Aidan Larned
The World Is Yours If You Make It

           Recently, a woman I was on a date with observed that I often speak in the third person, which was embarrassing. When referring to versions of myself I speak about ‘this Aidan’ or ‘that Aidan’, and when speaking about my life, I sometimes call it ‘Aidan-world’. As is often the case in my life, what was once a joke has become a recurring component of my vernacular. ‘Aidan-world’ comes from an ex. I bumped into her friend in a bar, and a few days later when I mentioned the encounter, my girlfriend responded, “She told me right after. Welcome to girl-world.” Wow, I thought, of course: girl-world. Girl-world’s existence implied, to me, the existence of endless worlds, each with its own properties and inhabitants. If you compound the collective worlds within which we all live, you reach a point of singularity. We each exist in our own worlds, our own subjective realities. I live in Aidan-world.
           Maybe Aidan-world is made for me, imposed upon me. My subjective reality is dictated by random encounters with material facts. I filter these through some synapses which ultimately form my perception. In this framework, the systems around me shape Aidan-world, and the actions of myself and others are accents to these systems. In short, maybe I have no real control.
           That scenario affords me minimal agency. I can make certain decisions but I can only do so much. I want to believe that my choice bears more weight on my reality, even if it may not be the truth. Even if I can’t change Aidan-world, I can change how I view it. If I believe in my changed view, and I mean really believe it, can it become true? This could be some law of attraction garbage, but maybe perception is reality.
           “Sarah and I decide to have a cigarette, so I take the opportunity to ask why exactly Kaitlin commands the kind of attention that she does. ‘Kaitlin really believes in these worlds, so it makes sense for that belief to be reciprocated in the form of fascination,’ she says, adding that we’re talking about rather ‘small worlds.’ ‘Does anyone quite believe in such a thing as the New York this or that scene as Kaitlin Phillips does? She’s a die-hard.’”*
           This is an excerpt from a party report about a get together hosted by Kaitlin Phillips, a New-York based publicist. Over time, Kaitlin Phillips emerged as an unexpected common thread through the various media, art and cultural ephemera that drew me to New York after college. My favorite podcasts mentioned her, she chimed in as a consulted opinionite in magazines I read, and she floated across my Instagram feed. She seemed to be either professionally representing or personally affiliated with an extraordinary share of the downtown New York media, art, and cultural scenes* (*note: the geographic designation for this is almost meaningless to me at this point. It includes Londoners, Angelenos and all of New York City.).
           But often those mentions were the extent of my exposure to her. She didn’t appear on podcasts as guest or host (except for one episode of Red Scare), and she would cover the camera when filmed on social media. Her preferred way of showing up in the digital world appeared to be her own writing, social media, or the occasionally permitted interview. To me, however, even in these sparse representations, Phillips belonged to and outlined a world–the ‘New York this or that scene’ to which her friend alludes. Through these intermittent cultural reinforcements–an appearance here, a profile there–I became fascinated by Kaitlin-world, which seemed sprawling and influential.
           I don’t know Kaitlin-world. I can only speak to what I perceive and imagine. A slippery and compelling collection of contradictions. There are dinners at Lucien and Fanelli, typically on the house. Everyone has a story to tell, and everyone seems to tell those stories to Kaitlin. She relays them with the coyness of the very intelligent in her now-discontinued Spike Art Magazine column. Her community-sourced gift guide included contributions from Sam McKinniss (painter of many great works including Kaitlin’s Twitter profile picture), writer Durga Chew-Bose, and beauty consultant Alexis Page. Her art- and culture-star studded New York Times profile quotes visual artist Ryan McNamara who says that Phillips represents: “a very particular kind of New York glamor: the girl from Montana who comes here and somehow is wearing a $3,000 dress and all she has to her name is this roll of quarters.” Her column entitled “Lower Middle Class and Loving It” is accompanied by a selfie in a bathroom at Larry Gagosian’s townhouse.
           High and low; opulence and precarity; a 9-5 and the ever-present instability of the last 5 years. And she also seems to professionally represent a large swathe of downtown New York. She was described in an Airmail article listing downtown personalities as the “culture publicist of downtown” who “consulted on this issue; otherwise, she would have been on the list.”
           Kaitlin-world seemed to me a version of New York that is as sexy, brutal and wondrous as the city’s mythology. A city where culture and fun flourish in spite of the city’s gentrification. A world that I’m romanced by but have scarcely seen with my own eyes. It’s oh-so-likely that Kaitlin-world was emergent–she was in a few of the right places, met some people she got along with, and they kept hanging out. She worked really hard and got in the right rooms and was fun and likable in those rooms. Her material realities, in combination with her own actions and psychology, produced a reasonable result. But that sounds fatalistic.
           Belief is a powerful force. The belief of a single person, expressed well, can be the pebble that creates a cultural, political, or social ripple. Is it possible that, as her friend claimed, Kaitlin’s belief in “the New York this or that scene” created an aura or subconscious signal, which magnetized a world that accommodated and fulfilled that belief? Could Kaitlin-world exist as it does without a preemptive belief?
           A year and a half ago I did the two cups ritual. I scrawled a description of what was not satisfying me in my life, and I stuck that piece of paper to a glass of water. Then I wrote what I wanted my life to be like–how I wanted to be, where I wanted to be and who I wanted to be. I stuck it to a second, empty glass. I sat on my roof with these two glasses in front of me, and I meditated on the first description. I felt where I was. I felt my dissatisfaction as deeply as I could. Next, I tried to feel how it would be to live in the second reality. I tried to really feel it. I sat there for a long time. Once I believed I’d felt this alternative reality, I poured the water from the first cup into the second cup.
           This ritual is predicated on a belief in a multiverse. It claims that if you can feel how it would feel to exist in an alternate reality, the symbolic action of transferring water sparks a quantum leap into a parallel universe where that reality is the truth. This other reality is there, and it’s just waiting for you to walk through the door. It doesn’t matter whether or not you have faith in the ritual, so long as you feel it at that moment. By embodying belief, embodying delusion, just for an instant, you can change your trajectory.
           My world hasn’t changed yet, but some things are in flux. If I’m in a slow migration to a different universe, I haven’t taken full notice.
           And I don’t know what I believe. I don’t think Kaitlin-world emerged from sheer belief, but what if it did? I also don’t believe that a ritual predicated on interuniversal travel will make my dreams come true, but what if it will? In accepting that I don’t know–that I can’t know–what’s true, I can choose what to believe. Choosing to believe in a future that feels fulfilling, sexy and glamorous seems as good a thing to choose as any. To believe in possibility, perhaps, isn’t enough insurance in a future. If it works, then great. In the absence of certainty, belief and action are the only levers I can see. I don’t know how far belief can get you, but now I think of belief in a future, out there hidden in the depths of a confusing, foreboding cityscape, as an excuse to keep it moving. Because without action nothing changes, unless it does.
           Three months ago I met a woman at a party. We had a great conversation, and I’d hoped to see her again. She graduated school six months ago, she said, and she just got a job, but for the time being she lived at home in the suburbs. She said that she read the New York Times profile of Kaitlin Phillips and reached out to Cultural Counsel immediately, the arts PR company mentioned in the article as Phillips’ former employer. She was glad to find that they often employ young writers interested in the arts. Last I’d heard from her she just moved to the city.



*Colyar, Brock, “It’s ‘It’-Girl Night at Kaitlin Phillips’s Apartment: The writer-publicist-Twitter personality avoided me all evening.” The Cut, 11 Oct. 21.