{"id":1275,"date":"2020-04-15T12:49:31","date_gmt":"2020-04-15T02:49:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/?post_type=articles&p=171314"},"modified":"2020-11-28T23:05:43","modified_gmt":"2020-11-28T23:05:43","slug":"give-me-a-window-into-your-world","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/give-me-a-window-into-your-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Give Me A Window Into Your World"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have always been nosy about the way other people live.\u00a0 Walking home after dark, I can never resist the urge to peer into the warmly lit homes of strangers.\u00a0 I\u2019m compelled toward these portals into other lives \u2013 trinkets illuminated as though on display, what art and lighting and sofa choice say about the people who inhabit different spaces.<\/p>\n

A home open for inspection is a windfall.\u00a0 It puts you in the belly of the beast.\u00a0 Finally, a chance to inspect wallpapers up close, pore over family photos, touch<\/em> things.\u00a0 I throw myself into these tasks with a birdwatcher\u2019s patience and eye for minutiae.\u00a0\u00a0 In my experience, the bougier the neighborhood, the better.\u00a0 It\u2019s all well and good to see how normal people live \u2013 but I\u2019m a normal person, I know how I live \u2013 what I really want to see is what too much money can buy.\u00a0 For example, a house I walked past in Shibuya, surrounded by sheep-sized Shaun The Sheep statues embossed with various national flags; or a house I inspected in Woollahra, in which every family photo was professionally taken, its subjects clad in all-white like a set of Kardashians.\u00a0 My favorite open home discovery was a grinning selfie, displayed by the master bed, of the woman who lived there arm in arm with 90s pop sensation Seal.\u00a0 When he noticed me ogling it, the real estate agent whispered in a stagy aside, \u2018They\u2019re good friends.\u2019 \u00a0How did they meet?\u00a0 Why keep this picture of him at her bedside?\u00a0 These are the questions that haunt me.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Ricardo Bofill\u2019s dramatic living space, with a staircase leading to the rooftop garden and spa. Photograph: Danilo Scarpati \/ NY Times<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I long for the moment of graduation from work friends or gym friends or dinner friends to Friends That Go To Each Other\u2019s Houses. \u00a0On my first visit to a friend\u2019s home, I insist on a guided tour.\u00a0 I want to know every artwork\u2019s backstory, the thought process that resulted in that<\/em> vase, that<\/em> table, that <\/em>wine rack (and the wines it holds). \u00a0In multi-person, plant-filled homes, I want to know who has the green thumb.\u00a0 I have pored over every bookshelf I\u2019ve ever walked past.\u00a0 I notice (and question) changes in decor between visits with all the gravity and attentiveness of a serial killer.\u00a0 When a friend moves in with a partner, I appraise the merger of lives and decorative styles, eyes peeled for collateral (Darth Vader prints relegated to storage closets; collectable action figures boxed up in a laundry corner, which a friend insists are going to Vinnies<\/em>). \u00a0I suspect this is all driven by fantasy.\u00a0 Fantasy about the lives other people lead when we aren\u2019t watching; the fantasy of our lives coming together with others\u2019; the fantasy of the lives we<\/em> might lead, in other spaces.<\/p>\n

Now that so many of us are working from home, the portal has really opened.\u00a0 Our access doesn\u2019t end at friends and loved ones (or strangers whose homes are on the market).\u00a0 We\u2019ve been invited into the inner sanctum of a whole range of people we\u2019d ordinarily only see in public \u2013 colleagues, clients, healthcare providers, newscasters and entertainers who have started broadcasting from home.\u00a0 Through the lens of a Zoom call, I can see whether my colleagues are cat people or dog people.\u00a0 I can glimpse the books that make up their collections and the art that lines their walls.\u00a0 As I do this, I think, does this align with who I thought you were?\u00a0 I hope for meaning in the mundane; an opportunity to make a connection between the beautiful objects that fill people\u2019s homes and how they see themselves.<\/p>\n

In one sense, not much has changed \u2013 social media was already a window through which to people-watch, even before Zoom calls became our primary mode of social contact.\u00a0 And as Dayna Tortorici wrote<\/a> in an essay about her relationship to Instagram, \u2018modern voyeurism has precedents\u2026 [and] the entangled dynamics of who sees whom and who knows they\u2019re being seen have always been present.\u2019\u00a0 She traces the instinct of interest in others\u2019 lives from our present-day use of Instagram back to the Hitchcock film, Rear Window (and of course, it can be traced even further back than that).\u00a0 These days, social media platforms provide snacky little bites of access.\u00a0 But the fact that they\u2019re curated stops them from truly satisfying any voyeuristic craving.\u00a0 What\u2019s more compelling is the accidental, the deeply personal, the private.\u00a0 The things people don\u2019t choose to show about how they live.\u00a0 The things that surround them accidentally.<\/p>\n

The difference is vulnerability.\u00a0 The chance to see the messiness in people\u2019s lives.\u00a0 I like seeing the way my colleagues parent when their kids (inevitably) wander into the Zoom frame mid-meeting.\u00a0 I love<\/em> when these kids interrupt a call, to say hello or display an artwork, their parents scrambling to pan the camera away (and the off-camera whispers, sharp or garbled or pleading appeals to be quiet while mummy\u2019s on the phone<\/em>, that follow).\u00a0 It\u2019s the impression of vulnerability that\u2019s made me weirdly attached to the adult show-and-tell sessions that are becoming a feature of my meetings (the emerging ritual of displaying household objects on camera and sharing their backstory).\u00a0 Maybe because this activity is traditionally the domain of children, I\u2019ve found there is no way of being the shower\/teller that isn\u2019t awkward, stilted, a little pained.\u00a0 Frozen grins and panicked eyes are dead giveaways for mid-story second thoughts, or the machinations of an internal monologue: \u2018God, is this a National call?\u2019 I feel such tenderness for the resolve with which these storytellers forge ahead despite discomfort, the way they let themselves be exposed in a bid to build closeness with others.\u00a0 Vulnerability is required to share these bits of ourselves, and intimacy is only generated when we make ourselves vulnerable.<\/p>\n

When we go out into the world, we send signals about who we are by how we present ourselves, whether intentional or not.\u00a0 But our homes are private.\u00a0 We decorate them for ourselves, not for others.\u00a0 We fill them with things that spark joy in us, or simply things that we\u2019ve acquired over a lifetime.\u00a0 Now these spaces are laid bare, made public.\u00a0 We\u2019ve largely lost the ability to curate what people see, or who sees it.\u00a0 I like to think that this makes us more open to each other, closer to each other\u2019s hearts and interior lives.\u00a0 I hope some of the people reading this feel the same way.\u00a0 For those who don\u2019t, I quite possibly sound like a voyeuristic creep.\u00a0 Please don\u2019t let that be a reason to stop inviting me over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10061,"featured_media":1276,"template":"","format":"standard","categories":[38,16],"yoast_head":"\nGive Me A Window Into Your World - Grazia USA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Am I the only one obsessed with other people\u2019s homes?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/give-me-a-window-into-your-world\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Give Me A Window Into Your World\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Am I the only one obsessed with other people\u2019s homes?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/give-me-a-window-into-your-world\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Grazia USA\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-11-28T23:05:43+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2020\/04\/FeaturedImage.jpg?fit=1280%2C720\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1280\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"720\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/give-me-a-window-into-your-world\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/give-me-a-window-into-your-world\/\",\"name\":\"Give Me A Window Into Your World - 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