Some mornings I stare at my phone, and it’s like being hit by an avalanche of greatness. Sometimes I think what’s so great about any of this? Substack, X, YouTube, Instagram, Blue Sky, Threads, Facebook. On a good day, they’re all kinda brilliant. On a bad day, they’re all fucking garbage. Or maybe it’s the other way around. One thing’s for sure—I’m overwhelmed.
This morning, I stumbled on a photo of David Johansen and Johnny Thunders on Hollywood Boulevard. I’ve never seen it. I’ve seen others…just not this one. They’re in front of Frederick’s, just chillin’ on a trash can in peak New York Dolls mode. Then I’m reading a tight little essay on Modernism that enlightened me on À la recherche du temps perdu (spoiler: not a wine). Over on YouTube? A Minutemen video from the ’80s I didn’t know existed. Then the New York Times app pings me: the 10-minute audio news roundup. Just news. No editorializing. Well. Kinda. My kinda editorializing! But wait—should I listen to Sherman Alexie read Carver’s Where I’m Calling From instead? My New Yorker app is open too.
So I text my NYC Crew: “How often do you guys feel overwhelmed with all the stuff we have access to?”
NYC Crew 1 replies: “It makes me feel ick. Manipulated.”
As I read that, I’m literally listening to Haruomi Hosono—never heard of him until Tosh Berman’s Substack post, like, 30 minutes earlier. (Hosono is so good. So weird. Very cool. Kinda like Tosh!)
A minute later, Crew 2 chimes in: “I feel bad when I get sucked into Twitter and can’t pull away.” But in 1990, if someone said they got lost in a novel for hours, we didn’t call that a problem. Unless maybe it was Danielle Steele. Wasn’t she ridiculous?
So yeah, maybe the algorithm’s feeding me crumbs. But mine? Only the cool crumbs, damnit! Sometimes they’re delicious, too. Other times, they’re a madeleine dipped in tea. Which—as I now know—is how you start remembering everything.
