I have four main themes occupying my mind in 2018. I'm using this tootstream to organize my thoughts and solidify them in to an action plan that will carry me through the next few months.

Themes:
- I'm buying a house and moving 600 miles and might need to find a job and AHHH! Stress! but also exciting and eventually good and relaxing.

- The modern web is a clusterfuck of bad choices. The modern internet is less safe with each passing day.

- Modern computing in general is kind of shitty, compared to even 10 years ago.

- DIY Media. We all gotta make stuff and support one another in making stuff. We gotta archive the stuff we make so that our movement, our history doesn't disappear.

I'm going to talk about DIY Media first, and then work my way backwards, and maybe pull some projects out of the aether.

DIY Media//Archive your shit//It's not just entertainment, it's a movement.

For a few months in 2015, I spent a lot of time trolling through scans of old punk zines and the noise-arch archive and various other sources talking about underground/independent music from the mid 70s up through the mid 90s.

You know what I found? Lots of really great music, and also many empty space.

When I say empty spaces, I mean I would read a review about a band, or an interview in a zine that would pique my interest. I'd start looking for more information about that band, or the members of that band, and build a little spiderweb of references that took me from scene to scene and show to show over a period of two or three years, almost invariably to end with

1) No Music still available through any sources I have access to

or more likely

2) No recordings ever made.

I can't tell you the number of times I'd see an interview with a band I respect the hell out of talking about how they took the majority of their inspiration from this other group.

And then I'd go dig for information on this other group and find 1) rave reviews 2) nothing else.

We owe it to ourselves, and to the future, to keep a physical record of the things that we do and to help one another in recording and archiving and documenting as much of each of our respective movements as possible.

It's not just music, either.

I'm talking about music because I was Close to music, and I watched these things play out in real time through lots of little decisions that seemed like the best idea at the time but that ultimately resulted in even our relatively recent scene being full of Empty Space where music should be.

But it's more than music. I've seen indie films at local festivals that, if you weren't in the room at one of those screenings, you'd never know existed. They're ghosts.

I have only my memories of them, and you don't even have that.

Or think about all the *Amazing* artists you knew on Tumblr who have completely disappeared, and taken their archives with them.

How many of those artists still even have copies of all of that work?

And, unlike in years past when, in order for something to stop existing it had to actually be destroyed, today things can just stop existing with the click of a button.

There aren't any physical artifacts tied to their existence.

This is not me railing against digital creation and distribution. Let me make that clear.

I love digital creation and distribution.

I honestly am growing to resent the oppressive size and weight of physical media. (Moving more than 1500 LPs from one building to another, to another, to another, to another 600 miles away, to another, and then back 600 miles again will do that to you.)

But we need to remember that the digital can be ephemeral, and make efforts to preserve our work.

Alright! So that was a rant about the preservation of DIY media. If this is a topic that you find interesting, I've written about it a lot (http://ajroach42.com/we-are-terrible-stewards-of-history/) and pretty much everything else I say is going to touch on this at least in passing.

But I'm moving on from archiving to creating for a minute.

In addition to all of these empty spaces caused by media which was no longer commercially available, there were also empty spaces caused by media which was never created.

Many bands never recorded even a single song.

Bands that everyone loved! Bands that packed houses! Bands that were called "the next thing" by the bands that actually went on to be the next thing!

In 1985 this was almost excusable, except that 4-tracks were affordable and cassette distribution was better than nothing.

Today, there is hardly an excuse.

If you do something creative, music, acting, writing, whatever take the time to preserve it.

The people like me in future generations will thank you.

If you keep waiting until you're "Ready" you might never release anything.

If the thing that is holding you back is financial, then (depending on your medium of choice) there are probably workarounds.

We set up a "recording studio" for $150 and released 6 or 7 albums out of it. Find some like minded folks, and create the scene.

Because in ten years, the only people that stand a chance of being remembered are the ones that we have proof existed.

If you don't write about your favorite local act, will anyone ever know about them?

If your favorite local act never releases a recording, will anyone ever care once they know about them?

What I'm saying here:

If you create things, release them in to the world. Archive them as quickly as you can. Make sure that those things will still exist in ten years.

If you consume things that other people create, Talk About Them in Public Places. Write those blog posts (and put your blog somewhere that it's archives will still be around in ten years.)

Write some damn Zines. Shamelessly promote the things your friends create.