Born in Tasmania, Emily Spurr lives in Melbourne with her partner, their twin sons and a deaf, geriatric cat. Shortlisted for the prestigious Victorian Premier’s Unpublished Manuscript Prize, A Million Things is her first novel.
Today, Emily Spurr is on the blog to talk data. Specifically, her own internet browsing data and what it might just say about her and her writing. If you’re curious about the kinds of things a writer might be Googling, read on …
Emily Spurr (Photo by Kevyn Lee).
Clear browsing data.
Yes. My finger hesitates.
I wonder what Google thinks of me. Not that Google thinks. It just knows. I wonder at the pages of information it has on me. One day I might request them. In the meantime I sit staring at my screen, cursor hovering over ‘clear browsing data’. I scroll through. A diary of sorts. If diaries leave clues that might make the reader think they are dealing with a psychopath.
That’s there too, ‘How to Spot a Psychopath’, as well as the ‘Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy test’ (give it a try, 33% of people scored lower than me on the ‘secondary psychopathy’ part, take that to mean what you will). I think all writers have to be a little bit on that scale, the alone time, the covert observation of others, the obsession with the spring and toothed gear wheels behind words and actions, the laser focus on the subtle movements of cogs, the manipulation of characters (in our heads, mostly) for days on end … It is what writers do. Or maybe that’s just what I tell myself when I can’t sleep.
Though those are not the searches I imagine will have Google too worried. No red police-flags there. I’m not so certain about the searches of 2018-19. Some are innocent enough: hoarding, clinical definitions of hoarding, complete with pictures, Department of Health & Human Services resources and information and guidelines for intervention. More problematic are the hundreds of searches and papers about decomposing bodies, smells, effects of time and temperature on a cadaver, how a body melts as it decomposes, insect activity, what ‘activity’ means when relating to insects and dead people and the rate at which such activity occurs. The little things that feed on death. What a person looks like after they’ve been hanged. Those descriptions I will never forget, I do not need the history. Delete.
2020 fared not much better. No sourdough for me, though there was an interesting digression relating to mild memory impairment caused by yeast in the brain. Countless sites about the blood brain barrier, symptoms of stroke, the workings of an MRI, parasites and effects on behaviour, and brain eating amoeba. Nasal cavities, detailed diagrams of the cribriform plate, the roof of the nasal cavity with a sieve-like structure due to the olfactory nerve fibres which pierce it. See ‘back door to the brain.’ Google might have worried for my health. See: Toxoplasma gondii, Naegleria fowleri, Trypanosoma, Cysticercosis and, of course, Rabies.
Delete.
A deep dive into artificial intelligence chatbots might have piqued Google’s interest but the search list following would probably have led to an assumed picture of someone not coping with things, or perhaps just worried for their brain: ‘symptoms of depression’, ‘perimenopausal depression’, perimenopausal paranoia’, ‘the basal ganglia’, and ‘basal ganglia calcification’. ‘Depressing songs for depressed people’ might have added to this first impression, ‘Unusual Symptoms of Stroke’ might have added weight to the second. I ponder what it would have made of the huge number of searches about taxidermied parrots, carpet beetles, and the uses of borax, and how those were fitted, algorithmically, with ‘There’s a Little Bit of Psychopath in All of Us.’
‘I wonder what Google thinks of me. Not that Google thinks. It just knows. I wonder at the pages of information it has on me. One day I might request them.’
Next: a PowerPoint presentation about working with MRI machines called ‘MRI Basics’. This one I remember well. I spent hours reading and re-reading this and staring at an image of a mangled patient bed that had been pulled at force into the centre of the donut, that and the first safety slide: The magnet is always on!!! with three exclamation points. I recall the time I spent staring at the crumpled patient bed photo wondering if someone had been in it, wondering about the person who must have been pushing the floor-buffer shown stuck halfway up the machine in another slide; the cautionary tale of the patient blinded by the forgotten nail clippers in his pocket, the six-year-old child killed by a flying oxygen tank. My finger hovers. Delete.
The audio files are next. Loops of MRI sounds. Listened to with eyes closed, remembering my own experience, feet first, as my hip was scanned. Contemplating what might have happened if I’d accidently left the piercing in my tragus, or had a steel-wool splinter in my finger (which happens more regularly than seems reasonable). A flash of a remembered slide showing a selection of MRI burns has me rubbing my hand. I blink. Delete.
Tram sounds, listened to over and over, tram pulling in, tram pulling out, the squeak of a door, getting it in my ear so I can pin it onto paper. The weirdness of lockdown. Most of a year in a dark room, working, writing, googling and listening. Staring at an image of a cocktail in a bar I once would have just visited. Imagining the taste of the gin on my tongue, on her tongue. Staring at the shape of the glass, feeling it in my hand, the weight in my palm, the coolness against my fingers. Imagining the fall of the light through the trees above. Checking the position of the trees on Google Earth, the tracking of the sun. I imagine Google felt sorry for me at this point. Poor love, in desperate need of a social drink and has forgotten what the trees outside her 5km radius look like. Both true. And not true.
I consider how Google might align the ‘Artificial cerebrospinal fluid solution’ (and a website where it can be purchased) and ‘how to prepare artificial cerebrospinal fluid’ with the other searches for information and what type of picture this builds. And what happens to that picture when the skin-crawling trawls through Quora are added into the mix. I feel again the creepy-warm tickle of shameful fascination that accompanied each deep dive: Why are some people so mean? Why can’t I stop reading?
The hour ticks over. A click of my finger clears all data for the remaining history. The page sits empty in front of me. I feel slightly bereft; regret that I threw something away that perhaps I shouldn’t. I shut the window and stare at the blank screen, wondering what the internet search history of other writers looks like.
I open a new window and Google it.
—A Million Things by Emily Spurr (Text Publishing) is out now.
Emily Spurr
A Million Things
Rae is ten years old, and she’s tough. She’s had to be: life with her mother has taught her the world is not her friend. Now suddenly her mum is gone and Rae is alone, except for her dog Splinter.
Rae can do a lot of things pretty well for a kid. She can take care of herself and Splints, stay under the radar at school and keep the front yard neat enough that the neighbours won’t get curious. But she is gnawed at by fear and sadness; haunted by the shadow of a terrible secret...
Comments
No comments