Defending PDA & recap from Date w/ a man in Finance who loves Lana
23. Little Deaths/Delights + working like Didion for a week
Tonight I have a few deaths and delights, and then the story of the insane date with the Finance Man. Share your deaths/delights in the comments <33
LITTLE DEATHS
Hangover
Audience Capture
Long distance family
LITTLE DELIGHTS
Hungover workouts
Hot Literati - every day I feel increasingly more grateful for this community. thank you for chatting, participating, supporting, etc
Kat Food by Lil Wayne
FROM HOT LITERATI YOUTUBE…
I’m very happy that you all are behind #reCognition summer. We have some great stuff lined up, starting with something super fun and interactive from
this week.But tonight I want to get some general ideas off my chest. I’ve been thinking a lot about one super fascinating byproduct of social media. The whole NPC/main character bit. The way it makes everyone feel like they’re performing and that they must put on a good show. I’m a little more interested in what this is/was like during adolescence — a really sensitive time where you should be able to make mistakes. I felt hyper-aware about documentation when I was 17/18 still doing pageant stuff.
I remember being at a pre-game standing with my then boyfriend, when someone visiting from another campus started recording me. Beyond the basic notion of how weird it is in general, I was immediately scared that there would be a drink nearby or some sort of proof that I’d behaved badly. But I wasn’t super afraid of behaving badly, more so the documentation of it. There’s this Neitschze quote about self-disgust I was obsessed with last year. About how you grow tired of yourself like a stale cup of water. But now we’re all perpetually confronted with little audiovisual slices of ourselves, as well as other people’s reactions to them, should they be on a digital social platform.
I think there’s this feeling of self-policing rooted in the fear that we could be documented in a way others will judge forever, digitally, or worse, that we will have to look at and live with. There was this image of me at my second Fashion week — my first Getty image — that used to be the one google would pull in if you looked me up. I hated it. I thought about it whenever I met someone new (you’re going to look for it right now aren’t you?). Then I had another Getty photo at a Gala and felt weirdly better. It isn’t normal to have this many versions of yourself. We have so many. And it’s terrifying, but it’s also kind of delicious and fun when you think about it in the right ways.
I think you have to be willing to divorce yourself from the fear of being documented, especially if that fear is prohibiting you from living a life in the way that you want to. So what if there’s a photo you don’t like? It’s just a photo. You are flesh and bone. Make more photos, get weirder with them. Paint yourself over and over. I think about Eva Hesse’s self-portraits a lot. Get surreal, get weird.
My fear of documentation has stopped me from PDA for years. At that pre-game. In my neighborhood (to be fair, this is a playgirl tendency). But I love holding hands. I love playing guitar. I love to sing. I love to write. And self-documentation is another form of art when you let yourself lean in in the right ways.
This is why I’m pro PDA, from today on. No more fear-based behavior. No more fear. I am not a stale cup of water. And I prefer room temp water anyways.
This brings me to the story of my date with Mr. Finance…