I Tried Virtual Therapy

I’m on the phone to a remote therapist whilst driving down the I90 drinking a red bull.

“If your village was on fire, would you pray to the god of flame or the god of water?”

“I’m not sure. Probably the god of water, maybe it would rain.” I say.

“ERRRR-wrong answer buddy. You need to pray to the god of flame.” Says the therapist.

“I wouldn’t be praying, I’d be trying to put the fire out.” I say, overtaking a truck. The therapist laughs, though the noise cancelling effect on the video call software makes it crackly and empty.

“This makes sense based on your personality type.”

“I don’t believe in that shit. I don’t believe in psychology.”

“Why are you using BetterHelp then?”

“I wanted to see if I was wrong.”

“And?”

“No. Turns out I was right about everything back when I was a teenager, but its always good to check.” I say. I pass Belgrade, Three Forks.

“Do you want my honest opinion?”

“You can just say opinion, its okay. You could just say, ‘here’s my opinion’. Or even just, ‘Opinion;’. What do you think?”

“I think you need to attend your nearest mental hospital and check yourself in. You’re kinda crazy low key.”

“I once visited an asylum, covering a story back when I worked at a newspaper. Was one of my first jobs, I was still a little green you know, still wore a suit to work. They called me Suit Boy. Anyway, there was a patient in there, claimed to be the reincarnation of Sigmund Freud. A lot of the staff stayed away from him, same with the other patients, he was basically isolated in this wing of the mental hospital. I went to his room, he was wearing a straitjacket and drawing on the walls with a marker he held between his teeth.”

“What was he drawing?”

“Scribbles, shapes, nothing really. He turned to me and I thought, he looks nothing like Sigmund Freud. The famous bulging forehead, strong nose and neat beard were nowhere to be seen. In fact, he bore a much stronger resemblance to Frank Vincent.”

“Was he in The Sopranos?”

“Yep. We get talking. Turns out this guy thought he was the famous psychiatrist, complaining they had locked him away in this Nervenheilanstalt and he wanted to get out. I calmed him down with a few cigarettes. This guy then starts to psychoanalyse me, right? Asking me about my unconscious mind, sublimation, superego, that kind of thing.”

“Did he use an accent?”

“He started in Viennese German, switching to English, sometimes Italian when discussing Dante. But by the end of the interview, I knew this guy was a fake. I even called him Sigmund Fraud.” I say, steering the Hyundai off the interstate and towards the Golden Sunlight mine. I pull the car up, crack open the door and light a cigarette.

“How did you know?”

“When you get reincarnated as someone, you look exactly like them. That is how your soul transfers from body to body. You seen that Tom Hanks movie, Cloud Atlas? Its like that. And the guy in there didn’t look anything like the grandfather of psychology. He looked like a mafia boss guy from The Sopranos, .”

“That’s not how reincarnation works. I’m actually a Buddhist, I can explain the concept of samsara to you.” The therapist says. I shake my head, blowing smoke out.

“Just let me finish the story. As I was saying, I called him Sigmund Fraud and started to leave but he called after me, going ‘nein, nein, du must mir glauben!’ and I turned around and then I saw something that I wish I didn’t. All those marks on the walls weren’t actually scribbles. When you stood at just the right angle, all the lines and shapes aligned to make a new image. It was startling, seeming to appear from nowhere, standing behind the man knelt on the floor who was shouting at me in eight languages.”

“It was a drawing of Sigmund Freud?”

“No. It was a drawing of Jacques Lacan. I then understood that this man wasn’t the reincarnation of a dead psychiatrist, but somehow had become supranaturally influenced by the famous French philosopher to make him believe as if he was in fact, the reincarnation of Sigmund Freud. Upon realising that, I managed to cure him.”

“Amazing.”

“He just needed six courses of CBT and he was back at home looking after his wife and kids and returned to his job on a production line, counting pieces of metal. The story made front page, I even got a promotion. They stopped calling me Suit Boy and started calling me Slick.”

“How did that make you feel?”

“I felt…absolutely nothing.” I say, ending the call. I get out of the Hyundai Sonata, walk to the edge of the open pit mine. The shape of the ground, the cuts in the rock, reminded me of ancient pyramids. I take a selfie with the cig in my mouth, then look at it for a few minutes, zooming in to my face and look at every pixellated bump, shadow, pore, reflecting in the horrible sun. A bird starts to scream.

Arts Fast Pass

Teenagers are loitering, unsure what to do, living amongst the corpse that is the death of the high street. The youth of today use the rotten arteries and veins that make up their towns infrastructure, repurposing the crumbling metal and concrete for filming skate disaster videos. In the background a gang of grafitti artists, known as “Sketch Dicks” in the neighbourhood, start a paint war with a rival gang. These gangsters don’t trade bullets, but spraypaint, to solve their disputes. Other kids are jacked into public wi-fi, downloading illicit warez onto untraceable hack decks. These disposable computers often leak toxic chemicals when damaged, causing local wildlife to mutate and plants to die. This is the youth culture of today. But could it be better?

The UK Government has announced a new scheme to get these teens off the streets and into culture hubs. With the new Arts Fast Pass, young people have free access to galleries, theatres, museums and libraries, all stored on one app, the Arts Fast Pass app (only available on iPhone).

The Arts Fast Pass is the brainchild of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport boffins. After two years of various trials, including lethal accidents, the Arts Fast Pass unifies access to all cultural institutes for free. This is a landmark opportunity for the users of Arts Fast Pass to gain their cultural capital, not to mention finding a way to get to know other young people in an inclusive, non-alcohol oriented space.

As part of the Arts Fast Pass softlaunch, journalists were invited to a sneak peek into a vision demo of what Arts Fast Pass could be. The lights in the auditorium dimmed and out marched David Attenborough. The audience started cheering.

“Good evening. As the director of BBC 2 in the sixties, I know a thing or two about technological advancement. That is why I am happy to announce the Arts Fast Pass, now available for all young people aged between nine and fifteen. Or am I?” he says, before disappearing into a cloud of voxels. It was a hologram. There’s a huge thud that shakes the entire auditorium. The words flash on the screen; Arts; Fast; Pass. There is a tiny square in the middle of the screen. It grows bigger. We are zooming through a tunnel, through a picture frame. Three young people are looking back at us. They have a confused look on their faces, causing an audience member to laugh.

“So what is it?” says one of them. The camera flips around. It’s the logo for the Arts Fast Pass.

“Hold on, lemme scan the Qu-ari real quick.” Says another, using their Smartphone camera to access a 16 by 16 black and white matrix file that then loads the website for the Arts Fast Pass.

Introducing the Arts Fast Pass. Your fast pass to arts and culture in Britain.

The three youths gather round their phone with their mouths open but the muscles around the lips flexed in such a way that they are each identical.

“Arts Fast Pass? What do I get outta it?” says another youth.

There’s a simple explanation on the screen, a wide font on a morphing yellow and gold background.

The Arts Fast Pass tracks every gallery visit, every theatre show, every music gig, every opera and tracks it in a personalised profile that only you can have. Every time you visit, you can share where you went with your friends, not to mention the chance to make new ones.

The Arts Fast Pass not only tracks where you go, but where you should go. It utilises an on-board, personalised AI assistant to track what went well with and well, what um, didn’t.

The camera shows two people looking confused at an abstract painting before looking towards each other and shrugging.

With the Arts Fast Pass, you now have unlimited access to the best arts and culture in the country. So what are you waiting for? Get your Arts Fast Pass today. Just download the application from the Apple Store.

The advert finished and the lights went up. All of the journalists in the room looked to each other, stunned. What an amazing achievement for the future of arts and culture in this country. By giving cultural access to people at an age where people are influenced easily, this solidifies lifelong fans of cultural institutions, and supporters of public arts funding for the future. The Arts Fast Pass is going to be the next viral trend, and if you don’t use it, you’re not liked and will probably be alone the rest of your life.

A government spokesperson had this to say:

“The Arts Fast Pass gives a fast pass to the arts for our young people and carers. Not only does it give them access to world quality arts and culture, it also doubles as a streaming service for every theatre, opera house and dance arena in the country. Users can watch their favourite plays and comment in real time with a chat function. This combines social media with arts and culture. The Arts Fast Pass is the next killer app.”

And this journalist has to agree. The Arts Fast Pass is indeed a product of its time. But what is the product of tomorrow? Young people, such as teenagers and older children, are known to be fickle creatures. Confined to the dustbin of fads are things such as computer games, whizzers and cigarette holders – but will this one stick? The only way to find out is an aggressive marketing campaign, a bit of luck and hundreds of millions of pounds. As for what the young people think? 

As I drove back through the town I wondered, are these kids ready for contemporary minimalist sculpture or should we start them off with plasticine? Do young people have feelings? Can you show them a piece of music without them wanting to remix it on their stupid phones? Can you bring a child to the opera and have them recite the entire work on the way home without stopping the car not even once? The answer is: you better grab the Arts Fast Pass and find out!