A notebook in Teal

 I found my journal from 2013-2014 last week. I had recovered the composition book with amazing paper from paper and postcards I found poking around New Orleans.  I remember sitting on the floor in the at sweet flat in the Marigny and 

Lists of the books I read, notes on prospective story ideas, idle thoughts on the practice or action of 'collecting' being separate from art or artefact, alongside the question of whether the museum is the modern castle. 

Notes on houses we looked at back when the Binnington and I were a 'we.' 

Notes from a recap of discussions from my early days at the incubator in Chicago, notes from the talk gave at SAA in 2014.  

And the moment when I realised I really needed to modify where I saw myself as being from (not really anywhere) when I decided to be what I am: the girl from western civ, a tangible by-product of the America during the Cold War, back when my mom was the best grandmother in the world and my dad was around to bullshit with me over coffee, leaning against the back of his pickup. Back when it just seemed like there would just be more time together.

Apparently, I thought about things like 'escrow for records,' and 'heritage in crises,' which are areas I still ruminate about now. Earlier this week, the incredibly talented Luke Capasso, a Dayton Ohio based comedian and cultural commentator (as well as f*cking amazing and inspiring building contractor) shared about his collection of charity shopped VHS cassettes.  I spend a great deal of time going through the material of the lives of others, often becoming the Keeper of their memories without ever fully having the context. I can make supposition, I can hold space, I can make sure they'll survive a bit longer, but outside of that, I am merely a voyeur.  It brought to mind the Antony Bourdain documentary that opened last summer in the US and the use of artificial intelligence and voice synthesizers to give sound to his journals and letters. This then led me to how we can manipulate the historical record, even our own recordings to depict a reality that never really existed, about how material can be used to entrap and ensnare and it made me wonder why people go to such great lengths to cause harm and heartache to others, using these tools nefariously.  I don't want to think that every con-artist is out to cause heartache or damage, nor am I naive enough to think we're always going to just 'get along,' but I do wonder about decisions and advancements made in times of great pain and maddness - such as in grief, if those kinds of inventions are ever able to free from their origins.  Or are they, like money/power/energies, neutral?  Or is it like what Keith Jarrett says about Jazz: that 'it happens. You have to be present for it. That simple.'  These moments where the beginning and endings are not deliberate or laid out with intent, that we have to be present for that somehow get captured and left behind...

Last week I finally got around to watching 'Archives 81' on Netflix.  Obviously, I was hooked from the beginning, even down to the three note tune that made up the basis of purgatorial opera. The inter-connectedness of the archivist/conservationist's origin story to the material was disturbing and enthralling and reminds me of the questions I wrestle with, taking possession of my father and grandmother/great-aunt's material (because legally, she was my great-aunt but biologically she was my grandma and yes, that makes my father his own grandpa and no, he never met Ray Stevens, but we all loved 'Mississippi Squirrel,') and how it comes to be that I can even think of researching into my grandfather's murder. Its like messing with fire ants without a can of kerosene nearby. 

Then I find this list - written in all caps - under the statement 'I don't want to own the old stuff, I just want to give it a safe harbor, - PH NEUTRAL  INTERPRET ENGAGE PROVENANCE ELUSIVE FONDS ENTHUSIAM AUTHENTIC TIMELY LAWYERS HISTORY UNIQUE COVERT EPHEMERA SECRETS FORGOTTEN INTERSECTIONS HIDDEN FREE ORDER PROVOCATIVE COMMUNAL EXHILERATING HUMIDITY and I have no idea what I was thinking or doing.