My daemon and me

I’m watching an episode of the TV adaptation of His Dark Materials. I know I’m behind the times, I know I know. A notification pops up on my phone. I glance at it. Just Huffpost. I see the blurb - summin’ about Boris and a ‘shambles’. 

Imagine having a daemon, I think. A part of your soul, your very being, made physical. Something that has to be close at all times. Something that’s effectively like your arm or your leg or your heart. Imagine how vulnerable you’d be. I pick up my phone to check WhatsApp. It hasn’t made a sound, I keep it on silent. But still, it’s been at least 7 minutes since I last looked. I click on Instagram. I scroll: leg workout, jewellery, smiling children, how to make a mug of cake in the microwave. I click on my email, delete a few. I put the phone down again, just in front of me - always within reach.

Can you see where I’m going with this? Yes (spins round in chair, stroking a cat). That’s right, my friends. I do have a daemon. Mine isn’t furry or scaly or even alive. It was made in a shiny factory by lovely Apple. There are millions of them, all exactly the same. And yet, somehow, this little rectangular metal contraption is an extension of me. I keep it nearby at all times. I freak out if I can’t find it. I interact with it at least a hundred times a day. It helps me. It knows what I need. It gives me solace, comfort, and packages from Amazon. It gives me recipes and tickets to shows and tells me how many days to go until the Gymshark sale. I go to shops IRL and pay for actual things with it. I even do my work on it sometimes. It’s my room with a view, my bridge over troubled water, my amulet, my lifeline. Flesh of my flesh and blood of my blood. 

If Mrs Coulter tried to take it from me, I’d scratch her bloody eyes out. 

The bond between us was strong before, but now, after Covid, we’re inseparable. All the nights I stared into it at 2am when I couldn’t sleep. All the hours I spent checking the news. All the online shopping, the messaging, the zooming. We’ve bonded like crazy - it’s attachment parenting on crack. Like a baby, it calls for me. Like a doting mother, I respond. Except it doesn’t actually have to call. I go to it, willingly, in total submission. Sometimes I look at it from across the room, to check if it's there. I just stopped writing this to pick it up. I click on Facebook for some reason. I don’t even need to consciously decide what to look at - how’s that for convenience? Someone’s daughter turned 17, someone has lots of marking to do, someone loves their dog.

Sometimes I leave it downstairs when I’m working. Classic out of sight, out of mind logic. But this is my daemon, remember; it’s not so easily forgotten. It’s still with me, in my thoughts, knocking at my brain, asking for attention. I look down at my desk, expecting to see its sweet, shining face looking up at me. 

How did it come to this?

I remember a time before. Like everyone my age, I remember. But it seems made up, dreamlike, even. I’m looking at it through a gauze, a mesh. It’s hazy. Meeting friends. Picking a place, a time. Then inevitably waiting an hour - or more - for someone to turn up. Or being the late one myself. So that’s what we did? We just stood there, waiting for 60, 70, 80 minutes with nothing to look at? What was that like? What did I do with my hands? What did my eyes look at? Was I at least leaning against a wall? Surely I wasn’t just standing there: unsupported, unoccupied, alone. I know I was there, I did it many many times but somehow I have no tangible sense-memory of what that felt like compared to now. 

Now you never have to look out at the world, you never have to wait in real time. You don’t feel the minutes, the hours - you’re protected from their passage. Time is yours to bend and fill with whatever you want to see. I have literally said the words: ‘it’s fine, I’ve got my phone’. Everything’s fine when you’ve got your phone. But back then. 

I remember not knowing what anyone else was thinking or wearing or eating. The world was a million miles away. There I lay on my bed, hours stretching in front me like an endlessly unfurling roll of fabric, legs against the wall, the feeling of anaglypta wallpaper against my skin. I remember calling on someone. Making a decision to get up, go downstairs, put my shoes on and walk to their house. Imagine that. Physically turning up at their front door with no prior digital arrangement. What impelled me to do that? What was the impetus to get up at that particular moment? What broke my daydreaming? How were these decisions made? 

In those days we seemed to reach natural conclusions, natural endings. You lay on a bed staring at nothing until you didn’t want to - simple. There were no external prompts, not in the way there are now. Nothing reminding you to message this person or organise that thing, or look up a cake recipe or buy that dress, no fomo or jomo or fomomo (it’s a thing).

Maybe we moved differently then. Maybe textures were different, colours, sounds, taste. Was the world more or less vivid? I remember reading for hours at a time. Whole novels, gulped down in one go. The irritation of having to stop for some unwelcome interruption. Now I can just about manage 20 minutes before my mind wanders, before my hand reaches for my little Apple-engraved friend. I have to stop myself from skimming, scanning the page. My instinct to scroll, to flick, to skip over is almost unconquerable. I read the same passage five times and all I’m thinking about is the fact that I have to order more coffee capsules. 

Back then, before, I remember sitting on our front doorstep in the sun, staring at my own hand for - who knows how long. And yes, part of it is the luxury, the languor of youth. But if I were nineteen now, how long would I sit on a doorstep thinking about nothing in particular? How long would I let the silence permeate? 

I’m not here to slam technology. It exists and I’m a total slave to it. But still, I’d like to undo it. Just for a day, perhaps. If only Mrs Coulter could cut my daemon away for a bit before welding us back together again.

I’d like to feel a natural ending, an unprompted beginning. I’d like to let the silence become me until I have to make a sound just to know I still can.

I pick up my phone and click on TikTok. I watch the same video I’ve watched thirty times: my children doing the Coincidance dance. I buy the wretched coffee capsules and book some cinema tickets. I see a notification about the new Ghost dresses at M&S. I want them. Oh, and I need to look up how to make a guinea pig cake. And I need a new concealer. So many things to want and need. Luckily my daemon’s here to help.