The episode linked above, the final recorded episode for Lost & Rewound appears in the playlist “Nonseason 12 - Onward.” All of the other Radio Free Brooklyn connected seasons and Nonseasons that followed have culminated in a final year end wrap-up or best-of clip show. Since this one did not, and to make up for my lack of one, please find below links to ten of our 2021 guests.
Matt Finch Eddy Marshall Golden Alphabet Placeholder Confidential LRS Laura Merli Mia Mera Jimmy Hoffman Subcontinents Semita Serpens
Thanks to everyone, musically inclined or not, for contributing their time earlier this year. And now, on to some words.
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I began cultivating Lost & Rewound as a showcase of mine and others’ childhood audio beginning in 2012. Over time, amid a move from independently produced podcast to weekly streaming content, with an ever changing cast of additional voices, and a gradual broadening out from the podcast’s original mission statement, an “anything goes” weekly experiment took shape.
Were Lost & Rewound not on Radio Free Brooklyn to begin with, not only would I not have given myself the chance to see something through until the very end, but I also would not have been given the autonomy to do so. Simply put, I was given a lot of chances and expectations, until I became the one pushing myself (as I am want to do). Practically all of the editing, planning, researching, preparing, and correspondence that occurred off mic went through me.
In May of 2021, a couple of things happened. First, on Thursday the 8th at 3pm, L&R streamed on RFB for the very last time, after 5 solid years amassing over 240 episodes.
Then on May 20th at 12:17 pm, I became a father. As an extension to all the other domestic obligations that have been merely heightened by co-parenting, my son Julian became the center of my universe. Nothing else mattered nearly as much, especially during the first few weeks. I had been preparing for his arrival like any excited expectant parent, and when he arrived 10 days early, I fell in love at first sight.
For 12 years my wife and I were but rocks floating together out in space, navigating many new frontiers, until one day we found ourselves as moons in orbit, watching over and circling a brand new world. And with such a strange timeline we have found ourselves in, staying the course with this new development felt all the more imperative.
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The truth is that I have long had so much to say, with the acute awareness that I don’t have a decent handle on how to be concise about it. At least in writing. Information consumption is already a quagmire. We live in a dystopian hell that not even the greatest science fiction writers could have penned. Chiming in with my thoughts into the public void during an age of eyeballs glued and ears plugged into devices would be at my own discretion, and what if anything was I to say after so much time passed?
Ultimately, I was the only one who cared about what I was doing creatively. Adding to the noise, or trying to be noticed felt like a futile exercise.
While there has been an unbelievable change to society as a whole, there has simultaneously been an almost unbelievable lack of change in our culture. Misinformation in all of its ugly forms are more rampant than ever. Racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and that good ol’ fashioned nationalist demagoguery just to name a small handful remain entirely too present, albeit now with way more visibility.
And so, I began to feel disengaged and quite frankly, justified in disappearing a little bit. As a result of this, I have remained generally happy. Whether it be admirable or come off as ignorant to be unplugging from the rest of the world in exchange for justifiably blissful distractions, I feel like Lost and Rewound has at the very least fulfilled the one part of me that wanted to be heard, even if I made it a point to scale back entirely from my at one point innate fixation on social media promotion.
Now I have reached the peak, the beginning of a self-imposed plateau, where all this content is sitting primarily in Soundcloud, dormant. While I do hold some interest in general maintenance of the page so as to make it easier to navigate (check out the B-Sides, Highlights, Extras, and Outtakes section!), I have also flirted with this idea of devoting time to an Instagram page for sharing past episodes. After all, there are certainly enough posts I could generate on this concept alone. [update - it will be a substack! stay tuned.]
And then I remembered that, even going as far as the typing up of this entry, which has taken me a few days to get through finishing, my time is more precious than ever before. I barely even touch my laptop anymore. Some of my gear got damaged by flooding last September in the first of two dreadful hurricanes, and the surviving gear is tucked away in storage for the indefinite future. I am co-parenting a small human. And I got very, very lucky working two flexible jobs including one from home that in its own twist of fate practically requires me to be on a computer less.
Which brings me back to the idea of disappearing. When one has not posted anything online in quite some time, there’s this anticipation as to what they will say. In 2022, I’m likely going to be continuing to lurk like a creepy swamp monster that looks hideous but really has a heart of gold--- misunderstood, but that’s only partially their fault.
I haven’t gone anywhere. I have been staying put, locked in orbit with another moon, blanketing our light onto this growing, babbling planet who is soon going to realize where he is, who he is, and who his parents are.
And Julian is going to have over two hundred episodes out there to listen to when he’s older, should he ever be interested in learning about what his dad was doing in his 30′s.
Thanks for reading. Thanks for listening. Thanks again to Radio Free Brooklyn, for being my home away from home until my home was all I knew. Much love to Tom, Noel, Rob, Shane, Lisa, Michele, Mike, Calvin, Amanda, Angelica, Colby, VC, Orie, and Kathryn even though she long ago canceled me because I allegedly clogged her toilet (once).
Also thanks -
To Jimmy for stepping up to the plate like Mariano when he needed to. To Rachel for believing in me. To Alyson, who was game to join, affable all the while, and inarguably responsible for some of our funniest episodes. To Doug for putting in the work and knowing what podcasts sounded like. To Will, for letting me edit out his spiels and non sequiturs and, like me if I were in his shoes, not being offended by it. To Melissa, for opening her space to our earliest recording sessions alongside big, sweet pitbulls. To Brooks and Ryan for being lifelong friends and frequent players of blocks on countless episodes with me. To Ben and his 11 year old self who played “Long Long Ago” on his grandparent’s keyboard somewhere in Connecticut, which eventually found itself as the L&R theme song to open nearly every episode.
A special thanks of course goes to Robin for putting up with my hours upon hours of editing in Audacity, sometimes until way too late at night, and sometimes all throughout the morning.
And to every single guest who ever appeared in some form be it virtually or in person, you are remembered, and appreciated for getting lost and rewound with me.
Signing off, Elann