Record-keeping

Howard Finster recorded the number, date, and time (down to the minute and second) of each artistic work he completed. A peculiar compulsion, perhaps the result of the same manic energy that drove him to paint all night through each night and to preach to every person he encountered. My step-great-grandfather, an inventor and businessman, liked records too. For a period of time in the late 19th-century, he kept a daily notebook that fit perfectly in a breast or jacket pocket. He recorded the sizes of all eight custom-made bicycles for his children, his daily purchases (small and great), his thoughts about the son who moved to Texas and whom he missed. About these record-keepers and their compulsion, I wonder. Did Howard believe that his works were so important that their numbering might confer value? Did he number them because he wanted to measure his own production? Did he mark them down out of the same compulsion that drove his inventiveness? Did my great-grandfather, also a maker of things, note his days in reflection, in an attempt to maintain privacy in a full house? Was he attending to details in the same manner he did when designing machines? Was the record-keeping a kind of Bach invention to limber the mind?

Record-making and record-makers -- I don't know what to make of them and of my own daily recording in this blog. Perhaps we share this: the simple pleasure of noticing.