On my personal e-mail, I have a small set of unopened messages. I am normally a ruthless trimmer of digital archives. No need to keep what is past expiration and utility.
I suppose I am like this in other facets of life, as well. I do not have a large collection of clung-to nostalgia. I frequently trim my collections of books and clothing, particularly after events from which I garner more. I am known, among friends, family, and colleagues as a somewhat emotionless recycler of basements, cabinets, shared spaces, and classrooms.
Hell, I am the antithesis of a supply-hoarding teacher. I may have moved into my first classroom after two women who retired in consecutive years, leaving me with their 54 years of collected debris, but I keep almost nothing. I spent four days disassembling and recycling their years of nostalgia (left, rather non-nostalgically) but I spend less than ten seconds dragging each year’s accumulated digital files from my lessons into the trash.
I have no interest in re-using what does not need to run again.
I do, however, keep the aforementioned e-mail messages in a file labeled “Notes,” as the collected messages often have links to the kinds of rabbit holes into which I like to tunnel.
From Jason Kottke, Austin Kleon, and more, these messages help me explore many areas, mostly of interest, while trying to avoid echo chambers, about which Austin Kleon has me thinking a lot lately.
A few of my recent favorites are:
I watched the tribute to Sinead O’Connor, which was so beautifully done, I followed it to a link of a group of 1000 Irish people doing the same. That had a connecting link to David Byrne singing “Heroes” with a crowd of Choir, Choir, Choir-trained people in tribute to David Bowie. Though it was odd to hear Byrne instead of Bowie, seeing Byrne’s face transform when he realized what a touching moment he was inside of, was worth the watch. I stopped my trail upon viewing their rendition of “Karma Police” because watching that many people transformed with emotion was getting me emotional. (Though, I will admit, while writing this, I dipped back into that river to watch them perform “Wish You Were Here.” I wonder if all of these are as well done?)
This one is quirky as hell, yet a dangerous time-consumer of numerous rabbit holes for the unprepared. Neal.fun lives up to his billing, as almost every click on his Substack page is worth a look and a few laughs. I was horrified by the Baby Map, intrigued by the Life Stats, and found myself shaking my head at the Internet Artifacts, especially because I was in school for almost the entirety of what I would consider the pre-internet age yet, to browse the history, could see I was just missing out. Probably being a poor college student with limited means to do much outside of our shared apartment played a key role.
I did not dig into this beyond the first video, but know this is a huge subculture of people. Probably something I would have done, and done badly and stupidly, accelerating the physical decline I am, somehow, already encountering. I did not pursue it out of a kind of jealousy, knowing that I am past the time when this would have made sense in that illogical way that always made total sense to me and, therefore, had to be done.
I don’t know what pursuits may emerge next, especially as I had marked on my mental calendar that November would be the month when I would (re)start writing my mini-musical, in earnest. (It is November 3 and I have yet to commit.)