Hi, Stacey–
I’ve been down at the bottom of a well lately, emotionally that is. Physically I’ve been walking around in sunny LA. It’s been a tough week but it’s kind of been a tough month and maybe kind of a tough five months. I feel lost and sad, unmoored from dreams and frozen by what life is without them. You know all of this if you’re been reading my texts and eavesdropping on my Zooms.
I couldn’t sleep one night. So I was up at 1 AM on TikTok. And all the videos kept telling me, in cool calming voices, everything is working out for you. Just relax. It’s coming, everything you hope for is on the way. The messages were so consistent and pointed, I had to wonder if they were true, on a cosmic level. I wondered if they came from you. (Did they?)
Of course, if the “messages” didn’t come from you, I know, they came from me. Or, they came from the exact convergence of my general interests, the specific cultural moment, and my recent online activity. There’s a phrase people frequently comment on TikTok, especially on niche videos: “I built this FYP brick by brick.” The phrase means that viewers resonate deeply with the “random” video their personalized “For You Page” showed them.
The internet is a funny echo chamber that way. I get information, which could be interpreted as impersonal signs, but everything I ever come across I played a slight role in. My ads are targeted, so surely most of the internet is. I am who I am and the internet shifts itself to mirror me best it can. I see the world I think I see. Or maybe a world I “want” to see. “Want” being a very charged, complicated verb in this context. …But then again, if the internet is shifting to accommodate me, I would be foolish to think I’m not also shifting myself to accommodate the internet.
Stacey, if you’re there, could you let me know if you’re ever talking to me through other human creators? Like, you have a message for me, but since you can’t deliver said message directly and stay hidden, you invisibly shuffle media around me instead? So I “get” the vibe but nothing seems out of the ordinary?
Yesterday I was bemoaning my aforementioned melancholy to my dear friend Ed, via text. While he was taking a moment to respond I opened Instagram. The first post was a video from an account I don’t follow. It was the official Instagram page for the play Oh Mary! I love the play Oh Mary! I saw it opening weekend in New York. This video was of the creator/lead Cole Escola addressing the audience after the show’s recent Broadway transfer debut. Cole gives a hilarious and warm speech about how trying to make art is like trying to convince one’s doctor one has a tumor. A very funny, very accurate metaphor.
So I’m just rotting in bed watching this tiny video. Then right as Cole is, like, expressing all this about art and not giving up etc. the video starts playing Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’.” I think, sure, it’s on the nose, but it’s effective. I finish the video, close Instagram, and check my email. But the video sound is annoyingly somehow still coming through my headphones. I double check the app is closed. Still, Journey insists on crooning to me, “Hold onto that fee-ee-lin’” …And then I realize the song is actually playing on Spotify. Meaning “Don’t Stop Believin’” kicked up on it’s very own while I was contemplating giving up. Journey is not in any of my recent searches, playlists, etc. There was no rhyme or reason to any of it.
Is it all working out? Is that what you really think, Stacey? And what would the “it” be anyway? What should I focus on right now, if anything? Waiting for more signs.
xoxo
Alice
Hi Stacey 
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