Matthew Speiser

Houses are too expensive. AI is coming for our jobs. Billionaires hate our guts. Maybe it’s time to start a commune? I don’t know how you start a commune. The first thing I’d probably do is call up my friends and ask if they wanted to join my commune. If any of them asked for details I’d hang up immeadiately because I wouldn’t want that kind of negative energy in my commune. Then we’d head north. I envision my commune being in some remote region of the Hudson Valley that’s still kind of close to a “cool” upstate town like Woodstock or Hudson. We’d pull off the road and wander until we found a big field with a really nice looking tree and a view of the Catskills. Then we’d burn the car and smash our phones. I imagine this part feeling really good. A final rejection of big tech and surveillance capitalism and the Toyota Motor Corporation. Next we’d set up a camp: I own an orange tent that I last used at Bonnaroo in 2011. This would be my new home. Ideally my wife would share my tent with me, but I can see a version of this story where she calls me “crazy” and refuses to come with. As for my friends, I’ll award their blind faith by allowing them to sleep wherever they want. I won’t have told them what to bring or what not to bring because that’s not the kind of commune I want to live in. Everyone should be free to make their own decisions. That’s what communes are all about. As for me? I’ll have used my REI Co-op Membership card to purchase a Coleman double-burner gas stovetop and 33 liter YETI cooler for personal use. Once we’re all unpacked, we’ll gather in a circle around the tree and howl at the moon. This will feel really liberating. Millennials opting out of a raw deal and returning to mother earth. Maybe someone will have brought an acoustic guitar and we’ll sing early 2000’s bops like “The General” by Dispatch. A really strong first night for the commune. The next day we’ll go about building the commune. In my ideal commune, there’s always construction going on. Makeshift cabins. A latrine. A campfire for cooking and also singing. So much to build. It won’t be easy. Me and all my friends are knowledge workers. The modern world didn’t train us to work with our hands. And we’ll have already smashed our phones so we can’t research how to build our cabins. But that’s the beauty of the commune. Just a bunch of human beings learning how to live again. How to take care of ourselves and eachother beyond the imposed norms of society. So badass. As for food, I’ll have loaded up on beef jerky and Nature Valley bars at REI. These provisions I will gracefully share with my commune until they learn how to live off the fat of the land. We’ll spend those first few weeks collecting wood and foraging for seeds. We’ll discover a freshwater source where we can fill up our thermoses and also bathe. We’ll have deep conversations about the nature of life and maybe also judge all the people who are still participating in regular society. This is my ideal commune. Chopping wood while telling wholesome jokes. Sunrise hikes. Gnawing on jerky. In the summer we’ll hunt big game with spears. We’ll dance around a large bonfire. In the winter we’ll go ice fishing. We’ll huddle closely for warmth. After awhile everyone will probably start to view me as the spiritual leader of the commune. I’ll say stuff like “we live how we please” and “every day is a gift” and people will find it prophetic. I’m not saying I have to be the spiritual leader. I’m not always the most charismatic in large groups because public speaking makes me anxious. So if someone else orgnaically becomes our spiritual leader that’s cool too. Even though the commune was my idea. But the commune is bigger than any one person anyway. And over time, it’ll probably attract more and more outsiders who realize our way of living is superior. They will come to us organically through the oral tradition but also maybe because I’ll post viral content of the commune on social media (as the spiritual leader of the commune I’ll be allowed an iPhone). It’ll feel really flattering and validating when newcomers seek us out but we’ll act like it’s totally expected. We’ll make them all smash their phones and burn their cars, as is tradition. I think they’ll also have to give us most of their money which we can then spend on more gear at REI (a quarterly pilgrimage to REI is the only connection I foresee us having with the outside world). I also imagine some kind of hazing period where the newcomers have to tend to our crops and dig our latrine pits before they’re fully accepted as members of the commune. After we get popular enough my wife will have to admit she was wrong and come join the commune. I won’t even tell her I told you so, but she’ll definitely have to go through a hazing period like the others. There are no favorites in my commune. Over the years there will be marriages and child births. We’ll learn how to deliver children the same way we learned how to build our cabins: through trial and error. Everyone in the commune will assume responsibility for the childrens’ well-being. We’ll teach them our ways of forraging and building. We’ll sit around the campfire and pass on the history of the world that was. The world of wars and data centers. “How could people ever live like that?” the children will say, and we’ll all add nod our heads in smug agreement. Yes, it will be a much better way of life. And for that reason the authorities will come after us. Probably because someone’s family filed a missing person’s report. Or because the cops saw all the burned up cars on the side of the highway. However, the commune will be adept in our ability to manipulate the police. Or to manipulate child protective services. We’ll show them how our way of life is true and righteous and their way is corrupt and wicked. We’ll show them how we have an awesome brand deal with REI so we get all of our equipment for free. I really don’t think it’ll be that hard of a sell. They’ll probably join the commune right then and there. Because why would you get a formal education and get a job and move to the city and rent an apartment and go to the gym and go to the bar and wait in line for viral baked goods and learn what vibe coding is and delete a post from your Instagram story and join a niche dating app and join a run club and scour OpenTable and get a semen analysis and take a mental health break and take a social media cleanse and form parasocial relationships and swear off alcohol and swear off sex and get angry by the news and doomscroll and doomscroll and doomscroll and doomscroll if you could just go live in the woods with all the people you love?

And so the years will go by. Me and all the OG commune folks will grow old together, and we’ll be tended after by the younger generation who decided to never leave the commune because we talked so much shit on the outside world. We’ll use homeopathic remedies to treat our gout and IBS and those of us who die will be burned in a pyre. The rest of the commune will dance around us as our ashes feed the earth. When I finally pass, I assume my legend as the founder of the commune will be passed down to future generations. I’ll probably get a bigger pyre than normal. Maybe a large feast. But I really won’t care about that. I’ll care that my commune carries on. Future generations who never have to learn who Clavicular is. Who’s only contact with the outside world is REI. That’s my ideal life. That’s my commune. Who’s with me?