I have a friend named Bamis. That’s not his real name, but in the universe of our friendship, he’s Bamis and I’m Gayev.

Bamis and Gayev communicate most often through voice notes. We send each other recordings from five to 25 minutes long. We call them personal podcasts and the content is generated from what’s ever on our mind and the notes from previous personal podcasts.

This afternoon, I was walking around town recording a Bamis message when I felt the need to eat lunch. I feel weird talking to my imaginary friend on the other side of the phone in front of people, but I wanted to continued with the message.

So I started texting him. And once I realized the text was much too long for a text, I thought maybe it was the beginnings of a Substack piece.

And what’s the most commonly written about topic on Substack? Substack.

Enjoy the swim in my stream of consciousness.

Gayev is taking a long weekend. It’s weird for Gayev to take a holiday Monday off. I’m anxious being around the people, who I can’t be sure sure if they’re locals or tourists.

I would be sending you a voice message if I thought you’d enjoy listening to 90s hip hop in the background.

I’m getting the tacos. Either the bartender only gave me the beer menu, or they only have three things on the menu. I hope that means that it’s three things they’re very good at, not the three most commonly ordered cheap things to make.

My wife and I are in conflict since yesterday. It sucks. But it always feels good to hang out with Bamis in slow motion. Cuz even if I never hit send, I’ve just been hanging out with myself and having a good time. If that isn’t a symptom of a perfectly sane individual, I don’t know what is.

What is Substack notes? It’s what I want a written Bamis message to be, except I can’t be sure the audience is cool. Well, the algorithm thinks we’d get along, so here we are.

I don’t like to get in debates. I like to have conversations. I’m an easy interviewer. My goal is to get the interviewee as deep into their narrative as possible. To find out who that person is. So I mostly agree with them, I throw some arguments up, and see how they parry the slice of my wit.

I think every public figure should have to do that type of interview, followed by a hardball one.

I have interviewed exactly one person in my entire life.

The bartender just did the thing where they provided the basic social necessities for a guy sitting alone at a bar. We chatted about if it was busy and if it was mostly tourists.

I feel so weird about tourists. That’s what two decades of working in tourism will do to ya.

Substack Unfiltered. That’s what I want Notes to be. I don’t want cleverly crafted micro thoughts, I want off the cuff. Risking the scuffle of conversation without the fear of some prick “digging up the receipts” in the indefinable future. I guess that’s the price of being yourself online.

Would the internet be better or worse if it had an anonymity filter. Do you want to be on the public internet or the anonymous internet? What if there were an uncrossable border and migration between the public and anonymous internets were impossible?

The tacos are here.

I was doing my yard trimming this morning and now my right arm has gone through a workout that the rest of my body hasn’t. So I’m picking up these tacos shaking like I’m nervous to be on a first date with an autocratic dictator.

Stream of Consciousness mode! That’s what Substack Notes needs! You post it, it fades after a few minutes unless it starts a conversation. And it all fades into anonymity, the screenname alter egos taking over the further down the branches you climb.

I get weird around people who aren’t my generation. Because they’re weird. They don’t know backyards and N64s and the early anonymous internet. How different it must be to have always had the public eye floating around the corner.

I wanna talk to the bartenders who have been doing it for a decade. Ask them how much humanity has changed. Bartenders are the front lines.

Substack Stream is not for working out thoughts, it’s for working with language. It’s for playing with images. It’s for wielding words.

Bamis, I hope you don’t mind, but sometimes you serve as my first drafting board.

If I wanted to virtue signal that I was a writer so that I could proselytize the virtues of Substack, would it be better if I was constantly typing on my phone, or scribbling in a notebook?

This has been lunch with Gayev. I apologize for this outburst.

Also,

Leave a comment

Thanks.