Scratching my niches: Number 7
Never enough paper, never enough letters
👋 Greetings friends, it’s been too long and I’ve missed you.
Today, I try to unpack a feeling I’ve been exploring these past couple years.
I touched on part of this in my last piece – the immense gratitude for the time this pandemic allowed me to spend with my two little girls (one of which was just born at the time), and the moments and memories we’ve been creating.
But there was more to untangle that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, and felt too important that I couldn’t dive back into this newsletter until I tried to do it justice.
Last summer I got a text on group chat: “have you guys listened to the Song Exploder podcast at all? Highly recommend the Khruangbin episode, so fucking interesting, a real gut-punch of a tune too.”
Discovering this song and listening to the accompanying interview where the artist described her writing process – I felt seen (and that gut-punch too). The lyrics captured so much of what I’d been trying to communicate with myself – this longing, this frustration, this joy, this feeling of utmost importance and impermanence.
An almost clinging, while in the midst of each moment, to capture and hold on to it.
Ooh, one to remember
Writing it down now
So we won't forget
Ooh, never enough paper
Never enough letters
So we won't forget
As I went about daily life I kept coming back to these words and to this idea.
As much as I would try to brute force my way through polishing a new piece of writing, or curation of interesting ideas, or brainstorming in a journal, I just couldn’t move on; I had to find the words to do it justice.
It felt connected to a problem I’ve been trying to solve for so long – this seemingly existential desire to capture everything.
Perhaps it’s connected to my interest in productivity, tools, and technology, wanting to create the perfect system for my notes, ideas, tasks, projects, etc. so things get done and don't slip through the cracks.
Or perhaps it’s fueled by my subconscious fears of forgetting while my brain races to the next idea (thanks, ADHD).
Both factors for sure, but while the desire to sort through this problem was still there, the urgency to solve it began to fade. I found myself more focused on living the questions (and documenting pieces of it) than finding the answers.
In the podcast, Laura, the songwriter, talks about her experience:
When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a writer, and at some point in my life, I realized that if I wanted to make stories, I had to go out and collect them. So, I went on this hike in California with someone I had just met, who was so kind to me, who saw that I needed a friend and took me on this beautiful hike. And after that day, I sort of realized that I had a lot of stories in my back pocket to tell. I was saying, “You know what? Actually in my life, I've lived a life of adventure and I have all of these stories that I've collected and I should write them down so that I remember them.
So after my hike, I came to Houston and I took a day of silence. I didn't listen to anything. I tried to not even talk to myself in my own head, just be in silence with a pen and a notebook. And I just wrote everything I could. And while I was writing, I would think about other stories that came up and I didn't want to forget any of them, so I had all of these post-its to remind me or to trigger these different stories that were coming up in my mind. And this just ended up being a story of its own, just writing about holding onto a memory.
A few days later, after listening to the song on repeat, I went for a run. When I came back, I wrote this down:
If there’s one thing I want to keep from these past 2 years of the pandemic and being a new dad, it’s this magnified awareness of our ephemeral existence, and the endless exploration of it.
Though a focus on optimizing productivity is still a worthwhile endeavor, what I’m actually after is a pursuit to optimize presence – a pursuit that has an inverse relationship with effort, and has no due date.
I can’t capture it all. These moments are fleeting.
I can try to simply remember them, but our thoughts and memories alone are fallible.
So there must be a balance to strive for, an attempt to commit to memory these everyday moments of utmost importance. The good and the bad, representing this moment in time.
Jot down what I can, so I won’t forget.
✍️
Listen to the song by Khruangbin on Spotify here
And check out the Song Exploder podcast episode (25 min)
Or peep the music video on YouTube👇
Thanks for reading! Until next time 👋