Dear Friends,

What lists do you make? Do you write down the things you hope to accomplish in a day? The groceries you need to buy? Do you keep a running list of all the places you want to travel to someday? Do you record the books you’ve read, the movies you’ve watched, the birds you’ve observed in the backyard? Do you keep lists of ideas to explore, or projects to start when you finally have some spare time?

And how do you make your lists? In a notebook? On sticky notes? Do you quickly jot them down on a whiteboard, or a scrap of paper? The back of a discarded envelope? The back of your hand? Are your lists bulleted? Numbered? Dashed? Do you draw tiny boxes, marking X’s or check marks in them when the thing is done? Do you make lists in an app on your phone or text file on your computer? In a spreadsheet? Do you compose lists in your head, rewriting and rehearsing to lock them into memory?

Are your lists organized by categories, like with like? Do you rely on logical or expected taxonomies? With headings: “Chores”, “Plants for the garden”, “Stuff we need”? Or are they random? Miscellaneous assemblies? Ad hoc? Do the list items float by in a stream of consciousness, the private order of things only apparent (or not even) to you, a record of intimate thoughts and actions?

Wondering about your lists makes me think of a well known literary list from an essay by Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentine writer, fablist, and librarian. Borges’ list, he claims, comes from “a certain Chinese encyclopaedia entitled 'Celestial Empire of Benevolent Knowledge’”:

[...] it is written that the animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies.

A list like this subverts classification, inspires intellectual play — and poetry. The French philosopher Michel Foucault cited this list as the provocation for his book The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. David Byrne created a drawing,  “The Evolution of Category”, derived from the strange non-categories of the list. Have you ever made a list, set it aside, returned to it later, and maybe been struck by its unexpected poetry? Or, in its strangeness, wondered about why you made the list in the first place, wondered what message it might convey to someone else? Or, maybe, like me, wrote a list poem?

Poems can be like songs; lists can be poems. What if a list is like a song? Lists have a shape and a tone. So I wonder how a list can be like a melody, where every key becomes a different category of notes (items on the list) that make sense together, communicating something more than the sum of parts. Notes in the key of C major make a materials list for the home renovation project. A minor records the friendships that have lapsed. F# major for the list of awards and honors on the curriculum vitae. Even the random, disordered things in the miscellaneous list hold together, albeit with tension, like one of Arnold Schoenberg’s twelve-tone compositions, notes discordant but bending toward each other through sequence and pattern.

Have you ever felt terrorized by a list? A list that’s too long? Too much stuff, too many things to do? Too scattered, like the junk drawer you keep shoving random shit into? Can lists be dangerous? Do they disturb our sense of present-ness, always yanking us forward into some unobtainable future where list after list concatenates into an infinite chain of desire and suffering? ( ;-p ) Too extreme? In Michael Sacasas’ latest technology and culture newsletter, he reviews German sociologist Hartmut Rosa’s recent book, The Uncontrollability of the World. Quoting Rosa, the tyranny of the list goes something like this:

More and more, for the average late modern subject of the ‘developed’ western world, everyday life revolves around and amounts to nothing more than tackling an ever-growing to-do list. The entries on this list constitute the points of aggression that we encounter as the world … all matters to be settled, attended to, mastered, completed, resolved, gotten out of the way.

We must take care. A list is not just a list. May your lists be whimsical, brief, and easily abandoned (or sung aloud)!

Warmly,

Jeremy