After I take a sip of my ARE-TEA-SEN-AL lemon balm and lavender fizzy drink in its Low Pressure Magazine koozy, I look down and see the message screen printed on its flourescent orange material:
“I’d rather be dwelling in obscurity.”
The irony of me, a person who posts all their thoughts and experiences on the internet for people to read about, feeling resonance with this message is not lost on me. And yet, it remains, despite that little snarky voice in my head telling me, “oh yeah, what the fuck would you like about not wanting to be seen or recognized for your work?” Truth be told, I am sorta sick putting my face on the internet. I am sorta sick of just putting my stories out into this predatory void where we are trying to have a meaningful experience in between mattress firm and quantum fiber trying to sell me shit.
Yet, this whole fighting to be seen and recognized on a app that uses a defense industry project monetized for mass immiseration wasn’t always a thing. I mean I didn’t grow up with social media. I only got facebook in college and even then it wasn’t that big a deal. At least not like it is now with most experiences being boiled down to 15 second, bite-sized content. I mean, hell, that weird tendency is only a few years old too, anyways. I used to be known for still having a flip phone even though everyone moved on to the iPhone. I have spent longer periods of my life off social media than I have on them. So, my desire to be obscure and not known runs deep.
This most recent iteration of me being visible is bound to run its course. It certainly feels like it’s coming to a close. I feel the clarion call to return to a flip phone. If I’m honest with myself, I am only on social media for the respect and recognition of cool people who I think are doing interesting things. I mean, I only posted my weavings and played the algorithmic game to be seen by folx as more than just my job and an Instagram husband for Lily’s cool projects. I remember that yearning I had for being recognized for doing something with my hands. That was a big part of the DIY millennial culture that came out of the early 10s alongside skinny jeans and avocado toast. Yet, a decade removed from that cultures high point and the respect of some peers secured, what point do I have in staying? That flip phone sounds darn attractive.
But, who cares, right? The world doesn’t need one more white dude feeling entitled to other people’s attention or time. If their is an illness that white men are infected with from an early age it is that their thoughts, dreams, and feelings are important above all. I know this illness, because I got it too. This is how we got to a place where Infinite Jest can be celebrated and a best seller and the dreams of countless female, Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, Queer, poor writers are crushed. Seriously, we don’t need any more middle class white dudes writing about how hard it was to be raised middle class while benefitting from the spoils of empire, colonialism, and the new Jim Crow.
Seriously, one thing I don’t miss about 90s culture is how many white dudes who really had gibberish to say were put on a pedestal. “Don’t talk sentimental, it always ends up drivel,” Thom Yorke of Radiohead crooned on “Let Down.” Well, that’s one of the last lyrics he sang that expressed a coherent thought. Yorke later devolved into incoherent, meaningless rambling in his lyrics, proving again that you can stand for nothing and be the biggest band in the world. And even that last little tidbit of advice he provided is garbage. Yorke noted it was difficult for him to record Let Down, because he had grown tired of by that point in his life. I get that. I’m tired of that infantile, emotionally-detached masculinity too. Maybe even Yorke knew the song was drivel.
Sentimentality should be the lifeblood of any mature man’s approach to the world. All I do in my family life is talk sentimental. It’s what keeps my family buzzing with vitality. I ooze with the deep profound feelings for my life. I tell my wife how beautiful she is, how much I appreciate the life we have built, and how much beauty I see in our growing daughter. I only talk sentimental, because I know how it is the core of building connections with the people around me, my kin. This is the hypocrisy of the mediocre white man who can’t see how much he has to gain from tapping into this sentiment. And yet, the mediocre white man has the audacity to have the whole world in at his finger tips and just piss on it from his vantage point of privilege. Did I mention it’s infantile? Imagine telling a whole generation of white men that their profound sadness, disillusionment, or other feelings are drivel. That’s some wild gaslighting. It’s a miracle that any white man can get out of his own way enough to understand their is more to the world than their own navel.
Shoot, that felt good. I am so passionate about taking shots at folx, like Yorke, I used to take advice from, because I don’t want any false idols around. I want that idea that men can’t be romantic, sentimental family men to die. No cap, this is what my life is now; It’s being a father and being a husband. Sure, I do this little project, but the time I spend on it will always be less than that which I put into my kin. That’s collectivism at its simplest. I’m building the family that I lost and I don’t feel like making it into instagram content.
I just realized that this whole essay is skirting the edge of the dreaded news years resolution discourse. Well, if your are looking for a grand pronouncement from me that I RESOLVE TO RETURN TO THE KINGDOM OF FLIPABLE PHONES, you gonna be pissed. I’m not gonna do it. It’s not because I’m being contrary. Well, at least not this time. I do love me a being contrary for the sake of being contrary. Any person, like me, who ironically enjoys creed hits and boasts about their “superior” musical taste knows this little trick of your favorite curmudgeonly contrarian. I just really can’t bring myself to think about how I can improve myself. Like sure, could I devise a plan to work out more, write more, learn more, and eat less? Doubtless, but all those attempts at self improvement feel pretty empty given that the far right government of israel is indiscriminately bombing Gaza into oblivion.
I feel no resolve to individually improve myself in this dark season with the bombs on bomb on bombs falling on gaza. I have seen one too many dead bodies to even really care about my own self improvement. I don’t even want to embrace alternative resolutions, as some people have talked about on instagram, like committing to maintaining my desert portions or continuing my pursuit of joy. It feels like my horizons beyond the everyday despair brought into the world with my tax dollars shunt the possibility of a future that I can even live into. How can I in good conscience even engage in a future when the lives of my Palestinian brothers and sisters are on the line everyday? This is the challenge of confronting the reality of power and domination in the 21st century when we are all palestinians. Yes, I still experience joy, but it is slippery with oil that the powerful seek to wrest out of the lands they are bombing into oblivion. Yeah, all this self improvement talk certainly just feels like a bait and switch tactic to make folx focus on treating ourselves like a struggling restaurant on Kitchen Nightmare that only needs a few tweaks to be truly great, instead of just focusing on our collective liberation.
Instead of making individual’s treat themselves like some kind of weird DIY improvement project, I am all for pushing institutions to make resolutions toward a better world. You know what resolutions the Biden administration should make? No more bullets or bombs to israel. Demand a ceasefire in Gaza. Close the 750 U.S. military bases that the US government maintains in 80 countries. Honor the treaties with indigenous nations and give them their land back. Invest the money saved from our wild $842 billion dollar defense budget and provide reparations to the descendants of slavery and Japanese internment, universal healthcare, universal basic income, housing, food, and child care to the people of our country. Impose a federal minimum wage of $30 an hour. Those are the sort of resolutions that will revolutionize people’s lives around the world and here at home.
So, yeah, when I say “I’d rather dwell in obscurity,” it’s part of my continuing work to weave myself into a collective rather than calling for attention to this animate bit of clay that one might call me. I want to be woven into the throngs of a collective we. I want to focus less on me and be in community with my family, my fellow weavers, my fellow bike riders, and my friends. That seems like as good a pursuit as any as an antidote to my dark hermit on the hedge tendency I displayed early last winter and spring. Maybe this recluse will once again learn to love and not just flame eternal.
As always, all my best to you, dear reader. Thank you for being here. This was a free offering for all members of this community. There are four free essays a month for this project. If you don’t want to miss the other four essays for paid subscribers, consider signing up for a subscription. Subscriptions are $5 a month or $50 for a year.
Let us raise our glasses
To what we don’t deserve
What we’re not worthy of
So rich and white
To the grains of sand
Slipping through our hands.
- Thom Yorke, Wall of Eyes
Don’t be dissin my boy Thom. ;) Radiohead is my sacred cow. But I get it.
I love your writing. Substack truly is a readers paradise.
My partner grew up in the 70s. Has never been on social media, doesn’t go on the Internet. It wasn’t until he saw some of my artwork of bombs and bodies last month that he asked me what this is for? A prolonged health crisis meant he had no idea what was even happening in 2023. Envious is not the word. But I felt some thing about his ability to sequester himself in nature, or with puzzles.
Several years ago he DID get a flip phone, in the spirit of so many in these oversaturated days. He returned it to the phone provider within two weeks. I can’t remember exactly why, but the dysfunctionality of the keyboard was part of the issue. Personally, I’m still resentful. I got conned into getting a cell phone at all in 2011. I was the last hold out out of everyone I know. The city removed all the payphones and I felt forced to.
Happy new year to you and your family. 🕊️