I remember the first time I heard Daft Punk, and saw it too. It was in Gianfranco’s parents’ living room in 1997, in the summer. Almost thirty years ago. The room was dark, the shutters were drawn or it was night. Hard to tell sometimes in a memory. “Around the world” was playing on MTV Europe, and I had no idea what I was listening to. There were neon outlined astronauts doing a weird march on a circular staircase, and other electric pink and green and yellow people playing instruments and doing other dance-y/music-video-y things. I wasn’t really watching it, I didn’t make any sense of what I was seeing. The electronic sound, the looping “around the world” lyric, it infected me that day. I think I knew then that I liked it but had no idea what to do with it.

All throughout high school I was solidly in the heavy metal camp; Metallica (seen in concert), some Megadeth, Pantera, Tool, and others. Then the rock and roll, and classic rock; AC/DC, Aerosmith, Tool. Electronic and dance music was way out of my scene.

It took me a long time to admit that I liked Daft Punk. The next electronic encounter was a remix CD of White Zombie. I found it on the red bricks of Western, scratched but playable, no idea what it was for a while. This unknown mystery CD was one of my favorites.¹ I think I still have it, but the scratches and age finally got the better of it and it stopped playing years ago. I couldn’t find it just now, but I’m pretty sure it’s out there somewhere.

I think I do own a copy of Homework, the album that “Around the World” is from; I remember listening to the house party opening track, “Stop the music and go home” is the opening line, but I don’t remember when or where I would have bought it. I don’t think it was during college; sometime after I had moved to the east side of the mountains. My branch out, musically, was classical. There was still a lot of alternative and classic rock in my musical catalog during those years. Maybe I got it from BMG; I fell for that a couple of times.

I looked but I didn’t find a copy of Homework. By the time I accepted my taste we were well into the streaming or at least the mp3 and burning CDs phase of music consumption. The only Daft Punk album I have is “Random Access Memories,” and I never even opened the CD. It came with download codes.

I would say that surely by 2008, eleven years later, when I went away to grad school, that I had admitted to myself that I liked these sounds and had gone searching for them. I’m certain that podcasts and Bob Boilen and NPRs All Songs Considered would have had something to do with it. Their relentless search through new releases and latest tracks and festival set lists gave me a high hit rate for interesting songs in those early years. Particularly the SXSW songs. But it petered out after a while, and I wasn’t finding so much stuff that way. I had found Passion Pit that way (I’ve moved on), and almost made it to a concert in Boston. It was a long drive and we decided against it; too much school work to do that weekend. I found Hot Chip too (still with them), and saw them in Santa Cruz. And Chromeo (yes). Glad I’ve gotten to see them, in the Fox Theater. Royksopp (definitely) is another, and Air (when they make something), and so many more that I’m glad to be able to hear.

I never saw Daft Punk in concert; it was years too late by the time I figured it out.

But, the evolution, the archaeology, the history of my listening tastes and how I got here, that is lost to my memory. We stopped making mix tapes in about the year 1999, and stopped burning CDs around the year 2010 or 2012. Everything went digital and into playlists on iTunes or YouTube or Spotify or some other service that has been deleted from the world. My oldest playlists in YT is called “music” but there is no date associated with it, no edit history. I have a playlist in YT Music titled “08-oct” that is apparently corrupted; it has 4 tracks repeated twice. It includes a Girl Talk song from Feed the Animals (good stuff). I found some burned CDs in the garage, unlabeled.

Newer finds (but still not that new) include Kavinsky, The Knife & Fever Ray, and Empire of the Sun. Fever f*cking Ray. I’m not sure what to call this collection, my genre, but it’s something like electronic dance. Meditation through repetition and noise. Not so much emphasis on the vocals, more on the textural soundscapes. It’s all because of Daft Punk. I’m sure I haven’t ever seen the whole “Around the World” music video, or any of their others. Would I have found my way here anyway? Probably. But it was that song on the TV in Gianfranco’s living room that started it, planted the seed that I heard over and over in my head during the dormant years, the searching years, the years of finding. All that wandering should be in the mix tapes that never were and the as-yet-unburned CDs still waiting in the tower. The bits, they just don’t hit the same.

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The advice is that you want more options, keep your options open and collect more of them, and that’s the way to succeed in a highly uncertain situation. One aspect of really having an option is to understand that option. Writing a thing isn’t the same as knowing the costs and gains of doing it.

In my personal framework for possessing lots of options there are three levels and a few more steps.

• On Level 1 the option exists and is within your adjacent possible whether you know it or not. This is just a long way of saying that you always have options whether you know it or not. That’s comforting, in a way.
• At Level 2 you are aware that the option is there; it’s on a list somewhere because you’ve identified and named it. It can be the first one, lists gotta start somehow.
• To obtain Level 3 you’ve explored the option and have enough understanding of what it takes to use it. Maybe you’ve rejected it in favor of a better one, but it’s still kicking around. This is what makes the option yours.

Repeat that conveyor belt and store the output. Now you’ve got some things that you could do. Think about them and consider how to use them in your current context. Rank them relative to each other. You’re probably in “I know my options” territory now.

Doesn’t hurt to step back and revisit the situation, make sure you haven’t missed anything or not thought about it from all the angles. It might not be actually all your options, but with effort it can be a good approximation.

I think it’s really important to keep the lower ranked options around, but relegated and out of the way. Consult that list of ideas from time to time. Some old discarded idea might be a great idea when new certainty has presented itself amidst all that uncertainty. Having this store of unforgotten ideas is a resource, a stockpile, even generative when you need it to be. You’ve engaged with these options already and thought, practically, how they work in a particular context. That’s a lot of thinking, don’t throw it away!

One additional note. Some people can effectively do this entirely in their head. I am not one of them and it doesn’t matter. What matters is making an options factory. If you need a tool, a notebook, a PKM software, whatever, who cares. This is only an implementation detail. Make it work for you, however you do it.

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My primary personal compute device is a 2021 12.9-inch iPad Pro with the Magic Keyboard attached. I will buy another setup just like this one when I have to. I have the Pencil too, but it gets very little use. And yet I expect to buy another one of them too when the time comes. It’s great for when you need precision inputs.

Why don’t I use a laptop?

I like the limits. You can’t do everything on it, and there are some things that are harder to do. That friction gives me a chance to consider if it’s something that I really want to be doing at that moment.

The singular focus design intent of the OS is a nice nudge to try and do only one thing at a time. I’m not saying it works perfectly, but I think it does vector in that direction.

The form factor is nice. Had it been still available I might have gotten an 11-inch Air. I guess I could get a Neo, but now a laptop feels too much like work. The iPad feels less earnest than a laptop, more playful. Serious enough to get some work done but not all business. I hope that’s not paper thin marketing but some real effect.

I guess I’m saying that I would rather use the least compute I can get away with to get done what needs doing. And because the iPad has more evident limits, choosing other options feels more real and present too. Options like paper, or talking to people, or getting outside.

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