The Archivist
Some cultures do not have a past or future tense. These linguistic constructs aren't necessary in their world; they live in the immediate, the present. Things that have already happened aren't cataloged and although there must be a degree of memory associated with them, they don't fit into a conception of the now. Imagine the medieval mind - one that doesn't think in terms of flashbacks, one which never hears a song twice but for it being sung again, one which has never seen itself except through direct confrontation of a mirror or reflection.
Our world is a different place and along with it, our language strives for descriptions and metaphors for the past and future. Governments have entire departments for the archival of data. We use words like bibliography or discography without a thought. We have private companies whose sole purpose is to suck in the past like a vacuum cleaner and make it retrievable with a simple click of the mouse online.
eBay ran a commercial not too long ago of a boy with a wooden boat on the shores of Cape Cod - white lettering towards the bottom of the screen marks this as 1972. After a few moments of playing with the boat the boy runs off-screen, forgetting that his boat is still in the water. The next two shots are the boat drifting off and the boat at high seas during a storm. It sinks to the bottom. A shot later we find this boat in the hands of some Asian fishermen unloading some nets. The last part of the commercial shows the boy, now a grown man, looking at it on eBay as the tag line comes through in a soothing, nostalgic voice:
What if nothing was ever forgotten?
What if nothing was ever lost?
I scratched these down after I saw it from my hotel room in Texas a few months ago. The commercial, to me, had a massive appeal. Not only does this culture offer the linguistic and mental constructs to conjure an image of the past, we are given the imagination of its possibility. In films we are presented with visual cues of time based constructs - the scene that blurs out for a flashback, the use of child and adult actors to stitch things together, and makeup to make it all believable.
It makes me think of LA's KKJZ1 - jazz radio mecca for anyone with a bit of an ear. Who knows more about the process of keeping and recycling experiences than these folks? I would listen usually until the talk got to me, but each track was not just a composition, it was a recording made somewhere, the year was such and such, with so and so on the drums, so and so on the horn, and so on. Jazz is about never experiencing music exactly the same and it's the biggest irony that its listeners are the most feverish archivists of all.
So we make it our goal to cheat time. We buy devices. We obsessively archive things: old records, CDs, books, magazines, links, postcards, letters, phone messages, pictures, computers, family heirlooms, gifts, action figures, computer programs, calendars, cars, baseball hats, coffee cups, watches, pez dispenders, emails, radio shows, greeting cards... we archive the way hungry dogs eat: swallowing without chewing. Just in case.
Maybe it's because we know what it's like to hear an old recording that not only sounds as good, but takes you back to that stage of life - the happiness, the angst, the awkwardness, the delicious mix of emotions that descend at any given moment. Sometimes a little time travel is good for the down times: The Cure track that makes me think of working in the darkroom for yearbook, the Tanum card that makes me remember a painful Christmas, the old printout of an essay that made your blood rush, the book that makes you remember that one trip... its multisensory bliss all over again.
I'm an archivist. I seek to keep everything. My language, obsessions, and clutter merge together in my attempts to keep it all. Every link I'm sent, all the CDs I brought with me from California, and all my books as I continue to accumulate them. It amazes me how insatiable my desire is to keep, store, and retrieve.
From South Dakota, I live on a lot of these archives2. I'm never sorry for packing it all in when I have a few moments for a Kraftwerk disc, or some old BBC Radio One I've got in mp3s, or my old photos and cards from friends.
The question that presents itself is not why, it's how. How do you archive? Right now I'm planning on setting up a machine as a digital music archive, using CDex methodically with all the CDs that I own. For streaming media, I use Total Recorder to archive songs and radio shows I've enjoyed. Next might be some simple software that would allow me to enter all my books ISBN numbers into a spreadsheet and have it build a database for me. I have no idea how to do physical photos (albums are cheesy and take a long time). Maybe when I'm next in CA I'll visit The Container Store for my other stuff. Any ideas?
1KKJZ has online streaming here if you're interested.
2Unfortunately, I didn't archive enough television.
2:53:04 PM 
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