I’m writing from an inn on Whidbey Island, off the coast of Washington. The island is 14,000 years old, about 50 miles long, located in Puget Sound. I’m here because an old Seattle company is celebrating a big anniversary, and they’ve picked up the tab for a ragtag group, maybe thirty people, to visit this inn in the woods for several days and hang out.
The party includes a fashion photographer, a well-known podcaster, and the second-best bull-rider in the United States. A rapper, two visual artists, several directors at fashion companies. Two actors who are famous, but who also are the younger siblings of extremely famous performers, whom they resemble. A cast member of Alone. A cast member of Queer Eye. At least three times, in restroom mirrors, I ask myself why the hell I was invited – the token author, that’s a thing?
The inn is reached by seaplane. The weather is crisp, the water sparkles. Over three days, there are oyster tastings and fly fishing lessons, and cocktails cocktails cocktails. It’s like summer camp for a really motley band of adults, and then at one point there is an actual band, a rock band, also famous, performing for all of us, and all I can think about is a late Saturday night, years ago, pre-9/11, deep in industrial Brooklyn, when all of us were so excited because the same band, at the start of their career, was playing in a friend of a friend’s living room. (The friend lived in a storefront that used to be an accountant’s office, I think.)
Most of all, on the island, there is small talk. Almost no one knows each other, but many kind of know of each other, so it’s one hesitant conversation after another about background, growing up, hobbies, and what the hell is going on with Ye. It’s silly and fun, I’ve never done this sort of thing before and I’m glad to be invited (as much as I find myself wracked with nerves, wondering what purpose I serve). But all the small talk is quickly grating. One afternoon, I go for a swim and relish the silence, deep underwater, just me and the scuttling crabs.
Then last night, at an elaborate dinner, several long tables in a big wooden dining room, with seven courses served, after I’ve exhausted a conversation with an Instagram influencer sitting next to me, I find myself thinking about the concept of oblivion – oblivion being pretty much the opposite of small talk.
And I realize – I quickly type this in a note on my phone under the table – I love oblivion.
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