Couple attached by a 15-feet string for 24 hours
Jennifer says: "On Slate V today: a modern married couple makes it through the day without straying more than 15 feet apart. Slate Deputy Editor David Plotz and his wife Hanna Rosin, also a writer, are attached by a 15-feet string, inspired by an Arizona Buddhist couple that recently made the headlines for having spent every minute together for the past 10 years." Link
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I saw an interview with two artists (Linda Montano and Tehching Hsieh) who did this for a year. By the end, they were about ready to kill each other.
"But you JUST WENT to the bathroom five minutes ago! Jesus!"
Tehching Hsieh link (this guy's not fooling around - check out his portfolio!): http://www.communityarts.net/readingroom/archivefiles/2002/09/year_of_the_rop.php
I hope they get a pile of money from NASA Mars Mission for their findings
Amusing, but for a husband and wife who don't work together I don't think it's any more significant and revealing than me spending the day with a good friend who works somewhere else. If their 9-5 lives are that different trying to spend the time together is more of a one time inconvenience.
My wife and I work together in a live/work-based graphic design firm and over the last 4 years have probably spent 80% of that time within 80 feet of each other. We don't share bowls (unless the dishes are dirty and laziness drives us to it) and we do go out to run errands or go to appointments separately - but since our desks are right next to each other I'd say the majority of the time we're within 6'. Even that's not necessarily a new situation - "mom and pop" family stores have been around forever.
The one "discovery" they mentioned at the end that I thought was interesting and which does happen when you spend that much time with someone, was the fact that you don't have any of the "guess what happened to me today" stories. Without new outside experiences, I find that my wife and I tend to have the same types of discussions, but they usually start with "I was thinking today about (blank)..."
I think that two people, even spending all their time together, still have their own "worlds" of thoughts throughout the day. It seems like trying to share all of one's thoughts, as they happen throughout the day, would be closer to experimenting with sharing consciousness than just being within 15' of one another.
On first reading I saw "Couple Attacked by 15 Feet of String for 24 Hours".
I had a delicious vision of a pair of the worst fighters in all of human history being unable to defeat a piece of string for an entire day.
After that, the real article was a mild letdown.
Wow! Those crazy Atlantic Monthly Journalists! Next thing you know she'll try eating eggs with hot sauce or riding her bike to work!
Tehching Hsieh has undertaken some of the most serious long-term performances ever.
Here's a link to the poster for his one year performance with Linda Montano. Apparently they really disliked each other fairly early in the project. They were connected by the rope, but the nature of the performance was that they could not touch one another.
How many kids do those people need?
http://www.impawards.com/1958/posters/defiant_ones.jpg
So string is sort of the opposite of a restraining order?
We've all seen movies where a few guys from a chain gang escape, but they're still chained together. We all know how these things will turn out, given enough time. After the escape, hilarity ensues for the viewer because the people chained together always quickly start to hate each other but, like, they totally can't get away from each other!
It's not nearly as funny if they're Buddhists, of course.
Wow how embarrassing! Watch the video and you will witness the slow realization of the futility and uselessness of your pathetic yuppie lives.
This is what happens when you put two children together and give them pay cheques.
They completely missed the point of the original couple.
Um, yeah, my parents work together too. Lots of people do. It actually seems a little weird to me to think that 15' is close enough to warrant being interesting...
Also depends a lot on the size of the living space.
I'm totally there for him if the whole marriage thing doesn't work out.
They were videotaping in the metro!! Obviously, they are terrorists!
That's nothing. A group of friends on SF0 went 24 hours while remaining in *actual* physical contact with one another.
That's nothing. A friend and a few of his buddies who attended a school on the Eastern Slope of the Rockies in Colorado Springs had an ingenious way of keeping the upperclassmen off their backs.
The first person would take a piece of string and then snort it up their nose and then cough it out the mouth. Then the next person would do the same. Four people on one string...
Am I the only one thinking of the Simpsons episode where Judge Harm tethers Bart to Homer for being a bad father?
Actually I'd be interested to see this experiment with people from very different walks of life voluntarily tethered together for a day--learning how the other half lives.
What? You guys have never had a handcuffs accident?
Hey #16, I think you're thinking of these guys:
http://sf0.org/RatherDashing/Dont-Ever-Let-Go/
That video made me ashamed of being white.
#7, #12, and #21;
I agree wholeheartedly. Just plain awful. Now they can go back to leaving passive-aggressive notes all around the house for each other.
On a side note, Linda Montano came and spoke at my art school in 1986 and spoke about being tied to Tehching Hsieh for a year. She also mentioned a project where she only foods that were orange in color for a year.
But, before she did that, she spun slowly and silently in a circle on the stage for ten minutes. It was hard to watch...just like that video above.
Thank you, Bucket, for #6 above. Now I'll definitely be getting that new keyboard I've been grousing for, what with the coffee spewed deep into the keys.
And I, too, call lame. Mr. Muscato and I live and work together, and our biggest recent issue has been a sitting-room redecoration that moved our chairs further apart. It just seems odd. On the other hand, there are days when I'm very grateful we have different sleep schedules...
Next time on... survivor..
Pickleops @21, why did it have that effect on you?
Raian @12:
Y'know, Joel and his minions could write us an editorial widget that would automatically generate comments indistinguishable from that one.There's a difference between being closer than 15' most of the time, and being closer than 15' /all/ of the time. And that difference is the very key to this practice - if you are close whenever it's convenient, that can easily be a lot of the time. But by forcing yourself to experience the inconvenience, you gain a very different kind of access to the world of the other person.
We saw this in a variety of ways in the video - when Mr. Plotz had to get up to follow Ms. Rosin to their daughter's bedroom twice in five minutes, for instance, and when Ms. Rosin had to watch Mr. Plotz xeroxing something.
Is it worth doing? Only one way to find out. Personally, I haven't tried it, but all this discussion makes me feel tempted. It's a fairly radical form of mindfulness training, and I have to admit that I could use some more of that.
I did this four several days with a friend when I was quite young. Our string was only about 6 or 8 feet long so we pretty much had to do the same things at the same time. If one of us was using the bathroom the other had to wait right outside and so on. We were on break from school and we lived next door so we took turns staying at the other's house. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be but I think that could change a lot depending on who the person on the other end of the string was.
the couple they were inspired by were never more than 15 feet apart because they didn't want to be apart, not because they couldn't be.
and of course they meant it as a journalistic stunt.
It's just like Dolls! Wait ... it's just like Dolls.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0330229/
Is this possibly one of the dumbest social experiments ever?
dumbest ever? Look around you.
you're right..every week I ask myself that exact same question.