Obsolescence is the natural ferment of life.

For some of us this is a beautiful (if haunting) process that everything goes through. My dream is to tour the abandoned prisons and mental hospitals of the states to listen to the ghosts and their bilious collective memory of chains and tools for silence and racks full of unattainable release. I want to photograph the detritus of my tribe, of my adjacent tribe, of the lost and the lonely and the bent. I want to walk through the dusty sinew of the disenfranchised, I want to tie it to my own muscles like a plow of of memory.

Obsolescence eats away at people who aren’t ready to move forward. It’s the boogie-man of old men and women who can’t shake the Isms of their youth that were the foundations of their self-image. It’s the boogie-man of middle aged men and women who begin to understand that their age advances rigidly without blinking at their attempts to arrest time.

We can appreciate archaic mechanisms, social mores, and methods without worshiping them like fallen Gods. We can pay homage to the past without fetishizing it.

I used to have a small collection of vintage typewriters. I loved the sound they made while I ticked my thoughts onto paper. I loved the viscerally satisfying way the ink hit the paper. But the truth is, I much prefer to write using a computer because the tedium of trying to correct the typewritten word adds nothing worthy to my craft. In fact, the best thing that’s ever happened to me and writing is the invention of the word processor. I don’t want to go back.

I love to listen to ghosts and I find obsolescence exquisitely beautiful but I don’t miss my vinyl records or typing and retyping papers over and over again. I don’t miss calling people on the actual telephone or being limited to meeting and knowing only people in my immediate community. I don’t miss the obligation to send a bunch of people Christmas cards who never care about me other times of the year and who never give me personal messages in their cards. I don’t see the importance of writing in cursive when writing in print has ALWAYS been easier to read which is why books aren’t printed in cursive. I don’t miss only being able to research subjects with books written at least a year ago or more, or worse yet, reading encyclopedias for information. I mean, back then that’s what we had and so I loved reading them, but if I could have had access to the internet when I was a kid I could have sparked my imagination and learned more facts than I actually did.

I was a real letter writer when I was young. I hand-wrote hundreds of letters and I loved it. But I wasn’t sorry when it became easier and easier to communicate via e-mail and when I could actually type letters because after I had Max I couldn’t write by hand so much without my hand going numb.

It’s a false premise that value can only be found in things that are HARD or TAKE FOREVER TO CREATE. It’s a seriously false premise that anything that comes easily or is obtained easily is less valuable than things obtained through serious lengthy toil. That’s a bunch of biblical bullshit training for you right there. If we were all encouraged less in having “manners” and more in being honest and true to ourselves and others then all communications would be more meaningful. Who the fuck needs a polite card from someone who doesn’t actually respect you but has sent you a card because that’s the polite custom?

Do you value things I say in an email less than things I say in a handwritten letter? Fuck that! It takes me just as much time to write a thoughtful email as it does to write a note out by hand, my process of thought is no different, my sincerity doesn’t suffer – so if you find my emails deficient I suggest you examine yourself instead of me.

The material fact is that if I say “I love you” it doesn’t matter what medium I use to express it, it’s honest because I’m honest. I can phone it to you, I can write you in italic fancy script and send it franked by rich people, I can send it post covered in emphatic stickers, I can say it over the landline, I can text it, tweet it, or share it via Instagram. My expression is always authentic because that’s who I am.

When I was young I thought I was an anachronistic person. Then I met people who truly worship at the anachronistic altar of everything old and obsolete and I began to understand my true place in the universe. I’m a cross-genre human. I love vintage style and old things and antique furniture and old houses but I’m a very modern human. I want to mix all the ages together in a mosh pit of anarchistic aggression and see what comes out whole against modern times.

I’m a cross-genre person and my time is inching down into the deep nothing.