Monday, 02:49
The neighbors’ lights are on.
The cheap blackout curtains I rush-ordered from Amazon a few months ago are too small for my windows. I pay the price in lost sleep and headaches that start before my morning alarm.
Good enough, I’d tried to convince myself while installing them, teetering on a swivel chair I use as a step stool when I am too lazy to get the actual step stool from the closet. At night I won’t be able to see this depressing beige. I won’t see how many dark creases this has from being folded too tightly and stored for too long in a warehouse in a town I’ve never seen.
At night, the curtain lining taunts, when you can’t sleep because you cheaped out on blackout curtains, you’ll revisit every fork in the road you’ve ever faced and wonder what would have happened if you’d chosen the other path. At night, it insists, now joined by the flicker of the neighbors’ television, you’ll question if you’re making the right choices now.
I twist myself maximally away from the windows, shove one side of my face into a pillow to leave passage for air, and pretend that the sound of pressure against my ear is coming from the Pacific Ocean. Count these creases like you count sheep.
Monday, 17:33
I’m considering taking a few days off to go up north, do some writing, do some thinking, I text a friend as I browse Airbnb for beds within driving distance. Available: tomorrow. Sort by cost: low to high. Do ittttttt, she texts back minutes later, but not before I’m already on the checkout page for the cheapest Airbnb studio available. Is there a bed for me, I’ll join u. This is Lily, always game for a spontaneous trip (as long as she’s not already on one), always able to make every trip we take a productive creative retreat. I expand my search and find a two-bed guest house in Novato. “Lots of character,” reads one review. “You won’t be disappointed.” I book it.
“Sorry for late notice,” I message in my team Slack channel. “Need to take a few days off. Will catch up when back.” My boss reacts with a thumbs up. A coworker adds a praying hands emoji. I set my Slack status to out of office.
Tuesday, 11:55
“Around here, trees,” my server at Lucky Cat Bistro tells me. I’d asked him what there was to do around Novato. Nature, et cetera. “I live in Santa Rosa, I like the mountains up there.”
“Santa Rosa? You come here every day for work?”
“Yeah, thirty minutes on a good day. With traffic…” He shrugs.
I nod. He’s soloing front of house, greeting guests, taking orders, checking on tables, working the takeout register. I wonder if he’s the owner.
A group of construction workers with high-visibility vests and hard hats take the table next to me. The server-maybe-owner turns to someone seated next to the door to take their order without interrupting our conversation. The lunch rush is starting.
“College of Marin,” he says to me over his shoulder, taking a pen from his apron and bringing his notepad up to meet it. “You can drive around there and look at the trees.”
Tuesday, 16:11
The entrance to the Airbnb is a sliding glass door. The second bedroom is actually a dining room connected to a living room, the way my first apartment in San Francisco was configured. “Checked in, thanks,” I message our Airbnb host.
I go back to the car to get a pack of gum I left in the cup holder.
The front door to the main house opens. Our Airbnb host has a speckled white beard, patterned short-sleeved shirt, and hand up in greeting. I’ve just taken a stick of gum from the pack. I slip it into my pocket, still wrapped but separate from the rest, as I move to offer a handshake.
“What brings you out here?” He looks unassuming but curious. Maybe he wants to make sure I had a good reason to book his guest house less than 24 hours ahead.
“Just work,” I say. “We’re doing some filming out here.”
He seems satisfied with that, pulling the sliding door back open for me. “Holler if you need anything.”
When I start the car to go back into town, the pack of gum falls out of my pocket. The wrapped piece stays.
Tuesday, 16:45
It’s a little early to be heading to dinner but I’ve already walked through the Downtown Novato Community Farmers’ Market three times, sampled four different types of fruit, and will not have the fridge space or time to consume more than a few pieces of fresh produce during this trip. Rodriguez Farms is selling organic heirloom cherry tomatoes, two pints for five dollars, each pint packed so full they look like over-baked tarts.
The first thing I see after I put the tomatoes in the trunk and lock the car is the marquee board between Mi Pueblo’s stone exterior and the skyline. “$2 TACO TUESDAY” it announces, in the same austere lettering a theater might use for a last-minute showtime. Quickest decision I make all week.
There is a flat-screen television above every booth, reminiscent of a chain sports bar except for the seats, which look carved from solid wood and hand-painted. I’m not particularly hungry but I know I won’t feel like venturing back out for food later, so I order an extra taco.
“Onions, cilantro?” My server glances up at me mid-scribble as if she already knows my answer. “Salsa?”
“Yes, everything.”
Wednesday, 01:17
I can’t sleep but I’m not going to memorize the way the fan sounds at every stage of its rotation tonight. Instead, I start Heartstopper, a Netflix show I never watched because I thought it was for teenagers.
It is absolutely for teenagers, especially queer and questioning teenagers, but I am surprised by how comprehensively it portrays complicated family dynamics, the span of romance and orientation, and the confusing weight of existence.
Alas, it is still a feel-good, family-friendly drama. Conflict gets resolved quickly and conveniently. I stop watching when I start to think the actors look tired.
Wednesday, 15:31
We’re at Sports Basement because I was in the mood for a hike, forgot to pack a hat, and don’t feel like applying sunscreen. Lily is very patient with me.
We get distracted by a Birkenstocks display. Neither of us owns a pair and we agree that finding perfect matching pairs is now our highest priority task. A store assistant notices and offers to bring out a few styles and sizes for us to try. I’m eyeing a pair of Arizonas to match Lily’s. Sandals and socks will also complete the Novato Dad look I’m going for with my Carhartt work tee and faded jeans.
“I love my Bostons,” our Birkenstock guide tells me, “So comfortable and cute.”
“Hold me back from getting two pairs,” I tell her. I’m not joking.
She brings us more options and we get her opinion on each one, how she likes them, how they fit us. We land on matching Arizona Birkenstocks. They’re perfect.
On the way out of the store I remember to get a hat.
Thursday, 18:16
All the footage we got in Novato is backed by a repetitive, metallic click. Lily says it’s probably the auto-focus. I watch myself on screen and see cracks in my performance. We didn’t bring lavalier mics because we went in with a writing intention, not a specific footage deliverable. I’d still hoped to get some workable reel. No matter; my acting is very thin and I’m not sure I’m communicating my character’s emotional state effectively.
We are making a movie about projection, denial, and the often hazy space between false and true intimacy. I’ve been writing a screenplay for the past year and its edit history has itself become a log of the ways I am changing the way I express, process, and care for emotions and relationships. Just as we start to wonder if we should make a movie about making a movie because the filmmaking process has created twists and turns beyond our initial comprehensions, I start to wonder if it’s not really change I’m seeing in this screenplay and in my own methods of creation. I start to wonder if this has been me all along, someone who hears miniscule rhythms in the staccato of window blinds opening in the morning, who sees undiscovered fractals in the crevices of eggshells.
Saturday, 03:25
I dream that I am standing in a field of iridescent grass. The moon looks larger, closer, and more colorful than I remember. Someone in tortoiseshell frames and full backpacking gear approaches from my right and beckons for me to hurry. “For what?” I ask, unmoving, wanting to observe this beautiful moon, this phenomenon of the universe. But they are already gone, chasing after the others.
“What are we chasing?”
Loyal Val’s Tech Blog subscribers, thank you for reading this experimental piece of semi-fiction. I am indebted to you. Special thanks to cherished friends Lily, Birk baddie-buddy, filmmaking collaborator and influential creative thought partner; Zareen, celebrated artist of many talents and earliest supporter of my Jesse Gemstone drag persona; and Lenny, trusted cinephile, restaurant reviewer, and Coherence (2013) evangelist. Please send all feedback and correspondence to @valstechblog on Twitter or our usual private channels.
The motivation for me to write this post started with a conversation with Weston Beecroft:
> I’ve never really thought much about how to practically improve the hegemonic/capital-driven recommender situation, I think mostly because of a feeling of hopelessness about it, like it’s just sort of a sad inevitability of modern society. > The phrase “encouraging natural information spread and diversity,” and your later mention of “… without storing or building a model based on user similarity” –both piqued my interest. > I don’t how much of that is like a worked out philosophy vs. something more inchoate, but I’d be interested in reading if you ever put something together on it, and other people probably would too.
— Weston
I’ve been analyzing and trying to tailor my own online recommendations for years. Recently, I’ve been able to attach to reasonable algorithmic recommendations on YouTube and Spotify, but that hasn’t always been the case. Then I came across a Twitter post by @lotusfracture recommending Rory McMeekin’s short story “My Friend Aaron” and was struck by a number of things. First, the way I discovered it, a screenshot of the first page of the story in browser view with no clickable link attached to the post, forcing the user to manually type out the link or search online if they wanted to read more. Second, the story itself, an exploration of what happens at the edges of human psychology and AI psychosis. And third, the way Rory organized and ranked Lists of experiences, places, and books.
I wrote this post to advance a different, more organic method of online curation, recommendation and discovery. Links to meaningful places, items, and media are themselves parts of the story. Our interactions with them are functions of our ever-changing moods, minds, and environments. This is, to answer Weston’s questions, an inchoate manifestation of a new recommendation system.
In turn, I hope to experience new forms and methods you may be inspired to use to communicate and chart out the ways in which you view the world.