Be the branded pop-up activation you wish to see in the world

Content pride

I am sick of hearing myself talk. By talk I mean write. Is writing a conversation with one’s self? Not sure. I do think it’s more dialogic than monologic (is that a word?) for me.

Last week I went to Basel. By Basel I mean Miami. Everyone says it isn’t hitting anymore. Most things I went to were mid and beside the point. Well, actually, the museum exhibitions were good but the parties weren’t. Fair art… I mean, what is there to say? Some is good and some is bad like anything else.

(Do you ever feel as if you’re defrauding your own life, living in the image of what you think it already was?)

I like making claims but not broad ones. Since unless you write for, like, The New Yorker, no publication sends you somewhere anymore unless someone else is footing at least part of the bill, my trip was funded by the PR for the Design District. This meant I was expected in turn to write something related to the Design District. I was like, Wait, if I actually just write a random article about the Design District no one will read it. So I decided to write a diary.

(If you feel your life is structure [plot, style] are you doing [your] living a disservice? Is living life for content the same as having form? What I mean is I was writing as I went.)

I think it’s an enjoyable little spiral but still informational. Document associate editor Maya Kotomori’s mom said it was “funny.”

Since I’ve been out in the world more, I’ve also been depicted more. My photo and name were in New York Magazine’s “Look Book” shot at Whitney Mallett’s party (which I previously blogged about). My photo and anonymized presence were in Taylore Scarabelli’s Miami diary in Interview. My photo was in a PIN–UP post about their party. My photo and first name were in Maya Martinez’s Miami diary. And my photo and full name were in The New York Times, along with a quote.

The Times photographed me for the reading I did at NADA with Maya M, Eartheater, and Macy Rodman curated by Whitney (but quoted me for being snarky in the Miu Miu store during the Gigi Hadid event).

Whitney called her event “Climate of Grief,” so I read the first two chapters from my unpublished (lmk if you want to make it published!) novel about sex, death, and maps.

(Its main character has my name; my psychoanalyst is always using the word “alienation” around me. [Why did I say “around” as if not to?])

I hadn’t picked the text up in a while tbh and it felt as if I were reading somebody else’s writing: it felt both solidified, outside of me, but also I wanted to hack at it, make it somehow different, but it seemed to resist any of my desires to edit it. I don’t re-read myself that extensively, so maybe this is a common experience. (Feeling dissociated is not the same as feeling fraudulent; I’ve only had imposter syndrome about being a human being not about being a writer.)

Oh, as I was writing this Tony texted me, joking, being like, Easy for you to say, you were in The New Yorker, and I was like, Yeah, but forever ago and first name only, but I realize he meant NY Mag but this reminds me, that Geoff (who last fall wrote a paragraph or two featuring me in his personal essay about his dad in The New Yorker) just wrote a piece for the Erotic Review that was previously a letter-essay to me. I am not named, I am the “you” so you are the “you” too. The Erotic Review is beautiful and I recommend!!! (This did not make me feel dissociated actually, it felt very sweet and I felt very connected! Romance is alive and well!! [All the dating apps keep inviting me to co-branded parties because nobody wants to meet online; Geoff and I met at a party in the offices of Triple Canopy...])

This week has been and will be mostly me editing—being in others’ writing—which in a way has been freeing. Getting closer to their voices than mine. Or for their sakes I hope so.

Or copywriting, which is its own thing too—like, it’s not mechanical exactly, but it’s oriented in a very different way for me than other types of writing and not just because my name isn’t on it. It makes different demands. Or I of it.

Anyway, I haven’t really written fiction in a minute. I’m too busy doing my job or going to branded pop-up events in Florida or whatever, I guess. Maybe I’m just hungover? I think I’ve been turning myself into a character (by which I don’t mean self-branding, although vis-à-vis alienation one notes [why did I say “one” and not “I”?] that wage labor under capitalism alienates workers from their time and efforts, while commodity fetishists mistake the value of objects as intrinsic rather than the result of labor, so when the jobs become contingent on self-commodification not only in ad-supported media and on commercial social media but “IRL,” well… that’s enough pseudo theory for today) but I’ve been finding more freedom in that, or the freedom to move beyond myself—if not yet to surpass it (me).

What I’m reading this week: Amber Later’s Special Moss, Copi’s The Queens’ Ball, and ideally getting to this book on mining I’ve been trying to get to for months…