Other Sean

Our seshes take place in the carport we built inside the office. Post-ironic, right? We used an aerospace-grade epoxy to adhere forty-five surfboards together for a table. Says, “Yeah whatever, brah, we know life’s too short to worry about stuff.” But it also says, “We still worry about stuff enough to build a table.

Naturally everyone wants to believe that by spending time online we are not steadily depriving real art, thought, and journalism of the attention and—since so much online “content” is free of charge—the money these would need to survive. It would be nice to feel that the gratifying shallowness and diversity of digital life can be balanced with fidelity to great and challenging writing and art, that our chatting won’t get in the way of our attempted masterpieces.

There is no giving up the internet now. And truly no logical reason exists why you couldn’t be a thorough reader of both Proust and Gawker—both, after all, are interested in gossip—or couldn’t exchange, by snail-mail, long, unbosoming letters with the same friend with whom you trade ticklishly glib text messages. A regular visitor to YouTube—a realm of mostly short, grainy clips pitched to amusement—can in theory also be a fan of Tarkovsky’s long, eidetic, and solemn productions. The internet, as its proponents rightly remind us, makes for variety and convenience; it does not force anything on you.