19 Comments

For some reason this hugely reminded me of a poem that really struck me when I first read it, like, thirty years ago.

“Who are you, reader, reading my poems a hundred years hence?

I cannot send you one single flower from this wealth of the spring, one single streak of gold from yonder clouds.

Open your doors and look abroad.

From your blossoming garden gather fragrant memories of the vanished flowers of an hundred years before.

In the joy of your heart may you feel the living joy that sang one spring morning, sending its glad voice across an hundred years.”

― Rabindranath Tagore, The Gardener

Expand full comment

stunning, thanks for sharing—i'll have to find a copy of this from the library over yonder past the goldgreen honey locusts singing in their proud voices the call of autumn

Expand full comment

Lol you got right in the mood there :)

Struck me when you said how people can still be alive in their recorded media though dead elsewhere. It’s kinda like the poem. I remember feeling so weirded out the first time realizing this long gone dude is, like, talking to me personally.

Expand full comment

Right!! @sarah cucchiara wrote a good piece just recently about the ghosts of women in media using Sarah Palmer from twin peaks as an example. It’s funny how we attempt to preserve people like in digital amber.

Expand full comment

I love the phrase digital amber

Expand full comment

I’ve put my IPhone in Greyscale before and it seems to work. I have also taken off any social media apps including Substack. It’s just too fucking much. You have a clear knack for writing and I have enjoyed reading your stuff.

Expand full comment

this hits hard. I have felt so smothered by my phone lately, and every time my unanswered texts start piling up I want to scream “this isn’t normal! how does anyone think this is normal? why do we all know this is kind-of-a-little-bit-not-really-normal but still act like it is? Why does everyone expect me to have a take on Twitter or TikTok discourse?”

I’m so disillusioned with the internet right now and find myself wishing for a smaller-scale, local artistic community that doesn’t really exist where I’m based.

Expand full comment

Right! The take-ism feels increasingly surface level and i'm not yet sure whether that's because we're all so collectively over it, or that none of this discourse really matters too much in the end because there's always another cycle ready to brew up next week (probably a mix of both tbh).

And me too :(, but like at the same time that smaller-scale local artistic community could be made!! pushing into the irl is so needed right now, i'd say, almost universally. even in chicago there feels to be a real lack of third spaces but at the same time there're so many efforts around to try and rebuild what was lost to the pandemic or to dream up new community/cultural centers that go beyond what bars have to offer

Expand full comment

screenagers scare the living shit out of me

Expand full comment

they’re up to something idk what

Expand full comment

yeeeees, thank you for talking about texts. most pieces focus on social media, but not much on how the digital overload/overlord’s tainted even our (modern) form of intimate communication. responding to texts within a couple hours span can be seen as a violation of etiquette and/or a sign you’re not interested. but i am!!! i’d just rather hear my loved one’s voices, see their faces. but of course most of that is also mediated through the phone…

Expand full comment

this was a fucking wonderful read, thank you. very much reflects how I have been feeling/thinking about the modern, tech addicted, world lately

Expand full comment

hey thanks sm! yeah the overwhelm is feeling more and more real, and even moreso i have a creeping feeling that it’s not a flaw but an intentional design of our digital spaces

Expand full comment

i agree, kind of like inbuilt obsolescence but for humans (terrifying!)

thanks also for introducing me to mark fisher i’m going to devour his DOCH lectures shortly

Expand full comment

they’re so so good,—just heads up tho mark fisher’s body of work is a crazy road to walk down and you’ll find yourself reassessing everything

Expand full comment

thanks, it could be just what i need

Expand full comment

loved this king. also deleted the substack app last week and don't regret the decision one bit. pls never feel like u have to respond asap (or at all!!!) to a message/restack/comment!

Expand full comment

been feeling the same way. I’ve grown out of recycling meme templates, over-run discourse and repetitive isolation that supposed to be smothered by “entertaining” pseudo-experiences online. I’m tired of learning how to “be the machine” so that being online simulated a story of self discovery more than what it really is—a desperate clutch of nothingness. I deleted my Instagram account and I haven’t used tik tok in six years. I’m trying to make my phone basic enough for general functions. I think I’m now searching for lost time spent on the inner web of algorithmic networking. I think many people are searching for permanence and that can’t be found online. The only permanent things are self sufficient algorithms that don’t really need us anymore than what they can replace. So really that isn’t even permanent. I like internet browsing on desktop more I think.

Expand full comment

I have just discovered your blog and I would like to say that you are an amazing writer. Your writing style in this essay conveyed so well the stress, the constant stimulation and the apparent pervasiveness of social media that I literally had to go for a walk after reading it.

Expand full comment