WFH: Zoom interiors - affluenza: the all-consuming epidemic
" It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom, for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself." The Declaration of Arbroath (1320)
I return to the Declaration later, but it might be tucked in the bookshelf behind me above..Or not.
So to begin. There ere are three stages to Affluenza - the all-consuming epidemic, a anti-consumerist book penned in 2001 in the US, that is issued to many university freshmen. I have added a fourth in my take below about decline and recovery. It is described as " a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety, and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more" . Written long before our virus epidemic, the parallel conditions could almost be forgiven for being in poor taste. Except all human cycles tend to share the same shape.
Origins
Last week, I was flabbergasted on a zoom video call with a work contemporary Richard - and my learned professor friend - and gazed in awe at his background location.
This has become a slight distraction when I watch in fascination at the interiors of CEOs in high debate on webex, zoom and the full video panoply adopted for WFH. Many have no idea what they are sharing visually, as they normally opine in the finery of the grandest, powerful City offices ,with panoramic views stretching down the Thames that assert their status as masters of the universe, indeed.
Richard laughed. Oh, that, we waved draftily, that's Buck's Club in London, it's their drawing room - and he clicked and returned suddenly to his domestic charming office, where his Italian spouse had scattered her many filing boxes.
Not to be outdone, like Dr Who, the good Professor then conjured a beachscape by magic on his screen, with palms swaying gently in the summer breeze in two dimensions. They shimmied.
Early symptoms
"But I don't have an Apple Mac, no green screen," I said covetously, but forlornly. They laughed.
But I was wrong.
The compact GHQ here in Islington lacks space and is serving also as a repository of many other people's stuff I have meant to move for some months. That and my growing kitchen mess do not offer the optimum milieu for professional video-conferencing now, although I have used the outside space, whimsically called a garden, in the patois code of local estate agents. Nestling near an olive tree, well it is a big twig really, and on a fine day, I declare I might be in Provence. It is hard to keep this up when the neighbours thunder by on barbie duties, so it is less than perfect. Besides, most know I am here in Plague Central in London, so it is unsupportable fiction.
The medicine is revealed: reader, I shared it
Then behold. As a grapple with my Zoom settings, I find no need for an Apple Mac at all. You can choose a selection of their stock photographs, no less, oddly either presenting ideal summer holiday locations or a spatial still from Star Wars. Or you choose and upload your own.
After a brief conversation with our kind Scottish branch representative, WHP GHQ is now therefore proud to announce, depending on the meeting to held, the glamorous library background of his Scottish schloss. Copyright fees waived, it is mine to use,
Tucked in the books somewhere is one copy of the Declaration of Arbroath, the famous Scots letter in 1320 that sought to regulated the behaviour and rights of kings. Early colonial lawmakers, mainly Scots,I think, cribbed from it for the US Declaration of Independence 450 or so years later. At this point I shared the visual I received (and narrative) excitedly with my castle-dwelling colleague in the shires of England, as proud as a teenager showing off with his first sports car. And he pronounced it more magnificent than any of his libraries in his castle. Like me earlier, he was struck too by affluenza, . I sensed regret and envy. I sense he caught the bug as he is rooting through his CD collection for madrigals to play in his minstrel's gallery for his own conference meetings.
I explained in mitigation that Warhorse Partners is an aspirational new brand, that I shared remote cocktails with important clients, lavish dinners for one and one further away. We need difference, to have the authority of ancestral time, I pleaded.
Conspicuous consumption and decline
So we leave it there for now. There are ten other backdrops in my tidy Zoom tableaux. These will range in time from humming computer rooms, maybe stolen from James Bond footage, a Georgian porch for wealth manager clients (and a gravel drive), the cosy interior of Polpo the wine bar/restaurant below the office in Farringdon (currently COVID closed).
Being in charge of the GHQ technology, digital and all matter of WFH functions including washing up, I can say soon my ambitions will be reined in, as WFH closes, for something more practical and acceptable. In the meantime, l'etat c'est moi, as usurpers are wont to be - and I am going to enjoy playing King for a few more weeks, until rightfully deposed.