Hoard Explorer

The neoprene carrying case which came with my missing Bose bluetooth earbuds.

I tried to throw this neoprene earbud case away recently. But instead of sending it off to the landfill, it became the focus of this episode. I honestly don’t know why I kept it this long. It belonged to the Bose earbuds I lost, so even the case is premium quality. But really, it’s not that great. Certainly not as cool as my expensive pocket knife. The only time I ever pulled a knife on anybody was at a roadhouse in the lush rural wilds south of New Orleans. A man named Nichol Dance violently smashed my cassette recorder on the ground and I feared for my life. If you’re at one remove, you’re already too far gone.

hoardexplorer.com #hoardexplorer #memoir #neoprene #earbud #bose #psychoacoustics #variances #pocketknife #sheepsfoot #bayou #shrimp #boat #captain #minivan #cassette #powerboats

A collectable plate featuring a monthly calendar for 1973 & personified seasons.

This is a plate with a stylized 1973 in the middle of a dense line drawing dominated by a cloud motif. Amidst the clouds are vaguely greek personifications of the four seasons, with outlines and postures that you might see in a map of constellations. I used to take my first girlfriend to the top of a five story train bridge over the Napa River to make out and look up at the stars. But the best stargazing I ever did was on the roof of a borrowed broken minivan on a soft shoulder in deepest darkest West Texas. I never got the hang of astrology, though I never really tried. I’m still trying to get the hang of philosophy but I’m not holding my breath. History is a little easier, and I keep a running list of noteworthy events that transpired in the year 1973. Did you know that Governor Ronald Reagan was across town from me at the moment of my birth?

hoardexplorer.com #hoardexplorer #memoir #plate #calendar #alamo #gipper #universe #hegel #eforeffort #college #trainbridge #minivan #awful #y2k #gemini

I typically don’t throw out medicine that I’ve been prescribed. Even if I no longer need it, even if it has expired, I put it in the plastic zipper bag I have set aside for such an occasion. It’s not a cherished possession, and I probably wouldn’t care if it disappeared. But I don’t want to throw it away. Sometimes I need some old muscle relaxers if my herniated disc acts up and it’s nice to know it’s there if I need it. I remember the first time I ever had a back attack, on a road trip back east back when I was a misguided college student. I blame Bak Shaolin Eagle Claw kung fu but I admit it’s only conjecture.

hoardexplorer.com #hoardexplorer #memoir #drugs #expired #pain #real #natural #rational #irrational #imaginary #nondenumerable #i #xday #conspiracy #1998 #subgenius

Hoard Explorer also has a music show on Freeform Portland community radio!

https://www.freeformportland.org/program/hoard-explorer-music-dump/

Listen to past episodes of Hoard Explorer’s Music Dump on Mixcloud:

https://www.mixcloud.com/hoardexplorer/

A hand-thrown ceramic vase, titled and signed by the potter.

I found a tall ceramic vase at the Goodwill across the parking lot from the Walmart in Windsor, CA. The vase is embellished with a pair of bronze female silhouettes, sort of primitive cubist nudes. There’s a label taped to the base reading “Spirit Women”. I can make out a signature imprinted in the clay beneath but I can’t bring myself to remove the label for some reason. When I recently unpacked the vase after moving to my new house, I discovered within this vase a small handful of eucalyptus leaves, a dozen pine catkins, and some dirt. I threw out the dirt but replaced the leaves and catkins and I’m at a loss to explain why. Sometimes my own behavior is a mystery to me.

hoardexplorer.com #hoardexplorer #memoir #spiritwomen #ceramic #catkin #testosterone #behavior #roadrage #norcal #archetypes #definitions #judgement #penpal

Hoard Explorer also has a music show on Freeform Portland community radio!

https://www.freeformportland.org/program/hoard-explorer-music-dump/

Listen to past episodes of Hoard Explorer’s Music Dump on Mixcloud:

https://www.mixcloud.com/hoardexplorer/

In 2015, at my mom’s house in Napa, I recorded myself while digging through some boxes of ephemera from The Hoard. The main Hoard, the motherlode, the deep cuts. This was a completely extemporaneous “first episode” of a podcast memoir concept I had been noodling on for months. I had planned on literally burning with fire the contents of each box after reviewing each bit in turn, describing and reminiscing and then incrementally ceremonially disposing of a lifetime’s collection of cherished worthless stuff. I actually did end up burning some of it in the backyard of my childhood home, but I abandoned that project along with the Hoard Explorer podcast. It was years before I could summon up the courage to give it another go.

hoardexplorer.com #hoardexplorer #memoir #episode1 #2015 #ephemera #extemporaneous #fail 

Hoard Explorer also has a music show on Freeform Portland community radio!

https://www.freeformportland.org/program/hoard-explorer-music-dump/

Listen to past episodes of Hoard Explorer’s Music Dump on Mixcloud:

https://www.mixcloud.com/hoardexplorer/

Support this podcast by purchasing Creamer Dog for $1,000. Comes with NFT certificate of authenticity. DM me for details.

An arrangement of things from the former Table of Wonders for the purposes of divination.

As I’m putting up some knick knacks around my new digs, I can’t help but notice the the way the assemblages always seem to add up to something. In particular there’s this built-in desk at the base of the stairs to the top floor. Here are numerous built-in cubbies above the desk that are just perfect for interesting hoard objects, and when all the cubbies are full I think it reads like some kind of heterodox tarot card. Or at the very least the desk becomes imbued with arcane symbolism just waiting to be deciphered to those who dare. In my early teens I was a camp counselor and I remember getting in trouble for trying to do a tarot reading for my prepubescent wards. Today I’m going to read from the Desk of God as if it were prophesy and I don’t have to worry about getting in trouble (I hope).

hoardexplorer.com #hoardexplorer #memoir #desk #tarot #kabbalah #death #gabriel #hermes #jvtv #mariachi #headlessone #beyond #queen #goat #king #sheep #thelefthandofdarkess #turtlesallthewaydown

Hoard Explorer also has a music show on Freeform Portland community radio!

https://www.freeformportland.org/program/hoard-explorer-music-dump/

Listen to past episodes of Hoard Explorer’s Music Dump on Mixcloud:

https://www.mixcloud.com/hoardexplorer/

Support this podcast by purchasing Creamer Dog for $1,000. Comes with NFT certificate of authenticity.

A tall ceramic penguin in my backyard.

Paul is a ceramic penguin who lives in my backyard. He took up in a weedy patch of rocks bounded on one side by a short length of knee-high wire fencing. Paul has a blank, slightly surprised stare which suggests an inner serenity. He is an object of contemplation for me, or more like a locus of attention while I myself space out. I could happily sit in my back yard staring at Paul, indefinitely. And if I stare at myself staring at Paul, it's called mindfulness. We’re all just energy, specifically clouds of resonating waveforms. Paul gets it, but I've got a long way to go.

hoardexplorer.com #hoardexplorer #memoir #paul #penguin #homology #vipassana #hebephrenia #heroinhotel #mentalmodels #sadhu #phillipkdick

Hoard Explorer also has a music show on Freeform Portland community radio!

https://www.freeformportland.org/program/hoard-explorer-music-dump/

Listen to past episodes of Hoard Explorer’s Music Dump on Mixcloud:

https://www.mixcloud.com/hoardexplorer/

Hoard Explorer also has a magic money concept store on eBay!

https://www.ebay.com/usr/hoardexplorer

Support this podcast by purchasing Creamer Dog for $1,000. Comes with NFT certificate of authenticity.

A handful of pointless audio clips from my digital archive.

I have a substantial collection of field recordings that I’ve amassed indiscriminately over the years. This episode is a clip show of sorts, a little audio menagerie that is representative of the sort of unnecessary recordings that I nevertheless feel compelled to store indefinitely. Back in Napa there is a pile of cassette tapes which capture a very early iteration of myself, back when I had a cassette recording schtick where I would claim to be a journalist just to get people to talk to me “on tape”. I wish I had access to those right now. But tape does not exist in the cloud, so I’ll have to settle for more recent material. You’ll get some fly-on-the-wall snippets of quotidian me, moments that are at once irreplaceable and totally uninteresting. 

hoardexplorer.com #hoardexplorer #memoir #catan #firsttuesday #portcosta #sitkaspruce #hoytus #dalecooper #fieldrecording #tonguetwisters #cassette #scleepy #technicaldifficulties

Hoard Explorer also has a music show on Freeform Portland community radio!

https://www.freeformportland.org/program/hoard-explorer-music-dump/

Listen to past episodes of Hoard Explorer’s Music Dump on Mixcloud:

https://www.mixcloud.com/hoardexplorer/

Hoard Explorer also has a magic money concept store on eBay!

https://www.ebay.com/usr/hoardexplorer

Support this podcast by purchasing Creamer Dog for $1,000. Comes with NFT certificate of authenticity.

Two large densely-packed tubs of miscellaneous fabric.

Dorothy spent most of her life ensconced in work that involved fabric. I got the impression that her career ran the gamut from clothing to interior design and everything in between. I didn’t know her but I met her granddaughter who explained the yard sale to me. Maybe the most singular yard sale I’d ever witnessed. The entire front yard and virtually all available floor space indoors was crowded with fabric. Yards and yards and yards of fabric collected over a lifetime which had lately come to pass. Crowds of people walked off with trunkloads of fabric and the piles never seemed to shrink. The hashtag  #dorothysfabric was created to track how her late grandmother’s fabric was being used. An unexpected legacy and a fine tribute to Dorothy’s life’s work. We are now storing two great big tubs of Dorothy's fabric. 

hoardexplorer.com #hoardexplorer #memoir #dorothysfabric #legacy #tribute #milleunaceramica #tatemodern #instagram #oz #sewistsofinstagram #americankennelclub #monomania #anagnorisis #lifelongpassion #noodlenoodlenoodle

Hoard Explorer also has a music show on Freeform Portland community radio!

https://www.freeformportland.org/program/hoard-explorer-music-dump/

Listen to past episodes of Hoard Explorer’s Music Dump on Mixcloud:

https://www.mixcloud.com/hoardexplorer/

Hoard Explorer also has a magic money concept store on eBay!

https://www.ebay.com/usr/hoardexplorer

Support this podcast by purchasing Creamer Dog for $1,000. Comes with NFT certificate of authenticity.

A heavy mirror in weathered frame purchased at the cat store.

This is a conversation I had with Zac about his grandparents’ “intense relationship with objects”. The patrilineal branch of his family exhibits a profound thriftiness and aversion to waste, born of formative midwestern experiences in the Great Depression. The matrilineal branch was consumed with collecting artifacts rather than needful things, amassing a large and wondrous trove of aboriginal art and craftwork from around the globe. There’s evidence that both these tendencies find expression in Zac’s own proclivities. On top of this, his life as a writer and dance critic has layered a librarian’s sensibility with regards to his lifetime’s collection of ephemera. This hoard is destined to be folded into a historical archive, at which point it will transcend him as a personal possession. He loves being a good custodian of his shit.

hoardexplorer.com #hoardexplorer #memoir #mirror #dance #gillianwearing #timeoutchicago #silverspace #legacy #archive #phone #marquetry #squidink #desertstorm #custodian

Hoard Explorer also has a music show on Freeform Portland community radio!

https://www.freeformportland.org/program/hoard-explorer-music-dump/

Listen to past episodes of Hoard Explorer’s Music Dump on Mixcloud:

https://www.mixcloud.com/hoardexplorer/

Hoard Explorer also has a magic money concept store on eBay!

https://www.ebay.com/usr/hoardexplorer

Support this podcast by purchasing Creamer Dog for $1,000. Comes with NFT certificate of authenticity.

Perfect little handmade demitasse made by flawless hands in dreamtown.

If I could pick a moment in my life to return to, I think it would be the second time I visited the Amalfi Coast. It’s a highly specific moment, less than a minute really. I was standing on this terrace at the edge of one of those cliff clinging villages, taking in the unobstructed view of the Tyrrhenian Sea. That would be a very good place to which I’d turn back the clock. I remember a time when I didn’t know where food comes from. And I time I won a clown boxing match. Those were good times, but I would take the terrace instead. It’s not even a choice.

hoardexplorer.com #hoardexplorer #memoir #amalfi #pogerola #demitasse #poem #flawless #mastino #milleunaceramica #clownboxing #münchen #škoda #framerate #pope #loureed #dairy

Hoard Explorer also has a music show on Freeform Portland community radio!

https://www.freeformportland.org/program/hoard-explorer-music-dump/

Listen to past episodes of Hoard Explorer’s Music Dump on Mixcloud:

https://www.mixcloud.com/hoardexplorer/

Hoard Explorer also has a magic money concept store on eBay!

https://www.ebay.com/usr/hoardexplorer

Support this podcast by purchasing Creamer Dog for $1,000. Comes with NFT certificate of authenticity.

A hand carved hardwood sculpture of a quail.

Don’t know about quail but Dad definitely hunted pheasants. I don’t have all that much experience with guns but I’ll share most of what I’ve got. The pandemic introduced me to food insecurity personally, whereas before it was only through the filter of the food bank I volunteered with in West Sonoma County, or West County as preferred by its residents. There is an arts & ecology center out there where the food bank’s master gardener would sometimes take us. I discovered both the bank and the center through the unlikely portal of HIV/AIDS. It could get kind of lonely up in semi-rural Northern California, so I was just grateful for the company.

hoardexplorer.com #hoardexplorer #memoir #quail #dirtyharry #eggdumping #billcos #soap #food #insecurity #hunger #multipathogen #westcounty #compostingtoilet #lemurs

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Hoard Explorer also has a music show on Freeform Portland community radio!

https://www.freeformportland.org/program/hoard-explorer-music-dump/

Listen to past episodes of Hoard Explorer’s Music Dump on Mixcloud:

https://www.mixcloud.com/hoardexplorer/

========================================================

Hoard Explorer also has a magic money concept store on eBay!

https://www.ebay.com/usr/hoardexplorer

Support this podcast by purchasing Creamer Dog for $1,000. Comes with NFT certificate of authenticity.

A stack of various sized empty boxes situated in the middle of my basement.

I have a collection of empty boxes. I have not broken down any of these boxes in anticipation of the day I will need them in order to move out of my current house. I have not desire to leave this location any time soon, but I think about it. I remember a time when I was 20 years old and more or less homeless, living in the back of a van with Mr. Happy Hat and 3 other people. I did a lot of drugs as a young adult and this was one of those times. In my mid 40s I explored my feeling about tiny homes and intentional communities, but for now I’m just happy to be ensconced in my small (but not tiny) house, reading general audience books on physics.

hoardexplorer.com #hoardexplorer #memoir #box #boxes #donuts #unrest #homebuyingseason #tinyhouse #boulder #coughsyrup #milkyway #empty

A long grey scarf made of heathered jersey and printed with heads designed by Oswaldo Guayasamín.

This is a conversation I had with Shya regarding my conversation with Chad. He was concerned that nobody brought up the fear of death crouching behind the hoarding impulse. We forgot to talk about death for most of it, we mostly talked about our living mothers and how they each handle the possessions amassed over their lifetimes. We drift into the topic of legacy, describing heirlooms and feelings about any sense of “heritage”. Shya reveals part of his origin story: his birth from the forehead of the 60s on a commune in Maine. I go on the record over my desire to inherit a numbered block print by Guayasamín hanging in the house.  

hoardexplorer.com #hoardexplorer #memoir #oswaldo #death #nft #divest #eatenbymice #innuit #mittens #hemp #heirloom #bloodline #mother #facinator #guayasamín #arbitrary #horcrux #enigmatic

A mint condition Game Stop exclusive edition of the Bojack Horseman Monopoly boardgame, including collectible tokens.

This is a Bojack Horseman Monopoly game that I picked up at Mojosales flea market in Santa Rosa CA. It still has the shrink wrap on it. I bought it thinking that I could turn around and sell it as a collectible. It turned out that this doesn’t fetch a high price on eBay. As a Bojack fan, I admit I see a little of him in me. That box reminds me of my time as a North Bay lush, sucking down some of the world’s best wines for free. Which reminds me of the historic fires raging all around me in 2017. Also, in this episode I officially announce both my magic money concept store as well as my new show on Freeform Portland community radio:

https://www.freeformportland.org/program/hoard-explorer-music-dump/

Listen to past episodes of Hoard Explorer’s Music Dump on Mixcloud:

https://www.mixcloud.com/hoardexplorer/

hoardexplorer.com #hoardexplorer #memoir #hoard #bojack #monopoly #drinking #firestorm #geology #babyseahorse #fleamarket #fortbragg #ava #wineindustry

A small mismatched pair of ceramic plates probably bought sometime on a road trip to Montreal in 2016.

Chad and I continue our conversation, which veers away from plates and Canada toward his personal stash of ephemera. We debate the value of a single vintage Band-Aid and wonder why it’s so hard to throw away. Chad shares his concerns about memorabilia’s dormant power, suggesting that sentimental attachment to objects can have a toxic effect on the mind. We discuss evidence of early consumer culture found in his midden, and ponder our own relationships with plastic bags and yogurt cups. We compare personal anecdotes of encounters with “clinical” hoarders, speculating on the psychological mechanics at the root of this disorder. We wrap up with a little 90’s rock reminiscence, and then I have to pee.

hoardexplorer.com #hoardexplorer #memoir #hoard #johnsonandjohnson #bandaid #redstring #yogurtcup #consumerculture #value #garbage #nostalgia #ephemera #upstateny #toxic

A small terracotta vessel handmade by a family of potters in a village outside Bundi, India.

A shorter than average episode, wherein I leverage my digital hoard as a memory aid to fill in blurry memories of India. I explore (in the words of Rudyard Kipling) “a palace as men build for themselves in uneasy dreams -- the work of goblins rather than of men.” I find a little clay bud vase at the end of a day in the back of an autorickshaw, jouncing around the Rajasthani backroads to go step in stepwells and soak in timeless village life. And there’s monkeys.

hoardexplorer.com #hoardexplorer #memoir #hoard #india #pottery #memory #autorickshaw #stepwell #rudyardkipling #rajasthan #bundi #fort #langur #macaque #goblin

A carved saltrock turtle from the Wieliczka Salt Mine outside Kraków, Poland

This episode centers on my business junket to Poland in 2016. My boss was dying of stage 4 pancreatic cancer and I had somehow inserted myself into the delicate task of selling his business before he died. So I checked in to The House of the Klezmer, did some catholic stuff on the side, and spent some quality time underground in jazz dives and salt mines.  

hoardexplorer.com #hoardexplorer #memoir #hoard #junket #wieliczka #salt #turtle #ashkenazi #justice #mergersandacquisitions #noveltysocks

A final attempt at a first attempt to explore the ephemeral hoard.

In this episode I come clean about my underemployment. I review a number of jobs I’ve had over the years as well as my jobhunting philosophy. I consider what it means to be passionate in ones life and even sing a few bars to demonstrate. I draw parallels between the Equal Area Project and my first walkabout in the year 2000. 

hoardexplorer.com #hoardexplorer #memoir #hoard #neilyoung #passion #williamblake #jobhunt #onehundreddollars #animalspirits #sehnsucht

Another attempt at a first attempt to explore the ephemeral hoard.

In this episode I attempt to unflatten my face. Sometimes my imagination gets the better of me, and in this particular case it got me good. Last Thanksgiving, I discovered a young man living in a shed behind the unoccupied house next door. What happened next involved a mysterious passport, a pair of dead squirrels, and a true crime podcast that only exists in my head. 

hoardexplorer.com #hoardexplorer #memoir #hoard #imagination #passport #homeless #thanksgiving #serialkiller #phobia #smile #envelope

A first attempt to explore the ephemeral hoard.

In this truncated episode I fall flat on my face. Sheer hubris drove me to open up the small folder that contains the last lingering remnants of my previous pattern of ephemera collecting. I normally spend time preparing for each episode. This time, I was unprepared by design, hoping to test my memory on the fly, as well as my ability to relay the autonoetic consciousness associated with the contents. It didn’t end well. 

hoardexplorer.com #hoardexplorer #memoir #hoard #memory #autonoetic #ephemera #dictionary #knockknock #hypothesis #koozie #envelope

A delicate glass skeleton from the vast darkness of the deep sea.

This natural wonder was once a living sea sponge with the remarkable ability to build itself almost entirely out of glass. It is another new acquisition to the hoard, which I picked up as an impulse buy at the neighborhood curiosity shop. I go into some detail about this miracle of natural selection which the Japanese call Kairou-Douketsu (“together for eternity”). I then  take a left turn into an examination of my personality through the lens of oriental / occidental zodiacs as well as pseudo / pop psychology. I am an individualist gemini water ox rebel, and proud of it!    

hoardexplorer.com #hoardexplorer #memoir #hoard # sponge #fiberoptics #inkblot #water #air #ox #gemini #individualist #enneagram #shrimp #blathers #rebel #oddities #glass #warlock

A strikingly ugly figurine with tufts of yellow hair.

I received a strange letter in the mail containing a solitary plastic figurine which I can confidently say defies description. The envelope came from a listener in Seattle who also happens to be a dear friend (and hoarding-adjacent fellow traveler). I return the favor by promptly scheduling a Zoom conversation and dutifully recording it for your enjoyment and edification. And thus we have our very first guest on the show! We discuss his various collections (e.g., figurines, playing cards, books, rocks, tools, etc), tracing over the origins and the odd logic of his collecting habits. He opens up a bit about his upbringing on the Puget Sound, his misadventures in Oklahoma, and his general antipathy towards Burning Man. We touch briefly on life under quarantine and sign off before we linger too long. 

hoardexplorer.com #hoardexplorer #memoir #hoard #collections #troll #postoffice #diphallic #univulvic #figurines #playingcards #books #rocks #tools #faulkner #burningman #oklahoma #pipecutter #quarantine

An old Japanese creamer shaped like a blue pug.

Instead of investigating the origins of this faded old creamer from Japan, I turn my attention to the “why” of Creamer Dog. Why is he mine? Of all the things I’ve thrown away over the years, why did he make the cut? Why is he still here? This leads us to directly address the psychiatric condition of hoarding disorder as outlined by the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th edition). I thankfully am not afflicted with such a tragic diagnosis, but I discuss the ways in which I relate to the impulse to hang on to seeming worthless stuff.  I talk about my history of possession by spirits (of my own invention), and set out a hypothesis on the nature of a hoarding dragon spirit. I also touch on hoarding as an economic phenomena through the story of how two mad Texans attempted to corner the silver market, culminating in the catastrophic event known as “Silver Thursday”.

hoardexplorer.com #hoardexplorer #memoir #hoard #creamer #dog  #dingansich #neolithicvillage #disorder #spirits #dragons #silver #spectrum

A pair of vintage wood dumbbells purchased from the Modern Antiquarium in Healdsburg CA sometime between 2015 and 2019.

I am not entirely convinced that these are, in fact, wooden dumbbells but I’m hard pressed to find evidence to the contrary. In this episode, I attempt to determine the type of wood through calculator soup cube roots and wood density charts. I reveal the complete recipe for my most excellent sourdough waffles. I describe my dalliance with Etsy and eBay and the sale of what was probably my sister's Judas Priest tank top from the Defenders of the Faith Tour of 1984. I also mull over my dalliance with a late career in studio art, including encounters with artist Teresa Camozzi and sculptor Bruce Johnson. 

hoardexplorer.com #hoardexplorer #memoir #hoard #studioart #waffles  #judaspriest #teresacamozzi #brucejohnson #materials #firestorm #wine 

Part 3 of a vibrantly colored metal souvenir plate from Ecuador in 2011.

The souvenir plate returns for one more go at Ecuadorian backstory for my father and extended family. We follow the Swett family from colonial Massachusetts to 19th century Guayaquil all the way to my Nana Olga. Names and dates roll out in an almost biblical succession of begot-begot-begot (usually a Charles). There are tales of derring-do during the war of 1812, shipwrecks and cannibalism off the coast of South America, and a full recounting of all my grandmother’s husbands. I also touch on my theory of infinite rabbit holes and sheepish admiration of deep math. We say goodbye to the Ecuadorian Souvenir Plate and promise to return to Ecuador in a later episode by way of a special hotel amenity.

hoardexplorer.com #hoardexplorer #memoir #hoard #genealogy #swett  #warof1812 #olga #mobydick #hopffibration #greatgreatgreatgrandfather #rabbitholes 

Part 2 of a vibrantly colored metal souvenir plate from Ecuador in 2011.

The small souvenir plate made of stamped metal takes a back seat to René Girard’s concept of mimetic desire as I riff on my early aspirations to “being” smart and cultured (with questionable success). Eventually I return to the task at hand, trying to roughly sketch my parents’ short foray into the Venezuelan ice business in the early 60’s. I conclude with an ill-advised attempt to read a letter (written in illegible Spanish cursive) from my father to my uncle Edwin in Ecuador in 1970. Defeated and muttering to myself, I commit to a third episode in this Ecuadorian plate series. 

hoardexplorer.com #hoardexplorer #memoir #hoard #mimeticdesire #venezuela  #family #father #leuschner #iguanas #proust #mumble 

A vibrantly colored metal souvenir plate from Ecuador in 2011.

This weeks episode considers a small souvenir plate made of stamped metal that reminds me of my father in a very circuitous way. I bought the plate in Ecuador, dad was born in Ecuador, his birthday was last week, my cousin in Ecuador recently sent me a copy of a letter from my father to my uncle in Ecuador sent in 1970, just a couple of years before I was born. It seems like now is the time to dig into my origin story, family drama and secrets, and the mythology of the patrilineal line. This is a two part topic because even a steeply abbreviated version would not fit, and I needed to save some room for a Spanish poem or two.

hoardexplorer.com #hoardexplorer #memoir #hoard #ecuador #2011 #family #father #leuschner #secrets #lies #poetry 

A pair of Damien Hirst anamorphic demitasse sets from the Tate Modern gift shop in 2012.

On the afternoon of Thursday June 21, 2012, I purchased a pair of Damien Hirst Espresso Cups & Saucers from the gift shop at the Tate Modern. I’ve been a fan of the bad boy of British art since the 1990’s, so I just couldn’t pass up the chance to check out this mind-bending survey of his works against the backdrop of the 2012 Olympics. Earlier that morning, I met a video game recruiter outside the Great Portland Tube Station to discuss a job with a Harry Potter augmented reality game for the Playstation 3. I didn’t get the job, and I was running out of money. I still bought the cups.

hoardexplorer.com #hoardexplorer #memoir #hoard #demitasse #damienhirst #london #tatemodern #harrypotter #georgemichael #2012

STOP! Listen to the most recent episode before attempting to "start at the beginning". Next, listen to Episode 28 - The Actual First Episode. Only then may you listen to the Preamble Ramble. To do otherwise risks breaking this podcast.

A brief introduction to the glorious Hoard and the ground rules for the podcast.

This is Hoard Explorer. It’s not a gross and sad hoard like you see on reality TV, and it’s nowhere near as large and invasive a “hoarder” hoard. But it is a slightly irrational hoard of papers, junk, and data that I’ve been collecting over the course of my life. This is the first of a weekly podcast about the hoard, what it is, why it is, and most critically, what it means. This episode goes over the underlying concept: each object in the hoard will serve as a memory trigger that I will faithfully follow into the rabbit holes of future episodes. This is kind of a game by which I build a memoir. Think of it as investigative autobiography and personal archaeology. I have a famously bad memory, so I expect to be surprised as we go deeper into the hoard. In this episode I also give the high level background of the hoards evolution, from high school to the present day. I also reveal what prompted me to begin this podcast right now (rather than save the hoard as a time capsule).

hoardexplorer.com #hoardexplorer #memoir #hoard #explorer

Now I’m not a capital “H” Hoarder but I can relate, you know? Hoard Explorer is a podcast where I grab a thing from my pile of stuff and use it to pry open a rabbit hole to jump in. I dunno, it’s like I go into a trance or something and I’ll be piecing together my weird little life, one minute I’m this reckless poet guy on drugs and suddenly I’m talking about the physics of neuroscience and then I’m an urban professional, like a video game producer or something, until I’m broke and semi-retired in wine country which reminds me of some niche topic in world history and then I’m crisscrossing the planet for months on end and THEN I start to get a little philosophical which can be a turn off for some people but it doesn’t seem to bother anybody that I interview because it all just comes back to this pile of stuff I’ve been accumulating all these years and I’m pretty sure you can relate. Based on a true story.

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