dead phone
I don't want to charge up the heartless nasty little bastard.
My phone is dead. Well that is being dramatic. It is at this moment in time, not charged. I’m not wanting to plug the charger in. I’ve been phoneless since about 9am this morning. I wouldn’t say it feels great but it feels an odd sense of almost peace to be more in control and to be looking more.
I was in London today and unfortunately being phoneless does not endure me to the wonders of my fellow mankind as rather than looking down I was looking around and up and down the tube at the other passengers in total judgement. We are and this will come as no surprise, completely screen addicted which in the case of Substack is a good thing because great you are reading this, indeed on a screen but at least substack is having to read something.
At Paddington station, I watched a man who was clearly very depressed visually on his face, wonder about and sit holding an orange Sainsbury’s bag for life from which he chucked only occasionally, crumbs for the little harem of pigeons whom plumptuiously bobbed about him excited for the next little scattering. Then the man who actually was wearing a fairly smart coat, I don’t know if he was homeless or maybe this is how he spends his weekends to cope in complete obscurity, for all I know he could have been a millionaire like that Harry Enfield sketch of posh country people who go to London for weekend and get completely rat arsed. He walked away and foraged under the station benches with quite, stoic nimbleness to pick up a wooden coffee stick stirrer which he seemed quite pleased at eyeing. He put it into his bag for life and walked out of sight. I would not have noticed any of his little scene if I had been phone scrolling. Phones are taking away the most simplest of life’s things which is to visibly witness what is is going on in front of us.
I’ve been watching The White Lotus unsurprisingly due to the brilliant Parker Posey, who plays Victoria Ratliff. ‘ I’m stuck on a boat I don’t want to be on, with a bunch of people I don’t want to talk to.’ Benzodiazepine frankly has never appealed to me more strongly.
Anyway, they have all given their phones into the spa so they can’t look at them, which is an interesting concept. Celebrity Big Brother starts soon I think. I don’t really recall listening to contestants on such things suffering from phone loss anxiety. The White Lotus has such a sinister vibe to it and it has made me want to write something based around its theme only within the world of Cotswold farmshops and spa retreats, Soho Farmhouse and Estell Manor one only has to hang around Charlbury station to see a host of character material to be typed up. But to write decently, I am realising cannot happen with a routine of getting up and spending the first few moments of the day scrolling, I think it kills creative thought. The most horrific are the depressive dark days of endless, mindless, mind fuck scrolling when thoughts turn to I wonder how many people do an instagram live of suicide and if I do it do you think I’d make a few headlines?
It is a difficult thing to give up Instagram because, it is when you have built a sort of brand onto it, a place of valuable communication, indeed I call Instagram work and that is true. I like Instagram too because I like to laugh I follow a lot of great comedy content pages and also of conservation charities and also porn. Quite honestly Instagram is a hot bed of porn, some people use it for book sales, some people use it for onlyfans, in fact Instagram has transformed the porn industry into a do it from home money maker if that it is you have the guts for it. I like that David Attenborough wildlife clips come up - not the awful and scarily obvious to me fake AI ones but his classic ones of beautiful, vanishing species. I don’t follow many gardeners actually. I absolutely love sharing about other people but they often aren’t gardeners. I love following people who rescue swans much more and sharing about petitions of the charities I support and finding tv clips that I find funny.
In the world of book deals, those prospective publishers want to know engagement and following so its not a simple thing to give it up or do a Devil Wears Prada throwing phone into the fountain scene but I do need to somehow spend less time on my phone. I’ll charge it later, for now my focus is on my old ThinkPad laptop that I use for proper writing.
I really feel you. I always want to give up my phone, in particular social media, only to realise it's kind of integral for my business. I do use an app that blocks my useage though so I can only go on it for half an hour a day! It's helped!
I dig this piece. Not so much for the issues you raise re phones, but for the brio and spontaneity of your writing.
I did, of course, find it this morning via scrolling. But now I’ve found it and read it (along with a couple of other pieces) I can walk away, feeling good because I’ve found some sweet writing that worked for me, to find my own brain, look after it by doing some analogue stuff, and do some writing (which I will then, probably, post on my Stack for people to find and read thereby contributing to the whole digital scene…and so it goes on…)
Your point about not following other gardeners is interesting. I don’t really follow many other people who write fiction here; some yes of course, but somehow not many. I don’t want to risk being part of a clique, slightly worried about risk of transactional following….yes, I’m sure I may be missing some great fiction writing, but there are other great writers doing their work here who interest me, and a broad spread of material is really interesting to me (as @India Knight put it, one can read S/stack rather like a magazine). I’m not sure what the algorithm gods here make of my following patterns (unlike on Instagram where my feed was, by the time I left the platform, phalanxes of queer leathermen all of us striding around giving one another shout outs and a whole lot more [no issues with our guts for porn] - all fine and good, but, man, after a while I felt just like a leatherman equivalent of the, as you say brilliant, Parker Posey).
I think your idea of a Cotswold themed White Lotus is cool. Please would you resurrect Jennifer Coolidge from series 1 and 2, and Tom Hollander, Theo James, Sabrina Impaccatiore and Leo Woodall from series 2 to join the characters you create from your observations of real life, not digital life, at Estell Manor and Charlbury station.