It was touch and go whether I’d go out last night or not. I had tickets to a show and I couldn’t get anyone to go with me. I’d spent a disconsolate day off work. A hoped–for morning coffee with a friend I hadn’t seen in ages didn’t materialise - it transpired that SMS messages weren’t getting through. So I was left to my own devices, to unravel the fabric of my day, as is my frustratingly habitual wont. Disappointment is a fractal. It’s not something I’ve really addressed. Maybe I should become a Buddhist. They don’t have a lot of time for hope. They’re lucky.

I spent most of the day in front of my computer, inspiration for this article largely absent, writing emails, vaguely chatting, vaguely cruising, vaguely trying to fix a chronic software problem without resorting to drastic measures. A Bill Gates classic. The Microsoft engineer’s bottom-line recommendation: uninstall and reinstall everything. That means a full day of muted anxiety, passively clicking “I accept” or “OK” every now and again, as the unstoppable process threatens to destroy all that one has created, in order to make one’s working environment safe and familiar and efficient again. When I’m in this mood, plugged into cyberspace, I lose connection with the material world, with the need to eat, to clean up, to wash the dishes, to walk, to get fresh air, to talk. I need to connect. But I can’t make connections happen.
These feelings tie in with the thematic concerns of a play I see later in the evening.
A woman is on stage in darkness, sitting at a desk in front of a huge projected Windows computer screen. She’s typing away. The microphone is directly under the keyboard, so the noise is oddly deep and rumbling, with scratchy overtones as her nails clip the keys. We, the audience, arrive in the middle of her composing a story, which is chaotic, slightly absurd. It turns out to be a dream - we find this out only as she saves it with today’s date, and drags it to the folder on her desktop called “dreams”. The Windows desktop has become a combination of performance area and cinema screen, inviting the audience in to what is normally a private, solitary experience. I had fled from this, just an hour earlier.
We learn about her hopes and fears and past by watching her draft and redraft letters, to-do lists, business plans, dreams. It is such a revealing process, redrafting, editing; her mind is exposed to us in a way that seems shockingly intimate – it’s as if we are in her mind, watching her. And yet she is utterly alone.
A message pops up: her disk is too full - she has to discard files, videos, photographs, memories, in a spring cleaning that is both comic and sad. Every five minutes or so, a webcam “security monitor” program interrupts her with a shot of outside the front door of her apartment, as if through a peephole. We learn that there’s someone living upstairs, illegally, in the attic, who leaves the house at three in the morning to go shopping. He is a subject of fear and, ultimately, fantasy. He hasn’t left the house in three days, and she knows because she’s been watching for him.
Slowly we see how she’s been projecting her own fears and depression and isolation on to him, and as she makes ever-despairing attempts to deal with bureaucratic emails, feebly attempting to write a business plan, searching for jobs and trying to get a visa, we see how the computer world is keeping her imprisoned. The show ends with her joining a webcam chat room, with various bits of inane chatter going on between buddies giving a good imitation of intimacy, rather like barflies passing the time.
When she’s asked how she is, she says “I’m in a dark mood”. “Turn the lights on” someone jokes, and the banter continues, as the houselights come up. Gradually we realise that the show is over. No applause, no recognition for the performer/artist, whose face we now see for the first time, but only on screen, a little hovering window showing the image from her webcam. We shuffle out silently, as if we’re trying not to disturb her.
As I write this, a new report comes out about children’s lifestyles. More than two thirds of children now prefer to sit in front of the television or the computer on their own, than play with others, according to a survey by Mintel. “Playstation children could be alone for life” says the headline. One of the authors says: “The risk is that we become a disconnected society. Quality of life depends on us relating to each other, and if we have no opportunity to do that and practise it as we grow up, we may settle for solitary lives, depending on television for entertainment and the internet to communicate.”
That “disconnected society” is here and now. Perhaps this generation of children will not feel so disappointed when they grow up.
Maybe they’re lucky.

Or Press Escape by Edit Kaldor, Riverside Studios, Hammersmith. This show played at the Project in last year’s Dublin Theatre Festival.