Attention Inventory: Cursed Nostalgia, Croc Loafers, Trending Parmesan

A mixed bag of recent preoccupations...

Nothing succeeds without taking stock. Below, this month’s installment of “Attention Inventory,” a list of 5 recent preoccupations including: cursed nostalgia, crocodile loafers, parmesan trends, & new ways to think about old images.

From Parallel Encyclopaedia #1 by Batia Suter, via Saint Martin Bookshop

1. The Charge of Association 

I have been thinking about archival or found imagery, and how today it exists most commonly as a kind of placeholder for romanticizing a past we didn’t experience; an easy nostalgia for uncontextualized history.

I have half-baked feelings about all of this (which I will spare you from), but have found a satisfying salve in revisiting the work of Swiss artist Batia Suter, whose work starts by accumulating vast collections of imagery, sourced from “lost books” (how she refers to books found on the street or in flea markets). After gathering, she disassembles and reassembles the imagery anew, to effects both encyclopedic and hypnotically disorienting. 

While Suter’s books can be hard to track down, I recommend this essay in Aperture; as well as her publications Exosphere and Hexamiles, both published by Roma Editions.

Related: Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa’s The Lives of Images: Repetition, Reproduction, and Circulation

A plate of parmesan hunks on the snacks menu at Stir Crazy in Los Angeles

2. Crumbles of Cheese

I’ve identified the plate of “cheese crumbles” (and or “shavings” and or “hunks”) as a new trending appetizer/snack. No further comments at this time.

3. Dedication to my own nonsense

Laughed at this line in a Paris Review essay:

“I had books to write, friends to see, drinks to drink, promises to keep. But always there was the ongoing project of looking out for volumes three and four of the Woolf complete diaries.”

As ridiculous as this example is…it’s true. There are always those things lodged in some subterranean layer of one’s brain. The things, ideas to search for in between the boring drivel of it all. Maybe some of those things are subconscious yearnings or “meaning”…but also: the perfect jasmine perfume oil (not too floral, not too rotten); soft crocodile loafers; a well-fitting baseball cap; the non-urgent, non-necessary wants that linger in the background.

Small Pocket Compass, 1915, via the Smithsonian archives

4. 24 Hours Away

Sometimes you actually do not need a vacation. You need 24 hours. I attempt to do this monthly—a mental unplug/replug, experienced elsewhere. Because I’m obsessed with hotels, I usually opt for staying someplace easy and (obviously) not too far. An hour or two away, tops.

You can’t miss out on anything, or accomplish anything in 24 hours, and honestly that’s the point. It’s a pause, not a pilgrimage.

5. La Lom

Listening to lately—La Lom (or The Los Angeles League Of Musicians), a take on classic cumbia, Americana, and Afro-Cuban jazz.

Until next time,

LP