{"id":355,"date":"2008-12-19T23:27:54","date_gmt":"2008-12-20T03:27:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.therowboat.com\/?p=355"},"modified":"2008-12-19T23:27:54","modified_gmt":"2008-12-20T03:27:54","slug":"living-in-lists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/2008\/12\/living-in-lists\/","title":{"rendered":"Living in Lists"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do you make lists<\/em>? Are you one of those people<\/em> who, according to caricature, have no rest until the things of their lives rest in a list? Who don’t feel even their own being until being properly listed\u2014be it by Google or by Post-It? Or else, perhaps, are you one of those who so valiantly inhabits the present moment that living in listless (hence the word) disorder gives no trouble to your mind?<\/p>\n

I am a list-maker\u2014about certain things. And I’ve learned a lot about friends by observing the things that they make lists of which I don’t. In my favorite film (after Star Treks I-VI, VII), Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil<\/a><\/em>, I discovered that lists can be an art form, as they were in eleventh-century Japan:<\/p>\n

Real power was in the hands of a family of hereditary regents; the emperor’s court had become nothing more than a place of intrigues and intellectual games. But by learning to draw a sort of melancholy comfort from the contemplation of the tiniest things this small group of idlers left a mark on Japanese sensibility much deeper than the mediocre thundering of the politicians. Shonagon [Sei Shonagon, a lady in waiting for the queen] had a passion for lists: the list of “elegant things,” “distressing things,” or even of “things not worth doing.” One day she got the idea of drawing up a list of “things that quicken the heart.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the minds of computers, lists take on a more subtle beauty, a more mechanical one. The power of a computer lies partly in its incredible quickness in making and managing lists of data.<\/p>\n

I’d like to try a new kind of post at The Row Boat, a post of lists. This is the first of what may be many. They’ll be brainstorming sessions put onto the wondrous internet in order to invite contributions from friends and passers-by. To inaugurate it, we’ll start with a list of lists\u2014more or less important lists that come to mind as indicators of all the different forms and all the different significances that a list can take. Please, for now and forever, offer your contributions in the comments or (if in secret) by email!<\/p>\n