staring at the blood dried on my beige tote bag, left behind by the J train from myrtle-broadway, i finger my ear. The silent echo of the Dunkin’ Donuts’s web page reverberating within my mind. Cory Arcangel’s So shines a good deed in a weary world (dunkindonuts.com) screened at a gallery occupying a former Dunkin’ Donuts in the financial district. Composed of shots of the artist browsing the Dunkin’ Donuts website, the company’s vine and youtube channels, unaccompanied by a soundtrack beyond the diegetic sounds of these sites, the piece left me cackling in the hallowed out backroom. Next to Krispy Kreme donut boxes, I watched 30 minutes of Rob Gronkowsky answering questions about his favorite donut, the endless scroll of topping options, the silent dance of plastic coffee cups, and the triumph of one man’s culinary concoction over false claims to the donut throne.

Am i to laugh at the sincerity of America running on Dunkin’? Am i to scoff at the saturation of a brand into so many aspects of contemporary life? Arcangel’s work skirts these questions concerning sincerity and irony, existing simultaneously within a detaching gawking and an awe-struck obsession. But taking any of this too seriously misses the point. The absurd staging of an hour and a half of screencapped scrolling of Dunkin’s website in a former Dunkin’ Donuts makes the audience the joke. Art dissolves into a property arrangement. We inhabit the refuse of a corporate behemoth. But, again, i’m missing the joke: ambient attention to internet scrolling transforms into rapt art appreciation. By focusing, we become the punchline, our asses inflated by every glazed donut and carmel shot. To sit silently is to allow ourselves to be laughed at. Laughing along is much more fun.

People crave feeling present. The allure of scrolling the Dunkin’ website is to be present with the artist as he moves through a hyperlinked mosaic. But, this piece is scored, Arcangel planned the path he would take through the Dunkin’ Donuts’s site and social media. The feeling of being present is mediated.

Showcasing the 2014 internet, the piece captures the tail end of the nostalgia cycle. A growing reverence for the inception of smartphones and social media cynically marketed cynically marketed within the indie sleaze aesthetic. A more acerbic writer than me will capture the failure of this moment. But it is unsurprising that a 28-year-old non-binary noise musician hates this shit. Rather than hate, let me describe it:

Under the brooklyn bridge, the train drowns out my phone speakers. My airpods left at someone’s house & me, not wanting to disturb their trip, left in the crackling speakers bothering sleeping bodies on the athletic field.

The wind blows my hair across my face. The hum of tires against pavement accenting my writing. Headlight glow catches my eyes.

I’m so bored by the feigned presence. Everyone is trying to convince me they’re having such a good time. But I’m left w/ the empty condom of flaccid whisky sex. And I don’t even believe the absent cumshot to be a failure. Sex is touch overflowing with desire. Good sex is unresolved desire, the possibility of being wrong, and the potential to become intertwined in unknown ways.

As he yelps at me over my phone speakers, uninspired beats competing with the aches and moans of the city, I only hear the desire for it to be known that he fucks. Another bedpost notch for every guest list spot.

Highways and parks, bodies spilling over into spaces where they weren’t supposed to be. Lost in the ecstasy of a present moment. Two years later, the aborted afterlife of LCD Soundsystem aping the Velvet Underground becomes the sound of the moment. Chants replaced by wandering lyrics winking at gender, sexuality, and the criminality of both, but never indulging the beauty of being beyond the word.

I don’t need to be told you want to fuck me. I feel it.

Birds chirp as I stumble toward the L train. Music off. Present w/n the sound that becomes me.