Pause: The Long Distance Video Guy

He's the man behind the camcorder, and he never puts it down. His right hand has grown around it; no-one's ever even seen his right eye. He walks the same paths others walk, but he doesn't walk with them. They see him at births and weddings and funerals, but they never really see him. His camera is less than a foot long, but it opens a chasm between him and them. The long distance video guy walks alone.

People make way for him the way they make way for police cars, ambulances and fire trucks. They let him go places they cannot go, but they block him from places where everyone else goes. They shrink from him as he approaches or they "play" to him, but they cannot ignore him. They cannot be themselves when he is around; at best they can only "act natural."

Do they fear exposure, ridicule, violation: "Why is he spying on me?" Perhaps it's vanity, self-absorption, hope of exposure: "Wait until everyone sees me on TV." Or maybe his presence make them feel important: "If the guy with the camera is here, I must be where it's at, where whatever is supposed to be happening is actually happening!"

As best friends and family they may embrace the videomaker, but when he raises the camcorder, it pushes them away. They feel like rioters at the wrong end of a firehose, or bacilli at the small end of a microsc…