The Insta pilgrims

On Sunday morning, in Puy-en-Velay, I climbed the 275 volcanic steps to the tiny chapel of Rocher Saint-Michel d’Aiguilhe. There, in the gloaming, among the silent stones that have stood on this site for 11 centuries, it was almost possible to imagine the awe of those very first Christian pilgrims who in the 10th century… CLICK! CLICK! CLICK!

Ah yes, the sacred selfie, now as much a part of the modern Camino de Santiago de Compostela as the rosary, the walking stick and the scallop shell. A Catholic grandmother taking photographs of her penitent grandson, devoutly picking his nose. A teenager snapping Insta-incense shots. A honeymooning couple in walking boots taking turns to light candles for the camera. A moment of quiet communion between pilgrim, God and several hundred social media followers. #holyhobnails.

No dogs, say the signs. No eating, no drinking, no littering. Could there be a sign that says no phones, no cameras, no flash, no duck-pouts in the cloisters, no gurning in the crypt? The old curatorial ‘look, but don’t touch’ should now be ‘look, but don’t click’. Then perhaps the pilgrim, whether she be religious or merely art historical, might get a little closer to divine revelation, not always seeing through an iGlass darkly.

Twitter, we read (if, that is, we read at all), has addled our brains. Gobbets, listicles, presidential perorations delivered in intemperate SHOUTY ALL CAPS. Read Proust? Read Tolstoy? Read this week’s New Yorker essay on the rise of the crypto-bitcoin bros? Not when attention spans are shot by hedgehog gifs and bunny memes. But what about Instagram? How many seconds does the average scroll-holer spend looking at each square-framed photograph? As long as it takes to read this sentence? This one? This?

I worry more about future art historians than future students of literature.