indices, archives, libraries

When I was doing my undergraduate I began to develop (well, I didn't know that's what I was doing at the time, but it was) the research method I use now, which is three parts randomness and one part extremely good luck. I walk into a library, get myself familiar with the classification system, and wander through the rows of shelves until I see something interesting. This method does have its problems: for one, it means that I tend to be overwhelmed with information, sometimes to the point of feeling really awful because I'm too interested in too many things! But its strength is the connections is allows (forces) me to draw between ideas, disciplines, objects, and ways of thinking.

I remember going into the library on campus and wanting to find a book--a sort of magic index--that would contain and anticipate everything I'd ever be interested in: red silk ribbons next to the history of medicine next to botanical illustration next to print ephemera next to practical sewing next to Derrida. And everything would be linked to everything.

Turns out that index is the university, or maybe the people there and the university, or maybe the whole world, everything referring to something else. So my method is working for me--I'm developing my own index, one where improvisational music production does link up with love. Where memory, poesis, and desire are on the same page as Japanese craft books and natural-colored linen.

There's at least one person I can think of who would not be surprised by this--he pointed out my tendency to contradict myself (joyfully and wholeheartedly) early on in our friendship. He's also the person who got me thinking about indices and archives and libraries. All this is about systems of classification, which, in the end, are personal--even the ones we take for granted, like the Dewey Decimal System (not, I was shocked [shocked!] to find out, in use everywhere in the whole wide world), or color names, or kinds of weather.

As I've gone through my boxes, I've taken photos of some documents I don't need to keep but don't want to forget--things that connect, somehow, to what I'm doing and where I'm going. I've begun a sort of archive of them. The process of categorizing information and sorting documents is another way of learning how I think about networks between objects and ideas.