where the sky used to be...and the 24-hour news eagerly updated each new death as Sky Sports News would eagerly update pub-goers of the score at....Old Trafford...or Lords....And then we witnessed the fall of....another....echo from.....our age without viral videos, social media, constant scroll scroll scroll...the turning of history as one might turn....metal.....wood....words....The fall of...a national flag, once turned into....black red green...and now after twenty years turned again to...white....purity and...censure....and...we are immune to the eagerness for....commentary....eager to call vaccines dangerous and eager to call mask-wearing oppressive even when we observe, on screens unbelievably small by 2000s standards, the genuine oppression of an earlier age...Watching with arm's length disinterest at...another....falling.....man.....Did you see....

...the video. The desperate video. The digital fingerprint of our new age. Watch one video, then another one. It's called binge viewing. It's okay to force an ad-break into the middle, its acceptable to be sponsored, and talk about your supporters, churning out the slogans for your latest....wheeze....And the digital shadow shows us...an airport, full, a plane, crawling with....desperate, helpless, hopeless, panicked people...who cling to....like subscribe, don't forget to share....a video... a plane, in the air, as it was, in other contexts, tracking its own ancient paths through history, a neon-line drawn by history, attaching itself to 9/11, attaching itself to the Soviets, attaching itself to the British, attaching itself to the hard, sharp, unnaturally straight lines of...a fake map...And now we watch as Falling Man repeats, as do memes, as do headlines across the bottom of the screen...Our new Falling Man. A crease in the digital signal. A small, certain, desperate....parallel line....drawn from....a war on terror to the new escape from...a white flag, defaced....a belief system...A new digital graph, columns rising beyond its axis....of evil!...and we watch on repeat, a plane, in flight, in escape, to an unknown destination, from which...falls....our new Falling Man....our new viral video reality....our new...digital parallel...hard, straight, parallel lines...where the sky was once...black red green...Did you see...

...how helpless we've all become? Only veterans and schoolchildren know the War Poets from ancient history, kept alive by the Age of Empire into which our curriculum is formed, is forged. Then, and for generations after, only the poetry mattered, the words as refugees of emotion, of an experience no man should ever have again. And again, and again, the poetry was supposed to save us from ourselves....and now, in this shadow of digital unreality...the photographs are the new poetry...for people to observe, if not learn from, if not hear the...parallels...drawing from one plane in the air...crashing into....the creation of social media...the creation of 24-hour news...the creation of being disinterested...in politicians realising how little power they truly have....And the creation of....horrible images we escape from, as quickly as pressing [X], as quickly as pressing BACK, as quickly as pressing F5, or the smartphone equivalent. One of our Falling Men has become....another.....reduced immediately to...an afterthought....Twenty years between....falling man....and falling man...Falling in snowfall....falling in....August heat....into crowds of....panicked, desperate, eager newsfeed, newshound, newshour, new....redefined....eager.....being....turned into jokes, punchlines, memes....a perverse scoreboard, of an entire year without a summer, fighting a virus, fighting an invisible enemy and now....a digital....backdrop....little wonder we prefer....falling into....ourselves....Falling Man, an indicator of horror, and twenty years later, another falling man...Refresh, rewatch, repeat. Our new, shallow, desperate, horrendous poetry.