Substrate

“I wanted just to be there, enjoying the mundanity of a place that would soon be mythological to me. I also wanted to tour it like a stranger and send away dispatches — to friends who would never see it, to myself who could never go back, to no one in particular.” “Some pictures I texted to friends. Others I posted to my Instagram, which is slapdash and homely, with about as many followers as it deserves — I use the app like I once used Facebook, as a way of being ambiently with people I like, or to set up a dopamine drip while I’m doing something I’d rather not. My friends, flung out over the continent, were posting their own holiday or non-holiday pictures, and as much as I love my parents I felt homesick, as one does, for my independence. I live in a new city now, and Instagram was the simplest way to reconcile two lives.”