the internet

Hey! It is so great to write to you again. I hope you enjoyed the first newsletter I sent out July 13th.

Sometimes I feel like I have mountains to move. 

Often, though, I feel like I am the mountain that needs to be moved. 

This one is going to be messy! Read what you want and skip around if you wish.

Only a few times in my life have I truly wished I was dead, but many times have I wished I was a different person entirely. I think the existence of Charlie Zacks is a net positive. I think Charlie Zacks has done some good things and is a general positive force. That being said, often, I would do anything to be anyone but Charlie Zacks. 

Maybe what I am looking for is rebirth. Maybe what I want is the freedom to re-identify myself, or rather, escape identity altogether. Do you know how much of my life I have wasted contemplating the complexities of my personal identity? Am I gay or bisexual? Am I an atheist or a theist? Am I a writer or a musician? Am I stuck in the past or obsessed with the future? I consider almost every moment spent in self-contemplation a waste of time. If I live to be 75 years old (I’m being generous), I will have lived for roughly 27,000 minutes. How much of that am I willing to give up to self reflection? What a presumptuous idea to think you have the ability to know the depths of you.

I have been thinking a lot about technology recently and have come to the conclusion that I regret ever turning on my mom’s old flip phone and playing Brick Breaker. I regret pestering my parents for years until they finally gave me one of their old iPhones and I tethered my sense of self indefinitely to the invisible technoverse. I feel that every few years, I lose more of my being to the Internet. I love the ability to share, I love the ability to connect, I love the ability to learn, but how much is too much? When do we become something new?

Last semester, I texted my mom asking her what life was like before the Internet. Here is a transcription of our conversation:

We used dictionaries, encyclopedias, the library and librarians a lot. The Nightly News and eventually CNN, ESPN, etc is how we got our news and sports. We used physical maps to figure out how to get somewhere. I had enormous books of maps for various cities, states and one of the entire country. You had friends, who lived near you, or if you didn’t you had to call them from a landline or send them an actual letter. All appointments (doctor, car repair, hair salon, taxi, etc) had to be made by phone!

So would you say it was more complicated or less complicated?

Both. More complicated I guess because resources were limited and you couldn’t just type, click and have an answer. Things took much longer. But less because you weren’t always a message away from everything and everyone.

Did the world feel smaller or bigger?

I guess bigger.

I never lived before the Internet, but I can see how the world could have felt both smaller and bigger prior to its invention. On one hand, it may have felt smaller because you would know much less about the world at large and would be much less connected to people from different backgrounds. On the other hand, the world could also have felt much bigger for the very same reasons.

I do not know if I wish I lived in the past. I do not think that would fix all my problems. I think this is just an extension of wanting to be anyone but me, anywhere but here, at any time but now. I am never satisfied. My leg bounces up and down constantly. I pace around rooms and go on runs and walks incessantly. I travel to new places to run and walk around new scenery and when I am there, I miss home. When I get home, I plan my next trip somewhere not home and the cycle repeats. I don’t want to die, I know that much, but the rest is just noise.

I spend most of my time thinking about what I should be doing with my time. I think that’s normal. This century, kids are expected to be savants. We’re expected to know how to do everything and more. Any time we are not working, we are wasting time. Relaxing has become “working on yourself”. “Working out” issues, “working out “ bodies. What are we changing?

One of my best friends I met in my first semester at McGill is in the “art-sci” program. This means he takes both liberal arts and science classes. Everyday he would wake up at 8am, eat breakfast alone, and head to the library. He spent at least nine hours a day in the library. My friends and I would ask him to hang out, get dinner, go to the market with us, do anything but sit in the library, but he never budged. When I asked him why he spent so much time in the library he said, “I just have a lot of work.” I’ve never understood what people like him do in the library for nine hours. Are they reading entire textbooks? Are they doing practice problems for their math classes? I genuinely do not know! 

I spent my first semester learning music note-by-note, phrase-by-phrase, song-by-song. I worked for hours in my tiny dorm room on 100 year old songs in five different languages. My teacher was the most demanding man I have ever met. He is also the greatest singer in the world (of this, I am certain). I spent hours with my classmates listening to recordings of harpsichord fugues, string quartets, choral pieces, and oratorios, learning to decipher the differences between Stravinsky, Mozart, La Comtessa de Dia, Hildegard von Bingen, and countless other very dead, apparently important composers. I had classes every day but Sunday. My Saturday nights were spent in a mandatory classical singing masterclass with my voice teacher and his studio.

Even with all of that time spent, I still had days without work when I could take the train around Montreal with a friend or walk miles into the suburbs alone. I would take six, eight, or even twelve mile runs on Mont Royal and build snowmen with strangers, while my art-sci friend sat in the library.

Before the Internet, university students were expected to do half the work we do now. Everything is right here always and forever until deleted and thrown into the ether. Ephemeral infinity!

Where does it all go?

I often think about detaching myself from The Web. I think this is normal, to daydream about escaping to a cabin in the woods, hunting and foraging for food, spending what little extra time you have available to write in leather bound books the secret wisdoms one can only find in isolation. This fantasy is impossible. The world has been fractured. We live half in the physical and half in the digital. We have not been taught to think the way we do, we have been programmed. Our language has shifted, our perspective is kaleidoscopic: seemingly infinite perspectives presented to each individual, eventually you have to be tunnel-visioned just to stand for anything at all. Everything contradicts everything because, depending on where you look, everything is both true and false.

A lot of the artists I am surrounded by -writers, musicians, painters, etc- seem to share my frustration with this nonconsensual identity fragmentation. How are we meant to create when everything has already been made? Is this a product? Is everything a product? New, new, new, new. Recreate, remix, regurgitate, recycle, return, reduce, release. 

I know many writers who journal everyday for hours, arrange their thoughts in elegant cursive, tape flowers and leaves to their egg-shell pages. They almost always write incredibly, with a unique style and thoughtful grace. These writers rarely share anything they write, and I don’t blame them for that. If you ask them what they are working on, they’ll say, “I’m just working on my writing.” You ask them, “Prose or poetry?” They say, “A little of both. Somewhere in-between, I guess.” Often, these are some of the most talented, inquisitive writers I meet.

I see these kinds of artists, those working mostly in anonymity, always between nameless projects, as taking a valiant effort in retaliation against the technoverse.

There is a magic between pen and paper, I cannot deny, but, to me, there is a greater magic between writer and reader, word and eye, brain and brain. More power lies in sharing ten great works with the world than toiling away on the “next great American novel” for eternity with nothing to show the world.

That being said, writing and creating as a solitary, personal expression is more than valid. There are doubtless benefits in writing something just to throw it away. I remember in high school, English teachers would have us students do ten-to-fifteen minute “freewrites”. We were told to turn off the editor inside us and just write for ten minutes straight, pick up the pen as little as possible, and let our thoughts go anywhere they dared. This process is therapeutic in that it helps clear out blockages in your brain. At any given moment, our heads are filled with thousands of random thoughts, images, regrets, and desires. A process like freewriting can help us spill out, rearrange, and hopefully clarify all of this, making room for ideas and creation. In a way, this newsletter serves this purpose for me.

This mysterious artist archetype I have outlined is a distortion. I too have attempted many times to work in the shadows. It is impossible now. In the digital age, to create is to regurgitate. Nothing is new, only, at best, different. I know many writers who toil away for hours on their next big thing. They hardly ever share their writing with anyone and delete whole novels if they decide they have grown out of the text, the story, or “the vibe”. I think these kinds of artists are hoping for the Van Gogh treatment. That is to say, their work will go unnoticed throughout their lives and will be lauded decades later as an unseen masterpiece. The Internet has rendered this impossible: there is so much excess art now, the kaleidoscope is spinning and our perspective is motion blur. No one will find your work when you are gone. If you have something to say you have to actively try and cut through all the noise.

Your work does not exist if we cannot see it. Sure, we can assume it exists, but like the dying stars in the Carina Nebula met with human eyes for the first time, art may as well not exist without the audience.

What does this all have to do with identity? I am not 100% sure to be completely honest. I’m figuring this all out too. What I do know is that you can only cut something into so many pieces until it's just scraps. The more we try to label our complexities, the more we bind ourselves to our past and present selves. Every second we have the opportunity to change everything about ourselves. The past is a story we are told and a story we tell. I know it’s really, really trite, but it’s true. It is a miracle we exist in this exact moment. And now. And now. And now, and again and again and again. Every moment takes a million miracles to happen.

Thanks again for reading. I really do appreciate it! Remember, these are my imperfect thoughts. Feel free to reply to this email if you care to respond. Remember to take care of yourself and tell those whom you love that you love them.