Memo 6: Ephemerality
By Lee Kyutae, one of my favorite artists.
My brain is feeling a little scrambled. A very blatant reason for this is the numerous, multiplying, never-ending fires across the entire West Coast in a heatwave on top of a pandemic. That’s fair. To distract myself and bond with my teen brothers, I have redownloaded Tiktok¹ this past week — my lover, muse, companion, foe. But though the smoky skies, fires and Tiktok take up a lot of my attention span each day, I feel passive.
I’ve very much outraged over the fires, how it’s only a crack in the velvet curtain to give people a taste of the Climate Change Cabaret, etc. It’s weird to wake up at 11am under a dark orange Martian sky, and sharing jarring things — like pictures of orange North Beach and rants via the quick medium of Tiktok — is an effective way to get that heavy bizarreness across to people. I have no problem with others recording these weird times, I clearly watch them, though I can’t bring myself to record much myself. When I woke up at 11am, I overslept. I was supposed to wake up at 9am, and I did for a moment, but my first thought when waking up to a dark orange sky was, this is wrong. Something’s wrong. I took no photos. I went back to sleep and had a fitful dream instead.
I used to take photos a good amount, to post them because of the composition or for my own personal sake. And I still do; it’s not a banned thing in my mind. My Instagram exists, I’m relatively active,² there’s no photo detox for me. It was just learning the word ‘ephemeral’ that really fucked my shit up.
Ephemeral: something fleeting or short-lived. Existing only briefly.
I did not do a 180 when I learned what ephemeral meant, but it did start a subconscious domino effect that made me ask myself, why?, everytime I had the reflex to take a photo or video. Like a runner’s high, subduing the initial urge to record something aesthetically pleasing, grandiose, impressive, cool and letting the moment pass instead felt good. The more I asked myself why? when taking a photo, the answer was either a strong one or faded away completely.
I’ve groomed this adverse reaction, this overcompensation to spite how easy it is to document anything at anytime now, into my default mode. Like a dream state, I see things in my life as floating around me. They’re not mine to hold down. I enjoy moments and figure that what’s meant to be remembered by me, will be. I skirt around this when I take photos on film, convincing myself that the long process, the money, the attention to keeping the camera in shape, the physicality of prints, that energy spent is a fair trade for the energy wasted by wanting to capture a moment at all. Capturing an intangible energy manifested in time and space seems like misinterpreting it. Not even willfully, but accidentally, because one person’s point of view cannot nearly capture an entire moment³ (how could it, when there are things that the person is unaware of inside and outside them that affect how they perceive that moment?).
Tiktok is a good example of this; not all Tiktok videos are deceptive and braggy, I would say most of them aren’t.⁴ Regardless of intention, Tiktok can feed into the simulacra of captured memories, especially when it’s the potent mixture of aesthetic and validation. It’s perspective masked as genuine honesty, but who’s radically honest with their feelings all the time? Who’s gonna record that for Tiktok? Maybe some, but not for many. Simulacra is no longer just Disneyland, or open houses for ranch-style homes. It’s personal, portable, it can be as simple as creating proof you existed last week when otherwise last week would have been a blur if you did not upload Tiktok rants.
I’m no drip. If something funny happens, or when it’s fun to take silly pictures, I’ll whip out my phone. When I go past that, a wall appears. I’ve created a mental block for myself where the recording of big, complex moments (fires) or small, inconsequentual moments (“how I decorated my Park Slope studio”) doesn’t come easily for me. Why would I record it? But a very obvious, and more than fair, counterquestion is: why not? The amount of time and effort it takes to record things nowadays is pennies on the dollar.
It’s all situational — images of California burning and a wavy Ultrafragola mirror behind rubber plants have different levels of importance, no doubt — but more often than not, the action of photo-taking seems like too much and not enough at once. When I have disorienting dreams, I rarely write them down right after. Sometimes they will stick with me, sometimes the details fade into nothing. I will only write down my dreams as a brief line in my Notes app if it was something that stuck with me for days, proving itself to be no ephermal moment.
And because there is always more to consume, here are some LINKS from this past week:
The Woman Whose Husband Is Sleeping With Her Best Friend, which has to be fake. Many stories like these are wild, but this one just has to fake. When you read, you’ll understand why.
The Thrills and Horrors of HBO’s “Class Action Park”. I could say less about the article itself, but the documentary is a ride (literally and metaphorically).
A Deep Dive Into the ‘Gentrification Font’ hits the good stuff! Ever since I’ve started pointing out and paying attention to the gentrification font, I have found it to be accurate 100% of the time. It’s like a gentrifying bat signal. It’s the consistency for me.
44 Square Feet: A School-Reopening Detective Story. Accurate science and math trying to break down the absurd lack of proper care around Covid? Check. A detective angle to anything that doesn’t need to be detective-y, but benefits from it all the same? Check.
Unsurprisingly, that did not help my headaches recently.
Saying this as a disclaimer so that me posting on my stories from time to time is no hypocritical act.
I forced myself to keep this part brief because this could be a whole memo on its own… Alexa, write down a note for me to investigate perception and consciousness sometime on Jouissance.
Saying this as another disclaimer because everyone should follow Rohun + Graham on Tiktok, as they make beautiful awe-inspiring videos and animations that feed wonderful vibes into the simulacra! Good stuff!