Authors Interviewing Characters. Liza Monroy Interviews Mischa Osborn

THE DISTRACTIONS

Solitary tech worker Mischa Osborn is mourning the shelving of her passion project—an artificial intelligence algorithm capable of love—when a chance encounter with a social media celebrity leads her spiraling into an all-consuming obsession. Simultaneously, someone—or something—is watching.

Mischa Osborn spends her days as a ProWatcher—keeping distracted people on task and lonely ones accompanied—from her Brooklyn Megabuilding, while eating PetriMeat Steax and working out with her favorite personal trainer, a straight-talking algorithm named Tory.

Her carefully constructed, isolated existence is suddenly upended by a chance realspace encounter with a HighlightReel celebrity, Nicolás Adán Luchano. On their first date, hiking in Kuulsuits and watching DroneBeez pollinate flowers, Mischa experiences a brief but intense realspace connection.

Mischa takes to relentlessly watching Nic onReel. As Mischa’s ReelWatching spirals into an all-consuming obsession, and even realspace stalking, Mischa takes increasingly desperate measures to be seen and valued, sucking others into her vortex of obsession until she completely loses control.

Meanwhile, someone is equally obsessed with Mischa, tracking her every move and perhaps even influencing her choices.

A tale of how technology enables obsession, envy, and unrelenting comparison, told through an eccentric cast of interconnected characters, The Distractions invites us to reflect on who we are watching, and why.

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Liza Monroy interviews Mischa Osborn

LM: Hi, Mischa. Thanks for meeting with me today. I know your perspective on time as currency so I really appreciate you taking the time to speak with me.

MO: Sure, you know, I really don’t think that way anymore. I’ve got all kinds of time lately. Infinite amounts! My well has been so full.

LM: Where are you right now?

MO: In my beach cottage. Just got back from surfing and eating some tacos. Or maybe it’s all a projection and I’m still inside Blue Lake. I don’t know. It’s been a while so I’ve stopped really thinking about it. I just enjoy it now, wherever ‘it’ is.

LM: Wow, so, whether you’re living in the realspace or some kind of augmented reality “Reelspace”—you’ve become indifferent to knowing the truth about which it is? Real life or a projection?

MO: Well, does it matter? Whatever we perceive is our reality, so whether I – or you for that matter – am or are in the realspace or Blue Lake – why would it matter when we don’t know the difference? We’re just playing out our content – sorry, life – the best we know how, the best we can, trying to contribute something meaningful while enjoying ourselves. That’s why I think it doesn’t matter, whether we know it or not. We’d be the same either way.

LM: I guess you’re right. It kind of brings to mind this part of a David Foster Wallace essay, “Tense Present,” that I really like and used to assign to my writing classes. It’s actually a footnote, and I’d love to get your take on it.

MO: Sure.

LM: Okay, here goes. It’s a footnote story about an adolescent pot-smoker who is suddenly struck by a “ghastly possibility” that what he sees as the color green is actually everyone else’s perception of blue, so what he’s calling green and others are calling green isn’t actually the same color. The only consistency is the language used to describe the color, and what’s being perceived are two different things. “What we ‘mean’ by the word blue is what he ‘means’ by green, etc.”

MO: Yeah totally, I agree. All we can really know is that we’re prisoners of the perception of our singular perspectives, and eyelets only give us an external view. But isn’t that kind of freeing, too? If I learned anything from what I went through with that disaster with Nic and Mire, it was this. The only perception you can trust is your own. And you can’t trust it, but that doesn’t matter. You have faith. You know? Follow your path. Purge your distractions. I had to go through all that because it taught me this lesson. Maybe that sounds simplistic?

LM: No no, I love it. I certainly hope after people read The Distractions, they’ll be able to reckon with their own.

MO: Sure, but it’s not all bad. I still like to think of distractions as signposts pointing the way!

LM: Yeah, what was up with that phrase? I kind of wondered whether you were in Blue Lake all along.

MO: [Laughs] Well, my friend and co-conspirator. Perhaps, aren’t we all?

LM: It didn’t necessarily sound like a bad thing—a place you can go where you’re automatically good at anything you feel like doing, and you can explore different outcomes of paths in your life you didn’t choose or get to take, can swim and surf with multicolored therapy dolphins? It sounded healing honestly. I could use a stint at Blue Lake myself right now.

MO: There was a lot I needed to heal from.

LM: Sure, but none of it was your fault.

MO: You really think so?

LM: It seemed like you were a survivor of your circumstances, playing out all your content wondering if your PieChart would add up to something that looked like a life worth living – being onReel constantly, what a lot of pressure.

MO: Isn’t your timeline like this too, though?

LM: I suppose that it is.

MO: You all are just stuck on screens. We had the advantage of being free of them. I think I saw you walk into a post the other day! And almost get run over by a bicycle! You gotta look up, girl! Trust me, you’d much prefer content with an eyelet.

LM: I might be content with that. [Laughs] I’m always thinking of ways to get offscreen, you know?

MO: OffReel?

LM: We don’t have that terminology, but basically, yeah. OffReel.

MO: Are you an OffReeler?

LM: No. I use my phone all the time. I am probably addicted to Instagram.

MO: What’s that?

LM: That’s like Reel but before your time. I’m a victim of the infinite scroll, because, you know, the next great thing just has to be right down there, just beneath whatever I am looking at right now!

MO: And so forth, forever.

LM: Do you ever still think about Nic and Mire?

MO: Think, sure. But I can’t check. It’s too embarrassing after what happened, the, um, accident. I can’t go onReel again because I’ll kickstart that whole habit or else find out for sure I’ve been left in Blue Lake.

LM: I’m glad, actually, that you’re offReel.

MO: Thanks.

LM: Whatever ended up happening with Flavio?

MO: Oh, we meet in ReeledIn Conference Suites all the time! We’re super close. We even have a lot of dinners together in there, Flavio where they are and me where I am. I don’t know what the future holds, but Flavio and I adore each other. I’m so glad we connected and reconnected.

LM: And Ari?

MO: Ari is doing much better these days with their climate refugee springoff and living a quiet life on one of the last remaining islands. I can’t say where. I promised. Ari only wants peace and quiet at this point.

LM: And what about Nic?

MO: Who’s Nic? [Laughs]

LM: I want to conclude by asking your advice for anyone struggling with envy, comparison, and/or screen-slash-technology addiction?

MO: Yeah. I’ve thought about this a lot and figured out some things to say. You just have to find a way back into the here and now, whatever that means and whatever that is for you.

Meditation, yoga, swimming, walking. It can be free. We want to be loved so much and so unconditionally—my own need for this led me to create Alovue, who went wild and rogue and had to be destroyed time and time again but kept coming back—that we get distracted by illusions of others getting this kind of vast love that we cannot, and by our own misinterpretation of being somehow unlovable.

You have to see that everything you need, and what you really need, is within, and you’re fine. You don’t have to become an offReeler, but spend time away from your eyelet. Lots and lots of time. Sorry. I mean your screen.

LM: Thanks, Mischa. It’s been awesome hearing this perspective from the future.

AB: That’s totally sterling, Liza. Keep on rockin’ the past.

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Liza Monroy is the author of the novels The Distractions (Regalo) and Mexican High (Spiegel & Grau/Random House), the essay collection Seeing As Your Shoes Are Soon To Be On Fire (Counterpoint/Soft Skull), and the memoir The Marriage Act: The Risk I Took To Keep My Best Friend In America And What It Taught Us About Love (Counterpoint/Soft Skull). Her articles and essays have appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times, O: The Oprah Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, the L.A. Times, Newsweek, Poets & Writers, Marie Claire, Everyday With Rachael Ray, Jane, Self, Bust and various anthologies, including both New York Times’ Best of Modern Love, Best American Food Writing, Goodbye To All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York, One Big Happy Family, and Wedding Cake For Breakfast. She lives in Santa Cruz, California, teaches through Stanford Continuing Studies Creative Writing Program, and in her free time enjoys surfing, reading, yoga, sunshine, and coffee.

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: Interviews, On Writing