The Video

Aeroplanes and Mocking Birds

Do you ever feel like you're not doing enough? You are in the present, enjoying it, feeling the sun on your skin and tasting the salt on your hair as the wind whips it about your face. You smile at the one next to you, grabbing their hand and feeling the roughness of their skin, noticing how they close their eyes when they laugh. You watch the never-ending change of colours in the sky like an artist mixing paints on a palette. These colours reflect in the calm water, waves gently lapping at your feet.

Yet, despite the stimulation of your senses and sheer content coursing within your veins, the looming fear catches you; it reminds you of it like a slap to the face and lightly surrounds you.. Am I living my life? Am I in the present? Will I one day look back and regret not doing more? It is irony that these thoughts occur when you are doing just that, living, feeling, experiencing.

"Before what the world is like now, another environment entirely existed. One where people were in the moment, with only memories and photographs to reflect with. Before the constant recording of one's PRD captured every heartbreak, every regret, every joyful, blissful moment. But there are so many advantages of having your whole life recorded, I hear some of you protest. You may be right. But as technology has improved, as it inevitably does, and the ability to delete certain memories, re-arrange and even edit recorded moments became available to people all over the world, a new set of issues are bound to arrive. 'What is real?' Becomes the new crisis with which millions of indivuals identify with. Our world is slowly becoming more planned and staged, until there will be a time where the distinguishion between reality and fantasy is unrecognisable. Stand up against PRD technology now."

Fifteen year old Rafferty Wood absent-mindedly chewed on a Haribo strawberry sour sweet as he watched a plump man state his opinion on Personal Recording Device technology. As he stared at the television, the man was pacing about a stage wearing a long sleeve shirt, sweat patches growing underneath his arms. Rafferty wasn't surprised. As much as the man looked a mess, he couldn't help but agree with every word that was being said, despite the majority of the world thinking otherwise. PRD's were such a big part of life that most never took the time of day to think otherwise of them.

Another man stood up from his chair and joined the other on the stage, arguing the reasons for PRD's, chuckling at the other man's argument. "To begin with, I would like to say that although PRD technology has increased enough to allow one to delete certain memories, there is no possible way for one to manipulate these memories." This man had a twinkle in his eye and a half-smile that made him look as though he was trying not to burst out laughing. Rafferty, however, had zoned out by this point, only hearing occasional phrases such as "a sense of immortality" and "essential for crime control". He sighed a bit into another sweet. It was the same old argument that had bounced back and forth since he could remember. Rafferty had been born with his PRD, the technology being invented before he was born, back when his grandparents were young children. His eyes fluttered to the mantelpiece next to the television where several photo phrames stood; the one where Rafferty was blowing out the candles on his first birthday cake, next to which was one of him and his parents on the beach when he was five. Two photos of Rafferty and his best friend Eden stood beside one another. Then there was the photo of him and his father flying the remote control plane that he had received on his sixth birthday. Rafferty smiled to himself. Every week, without fail, he and his father would fly the plane.

Rafferty tore his eyes away from the brass frame and looked at his father who was asleep on the armchair, his feet propped up on the coffee table, cigarette ash all over the floor around him. Rafferty watched his father breathe in and out, his chest rising and falling again rhythmically. He surveyed his father's body, leading his eyes down to his legs where his tracking monitor was secured tightly around one ankle. Rafferty remembered the evening he and his mother had been called to the police station. When the policeman told them what his father had done, Rafferty's mother had screeched in horror. She had turned away from her husband that day, and had never looked back. Rafferty's reaction was different, however, he knew his father didn't do it. His father loved to bake cakes and would religiously take Rafferty out every weekend to fly his model plane. Everyone in the village adored Rafferty's father and knew him as the man to call in times of need. He bought Rafferty's mother a different bouquet of flowers every week, and some evenings he would twirl her around singing Sinatra's The Way You Look Tonight with genuine love in his eyes. He was Rafferty's hero. But when evidence was extracted from both Rafferty's father and and work colleague's PDR proving him guilty, Rafferty started to feel distant from his father. He had been inprisoned for four years and was to be on house arrest for the next four. Despite the fact that Rafferty could now spend time with his father at home, he tried his best not to. Not only had his father done something awful, but he had also lied to Rafferty and his mother without a hint of guilt.

Realising how upset his thoughts were making him, Rafferty got up from the couch and walked outside the front door. He stood for a while, just looking at his bare feet and feeling the grass tickle him. Next door's sprinkler made a repetitive gushing noise, and an overhead bird sang chirpily, as if to mock. Rafferty set along the road, leaving the front door open behind him.