My Digital Attic
TAoN No. 177: What attention time capsules are hidden in yours? An accidental year-end music issue.
Today, a brief tale of making some pleasing discoveries in my digital attic.
While I’ve mentioned a few times that I’m not very good at keeping a proper journal or notebook, that doesn’t mean I don’t make a lot of notes. To the contrary, I note things to do, books to read, shows to watch, silly projects to start, ideas for my journalistic work, friends to reach out to, household tasks, and so on. Some of these things I actually do, but inevitably others are neglected.
Aside from sticky notes, note cards, and actual notebooks, a lot of these notes live in digital form — Word documents, saved links in Feedly, articles in Instapaper, thousands of notes in Evernote.
Every so often, like a hoarder skulking around a storage unit, I try to weed through all this digital stuff, to sort the keepers from the trash. It feels like a good year-end activity, and that’s the spirit I was in when I started going through Evernote (which I have used for about a dozen years), and promptly encountered a file called “Music,” that I had no memory of. It was a haphazard and obviously abandoned list of obscure songs that, apparently, I’d overheard on various radio shows, long ago. Almost none of the 20 or so titles meant anything to me.
But this turned out to be a total score.
I didn’t recognize the name “Golden Lady in the Graham Cracker Window,” by the Marion Brown Quintet, at all, but it’s on Spotify — and it’s beautiful! Don Covay & His Goodtimers rang a bell, but “Take This Hurt Off Me” didn’t, and was a treat. And “I Wanta Holler (But the Town’s Too Small),” by Gary U.S. Bonds, is one I instantly did remember as a song I’d searched for in vain after overhearing it somewhere. It’s easily available now, and so so good.
And so on. Your tastes may of course differ, but he point is that this long-neglected note turned out to be a gift from the version of me that made it, however many years ago, to me right now.
Austin Kleon has written in the past about the importance of not just keeping but revisiting notebooks or journals, both for doing creative work and to help one remember. Clearly I don’t have anything close to the thoughtful systems he describes, but even if I did, I’d say this digital-attic discovery was, while related, also a little different.
I doubt I’m the only one with a digital hoard, though the contents of your “attic” may be different: perhaps a sea of neglected digital photos, finely crafted playlists that haven’t been heard in ages, watch lists in various streaming services, whatever. But I recommend trying your own version of what I did accidentally.
Yes, I set out to clean my attic — and basically failed. No regrets! It felt like opening a random trunk and finding it filled with artifacts that it was pure, impossible-to-predict pleasure to rediscover. So consider what souvenirs of your past selves, what attention time capsules, might be lurking, and how they might — or, just as importantly, might not — connect with your attention today.
I would never — I could never — have set out to find these little sonic treasures I lost track of. And of course that’s exactly what made them so much fun to find.
So take a look around your digital attic. Who knows what attention time capsules might be there?
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MORE MUSIC!
I didn’t plan this to be such a music-heavy issue — though open-earedness is an important dimension of attention — but once again, I have made a big ‘ol playlist of my favorite songs of the year. At 115 songs, it lasts about seven hours, and is meant to be played on shuffle. Please note some songs include explicit language.
And this year I also have a second list, of my favorite instrumental music of 2024. There’s some overlap with the main list. Seven hours and 45 minutes, again best on shuffle. Good for background music while you explore your “attic”!
One last note. Earlier this year I published an interview with Doug Schulkind, veteran WFMU DJ and overseer of its truly remarkable Give the Drummer Radio stream. Doug is one of the most open-eared people I’ve ever met — a truly adventurous and inspiring listener.
Inspired by Doug myself, I launched an Every Single [X]-style listening quest: I set out to listen to at least one episode of all of the 30-plus shows on the GDS stream — each hosted by deeply knowledgeable (and decidedly open-eared) DJs.
It took me several months, but I really enjoyed the quest. Sure, I heard lots of music I didn’t care for. But I also heard some true gems that I seriously doubt any algorithm would have served me. And to contrast the best-of-2024 lists, hardly any of this music is “new” — but it was new to me. Naturally, I made a playlist of highlights from this listening adventure. Here it is.
Icebreakers & Missing Words will be back in the New Year!
IN OTHER NEWS
I was pleased to answer some questions from The Booktender about my 2024 leisure reading. Best of all it was a chance to give a shout out to my secret book-recommendation weapon: my friend Sam. (Thx so much, Abra!)
What’s the one thing you notice that no one else notices? (Thx: Erin)
Here’s a good Every Single [X] quest — The McTrot: visiting every McDonald’s in Manhattan (there are 47) in one day. From a recent episode of the McD-centric Hamburger Business Review podcast.
Speaking of McDonald’s, here’s a thoughtful piece about the fast-food chain’s role in communities. (Big thx to George W for the pointer.)
Sex and relationship columnist Dan Savage invents (or hijacks) a holiday, and does a great job defining the component parts of holiday invention. Some of the details are probably NSFW and may offend some, but I found them funny. I previously wrote about inventing your own holiday here.
For the gifts file: “The best holiday gifts make you feel like you’ve been spied on, lovingly, by a psychic who sees your soul but doesn’t judge you for what’s there.” — Zooey Deschanel
“Learn about the Moon and its path around our planet in this highly interactive essay from Bartosz Ciechanowski.” — MetaFilter
OKAY THAT’S IT! HAPPY NEW YEAR!
As always, I value your feedback: suggestions, critiques, positive reinforcement, etc. Constructive insults may be directed at me, not at anyone else. I also welcome your tips or stories or personal noticing rituals, things we need a word for, and of course your icebreakers, at consumed@robwalker.net. Or use the comments.
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rw
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All this by Rob Walker PO Box 171, 748 Mehle St., Arabi LA 70032. Send me mail!
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I’ve been journaling for 52 years and I’m still surprised at the difference between “calendar” events and the “parallel universe” of epiphanies, synchronicities, serendipities, dream messages, and all those moments that nod to me (to each of us!) in private conspiracy!
I've been journaling every day for the past three years and love that, but I also pull images from the internet like a maniac, and have since it began. I also regularly go through them and discard a bunch but keep the best stuff, which I back them up on CDs, which I still burn. Now I feel like going to find some old CDs and see what all I have on there.