NYC Scrapbooking

At the risk of being gauche, allow me to quote myself: a couple of years ago I described this blog as a "pastiche" or "a collage, a repository for memories, a collection of favorite things, a funhouse of nostalgia, a love letter to the past and future, a work of art, a self-contained world that invites you to visit a while and become absorbed in."

You might also call it a scrapbook.

In its way, Mr NYC is a digital scrapbook, roughly defined as a document of precious memories, a collection of souvenirs and mementos, and an opportunity to channel one's inner artist.

Scrapbooks need not be literal books full of pieces of paper and objects of one's past or journey thru life. They can be, more metaphorically speaking, things like diaries or autobiographies or videos -- or blogs like this one -- anything that captures and makes sense of the past and provides tea leaves for the future.

I recently encountered two examples of metaphorical scrapbooking, both of which fascinate me: a new exhibit about Lou Reed at the NYPL that is a collection of his papers, recordings, and various nickknacks, showing the work and evolution of this great and influential NYC musician; and a new novel by, of all people, the actor David Duchovny that is based on his memories of growing up in NYC.

This exhibit and this novel are, in a way, scrapbooks of these two very different NYC artists -- as is this humble blog.

When Anne Frank wrote her diary hiding out in that apartment in Amsterdam or when Marco Polo dictated his memories of China while literally imprisoned, these two people who would otherwise be lost to history instead were made immortal.  They told their stories, they recorded and "scrapbooked" their lives, and in doing so not only made us better understand their times and adventures (told both from the perspective of two people who were literally trapped) but made us understand that the world was a greater place, and the human spirit more indomitable, than we could ever imagine.

Scrapbooking is a great start.