(ESSAY) disbelief, suspended by Godelieve de Bree

In the next instalment of our Digital Dreamland series, Godelieve de Bree writes through the entanglements of bedtime procrastination and late stage capitalism.

in the insufficient darkness. people smiling, off the cuff comments: they like to buy farmers’ market cabbage for their okonomiyaki because it tends to be sweeter & crunchier / or / they haven’t been able to go on holiday as much this last year … i do not want to do the day tomorrow. well. this is what we say to ourselves. in the cast white aquariums of our beds scrolling, suspended in an alternate reality: not the one where at 7:47, 7:48 & then 7:55, then — if we are this far into being honest — at 7:56, 7:57 & 8:00 the same alarm which has woken you up every day for the last eight years – at least – will wake you again. is it that we feel ashamed? do we understand that shame is how we feel? make your way to the shower. stand in the downpour of wishing the day ahead didn’t look how it looked – like the day before & the day before that – & perform the same repeat actions – scrub the armpits, the thighs – & any ease, which is fundamentally what this content – pun on peace – wants to imply life has: ease, joy – the perfectly curated moment – doesn’t seem to exist in your own life, lying there in the dark. wild & artificial the suspended culture hangs above our heads like a sunk tarpaulin loaded with water.

            we’re thinking what do i wear today what does it matter? our world is being defined by violence & the intricacies of our lives are being directed by a handful of people who would have us believe that our sweaty, spotty, stinky lives are unreal & we need! to buy! this dress! which broke the internet! pretty impressive feat if you ask me. the dress is ugly. it’s beige. with polka dots. or something like that. we’re rooting around drawers for a pair of clean socks & other people are waking up & setting up their phone on a tripod & then getting back in bed to film themselves waking up. a friend told me all about kayfabe in WWE a word which describes — to those not in the know — the audience’s state of suspended disbelief: the presented events of the sweaty melodramatic wrestling mania are authentic, not scripted or curated in any way … okay, so yes, this beautiful slender blonde spotless lady did just get up, her phone started magically filming the second her alarm went off & her hair isn’t done, neither is her make up, the wrestler is shocked by his counter wrestler’s move – he never could have seen an uppercut coming … we’re in disbelief, suspended let’s remember that together — we’re suspended like one of those tents between two trees or a climber on a rope — & life is full of ease & it’s beautiful, pristine even, the sheets are unstained, pyjamas a striped matching set of lets say … navy & burgundy. yes. that sounds good, that sounds like the kind of thing a very together woman would wear to sleep in, so yes – she’s there & you are watching her & she has absolutely no idea you exist but only that your eyes are what pay her bills so she’d better compel you. anyway back to my point: we are in the dark, you & i beloved reader – & you & i we know something that jia tollentino writes about in her article called the age of instagram face for the new yorker namely that, “contemporary systems of continual visual self-broadcasting – reality TV, social media – have created new disciplines of continual visual self-improvement” but here in the darkness we are not improving ourselves visually or spiritually or in any way but we understand that there are systems in which we play a part so here we are in the darkness consuming content which is the part that we are supposed to play except it isn’t very fun game because our eyes – & our supposed & enforced inadequacy — are the dollar sign generators for someone else so they can attain ads & sponsorship deals & revenue & blah bah lah blahhh

we’re back – it’s the evening of the day i wrote about earlier – we’re in the dark numbing our brains because the ingrained, prescribed ideal of success & beauty which is painful in a hirearchical homogeneous violent culture does not serve authentic joy or acceptance. it’s painful so we are fascinated with it. we are in the dark & we love each other because of something called fellow feeling & we have bountiful empathy for the fact that contemporary life with its technology is overstimulating & exhausting & life was never, ever supposed to look this way & that the original monkeys who walked the earth back probably wouldn’t get the stimulation we get in a year in a day when that’s what we were, still are now — are in the dark & we do not want to sleep because we do not like our lives as they are & we are engaging in an activity called revenge bedtime procrastination & we are suspended in life as it could be as we have promised it would be with enough hard work & devotion to the oh so mighty god of capital oh yes oh yes capital of the infamous ism so we enter the lives of others in little temporary portals my god yes i do want so much to have a coffee machine with a milk wand at home & a rug which was handcrafted by an independent artist in the shape of a mollusk or whatever silly things we think we want to own as percieved substitutes for peace, connection & contentment among the wasteland of agonising realities which are the human condition. we are in the dark & we are wanting & we are wanted wanting & we are trying to do what humans have done forever: survive. & now the infamous ism is here not as a concept but as a prescription & us with our little eyes & nervous system are giving it currency & everything you see you have been trained to draw yourself against so i ask a question i asked already which is do we feel ashamed? & guess what because i’ve got this far i’m going to wager yes we do because we are not happy or smart our faces have scars & we are unsure about the fat on our stomachs & the little snail trail of hair which grows there & instead of living in a society which has programmed us to go “yes i feel good about myself, these things are organic & natural & completely acceptable” has decided to sell us whatever it can off this sense’s opposite through a condensed pocket of artificial moonlight. in habit’s pathways: repetition, conduct, power tony bennett writes about habit as “unthinking repetition” & more so that “habit has been implicated in the exercise of varied forms of power” so yes when we are scrolling in our off hours — the off hours in which we are not explicitly contributing to capital — we are still contributing to capital & that’s the kicker folks! that the default of our lives dear reader who might very be reading this on your phone at approximately 1:37am is that there is almost no moment where we are not entering into the relations of the previous mentioned ism & that all of this is political & if we are lucky we realise that the only way to counteract this is moments of self-connectedness of care of presence & then the hour is so late & we are angry & frustrated enough at ourselves knowing we will be exhausted tomorrow at our desks or tills so you & i will do something like swipe to remove the app which we were languishing in & will search for — or perhaps somatic instinct will guide us to — a graphic of a clock to open another app & we will click three to six buttons green & we will press a button on the side to turn the device off & lay it flat down on the bedside table & then in the moments, those sometimes terrible moments when in the dark alone with our thoughts we will promise tomorrow we will change. then we try to sleep & if our unfortunate neurons are not too hysterical from all of the scrolling & stimulation we will enter another kind of suspension, a portal, not too dissimilar but this one is beautiful because it’s one of our only equalisers: sleep. & we – instead of breaking that promise when we wake up – in the echo of rilke – will change our lives, we will change our lives.

~

Author: Godelieve de Bree

Published: 2/9/25