My Friend Bevin is a Digital Yogi! (How Can we Best Help Each Other?)

Today we discuss our digital self:

This is seriously one of my favorite things. Ever.

We are conscious of ourselves; social media is the market’s response to a generation that only wanted to perform. So the market said, “Here, perform EVERYTHING. To each other. All the time. For no reason.” And we do. It is audience and performer melded into one. It’s prison. It’s horrific. What do we want to do more at the end of the day than to sit down and watch our lives as a satisfied audience member.

Everyone is a performer in this day and age. Social media demands that we be. Demands that performers are no longer just performers in their work, but in everything they do:

• where/how they eat, 
• how they dress, 
• what they wear, 
• where they go, 
• who/what they see, 
• who/what sees them. 

Look at Lin Manuel Miranda and his legions of Twitter followers to feel inspired and uplifted, only to realize that you don't have that many friends.
To realize that nobody cares what you have to say outside of your social sphere.

My generation, and by that I mean I, was taught to think I was special, to think that my opinion mattered.
That I would one day be like Lin Manuel Miranda.

"I have a privileged life, and I got lucky, and I'm unhappy. "

 Truer words were never spoken by a white, cisgender male.

So what do we do?

You’ll notice the audience doesn’t answer.

In the tradition of Bevin Bell-Hall’s spirit jams on social media, let us ask questions and hope for response (because that is the truth, we never know if we will have a response/impact or not; every day is a leap of faith. I know, I asked Bevin):

In an age where more emphasis is placed on social media and the visual information, how can we best help each other? 

In an age where the friends you have are the friends you never really knew, how can we help one another?:

Donald Trump & Princess Spanky are my homies!

What can we do?
How do we help one another?
Speaking personally, I get depressed.
Like seriously. wretchedly depressed looking at my feed.
But, not even just my feed, posting to my professional page:

• When viewership goes down.
• When the number of clicks plummets
• When the number of people I may or may not know anonymously click on an article I have written and don't leave a comment, they become a single tick mark on the social media machine that tells me nothing about the beautiful, wonderful, individual souls that pass through my digital hall for a brief span of this precious life.

What can I do?

What can they do? 

What can we do?

When Instagram is the dining experience as opposed to the DINING EXPERIENCE being the dining experience:

Visual media and sensory information is becoming the dominant.

I feel compelled to chronologue every excursion, every event, every single fucking thing.
And why?

Because how do I know if I lived a life?
How do I know if what I did mattered?
How many people care about me?
Do you?
Does anyone?
How do you know?

Twitter tells you.
Facebook tells you.
Instagram tells you.

Unless you are completely switched off, which is possible, possibly even preferable these days, there is an objective tick counter that tells you how many people like whatever you are posting.

There is a way to find and support almost anybody anywhere at anytime.

But, this is our digital world.
And it is a reflection of our real world.

My very best friend Bevin, says that there must be a spiritual side to the digital landscape.
And I, for one, support her in that idea.
The digital sphere is what we have made it.
It doesn't have to be.

Because there are any number of ways that the digital sphere has been supportive and wonderful.
Her spiritual jam sessions where Bevin asks thought-provoking questions are just one.
As a political platform, it is unquestionably valid.
The democracy of the internet is unquestioned.
Everyone has access to the same internet so long as they have a connection.
(there are socio-economic concerns there that are not the subject of this article, e.g. access to poor/disenfranchised areas being less prevalent than our 5G enabled megatropolis of the United States)

Point being: WHAT CAN WE DO TO HELP ONE ANOTHER.

For me?

Letter writing.
Studying the art of letter writing.
In an age where everything is public, where everything is vocal, and loud, and noisy in our digital space, we need a chance to be quiet.
A chance for kindness and dialogue and helping one another.

Why?
Because we perform. ALL THE TIME.
The feed is like the town square. It is a place where people shout to be heard, discuss prices, dinners, bargains, news, stories, experiences, in loud voices with other people possibly watching and listening too.
We need places and experiences to not do that.
Writing letters is one.

They are a physical, tangible way to show how much you care.
The require time and crafting to be made manifest.
But, they need not be purely physical.
Writing digital messages in a bottle and sending them off is wonderfully cathartic for me.
Apologies, love letters, congratulations, and calls for help to friends past, present, and future creates a digital landscape that I find spiritually and socially satisfying.
I wish that I could just have the Messenger without the Facebook feed sometimes.

Finding one's tribe in a digital landscape is what I think it is all about.
Exposing oneself to different ideas is the ideal, but creating/paving the way for thoughtful, powerful experiences digitally is how I know best to help one another.
SO I write letters.

• I write thank you letters to people for helping me out of bad situations
• I write apology letters to people that I have wronged or felt that I have
• I write celebratory letters to people that seem in need of uplifting or joy
• I write letters for me so that I know somebody does.

I don't send all of them.

Most haven't because they take time and they take craft.

But, they are there. 

I guess the biggest thing that I take away from it all is thoughtfulness.

In a sea of information, I don't feel like a drop in the sea, or a part of the ocean. 

No.

I feel like a drowning man in the middle of a tempest without so much as a plank.

Every day is a hard fight to breathe and post something that is meaningful.

Not just to me.

oh no.

But, to everyone.

And that is where the feeling comes from.

So maybe the better term is deliberate.

I aim to move towards a deliberate digital presence, a deliberate spiritual practice that can influence not only mine, but others as well.

This letter is one of the first to be made public.

It is to my dear friend, Bevin and to any and all who read it.

I hope you find it worthwhile.

I hope it helps and expands the conversation.

Too often, I find social media to be the last place where anybody wants to engage in political debates.

Mostly because the ability to offend through a purely textual medium is easy.

It doesn't allow for positive rhetoric or affirmations of the quality of the ideas.

Bevin manages to do it in her Facebook feed.

She can and should be thanked.

Thanks Bevin for all your hard work and bringing people together.

It really means the world.

It can be hard to engage because you never know if what you're saying has any meaning.

I hate ascribing meaning to Facebook's "like" button. 

So, for me, personally, I'd like to burn that bad boy.

But, that being said, it brings me to my final suggestion.

How we might best help one another:

Show the love.

I know everyone is doing it all of the time.

And that is part of the problem of social media: Too much lovers, not enough time to love.

I have too many friends to individually like and comment on everything they post.

Same is true for me.

Facebook cherry picks what I see.

Already we have some people who are not seen in feeds nearly as much.

Content that gets passed over. 

It can be very scary.

And very daunting.

The silent few who don't get noticed.

1. Please notice them.
2. Help them where you can.
3. Message them.
4. Write a couple letters to people that you remember after years of not talking.

And finally:

Think about the kind of digital life you would like to have. 

If you would like for it to happen, try doing it for someone else.

And ask.

Always ask for it to be returned. 

Maybe not right away, but soon.

You deserve it.

We all do deserve that much. 

Sincerly,
Your Friendly Neighborhood Artist.