Album Review: The Past is Still Alive (Hurray for the Riff Raff)

One of my favorite R.E.M. anecdotes passed on through the years is how Michael Stipe reacted to hearing Patti Smith’s Horses in his formative years. The story goes that he bought a few albums, took them home, had a whole bowl of cherries while listening to them and was so moved by the music that he threw up afterwards – and decided then and there to be a musician. A bowl of cherries will do that.

For me, Hurray for the Riff Raff’s The Past is Still Alive is one of the finest albums I’ve heard in quite some time. No cherries nor vomit, but this is a damn good album.

I’m not new to Alynda Segarra’s music, really. The first song of theirs that hit me was “Living in the City” from 2017’s The Navigator.

The album at large didn’t quite land with me, but there was something very special – if slightly underbaked – about “Living in the City.” Segarra’s writing is so evocative of a place in this song that before I really cared about the video I had gone with them on a voyage. There were a few lovely layers and textures (the backing vocals!) and amazing deliveries on lines like, “I watched the city quiver.”

I’d followed their music off and on since then and dug a few tracks off 2022’s LIFE ON EARTH – “PIERCED ARROWS” is a great power pop song with a soaring chorus; “RHODODENDRON” is a grower that inserts itself into your noggin and lives there, unveiling more and more on each listen. The lushness of LIFE ON EARTH was notable and the whole piece just felt more organic versus the balance of something like The Navigator. Through it all, though, Segarra’s songwriting hit a really nice target. Their lyrics blended the literal and the figurative, stories and fables and the reality of life, with an admirable level of economy – they’re an amazing editor. Their music got more ornate and denser, but not to a fault.

That brings us to 2024’s The Past is Still Alive. The album cover sets the tone and the mood. This is not an album of a trivial nature; this is serious shit, this person has seen some shit, and they’re very present with us here… and yet, it’s a bathtub against the barren landscape.

But barrenness isn’t permanent, and it isn’t how things have always been nor how they will be. In this piece, Segarra turns over the ideas of memory and time and history so like a pebble in their hand as we see their life flash before our eyes in song. “You don’t have to die if you don't wanna die.” “I’m in the back of the pickup most of the time. It’s all in the past, but the past is still alive.” “Return to the rocks and stones.” “These things take time; I know they do.” “Most of our old friends are dead.” “You told me your big secret on the F.D.R.” “Now what do you turn to when all reality’s bending?”

The feel and fabric of the album is just as organic as LIFE ON EARTH, but the spirit of it leans more introspective. This album is, to me, more accessible. Songs are tight – the soaring “Ogallala” earns every one of its five minutes but it’s the longest track here – and we’re in most scenes for just a few minutes. On the road in “Hawkmoon”, meeting Miss Jonathan (“I could have ridden shotgun forever”), being exposed to the bigness and queerness of a person and a city. A poignancy and moment of nostalgia… then it’s gone. Time collapses in on itself in “Vetiver”, the natural world contrasting with a hook up at Stonewall (a rare moment of wit shows up: “She broke my heart, but at least I got a shower in”) and the feeling of missing someone or something and going back to one’s roots. “Buffalo” reaches out after leadoff track “Alibi”, masquerading as a straightforward guitar & vocal track before it deepens to a meditation on extinction and loss. Easy stuff. Through it all The Past is Still Alive builds into a retrospective of one’s life told in vignettes, contrasted against a real struggle with time. This shows up in the functional closer “Ogallala”: “I used to think I was born into the wrong generation, but now I know I made it right on time.” Segarra’s voice is triumphant but not victorious; they belt this line with the emotion of someone who won it all but also lost it all. Just a stunner.

The album ends with “Kiko Forever”. The club is closed, the story told, and we’re left with a jazz ditty haunting the room after hours as voicemails from Segarra’s late father play front and center. The voicemails are what you’d expect from a parent to a child. How the day is going. Making chicken wings. Saying they’re proud of you. Even here, we have those little glimpses into the daily life of someone. And then the track ends abruptly. So does life.

I definitely saw a thread to my favorite R.E.M. album, 1992’s Automatic for the People. That piece is more straight on about death and mourning and loss. But I loved putting a track like “Find the River” (“None of this is going my way”, and the shout-out to vetiver and the natural world) in the same sphere as this album; R.E.M. goes for the oblique, as is typical, while Hurray for the Riff Raff goes for the literal. But while The Past is Still Alive isn’t “about” death and the passing of Segarra’s father it opens more doors than R.E.M.’s album via the stories and the vignettes. Stipe and crew are there to emote with us and commiserate, while Segarra is here to honor and tell the stories of those who are with us and those who are not. Automatic is the immediate balm for massive loss and The Past is Still Alive is a reflection and renewal of what life was in the first place. It’s how we celebrate and remember people when they’re gone, and should be what we do when they’re here, too.

The Past is Still Alive is one of the best things I’ve ever heard. I’m eager to see what Segarra does next of course, but in the meantime they’ve given us something very special and very real.

Further reading: Matt Mitchell's great piece on this album at Paste.

Changing Bigger Patterns

In the past I've espoused the idea of focusing on the small things in your life in order to bring about design changes. They're the “microinteractions” of our lives, if you will. In my experience, that is arguably the easiest stuff to tackle. I'd rather focus on something like not drinking caffeine in the afternoon in order to improve my health, versus going all out and saying I'm going to eliminate all caffeine for three quarters of the year (ACK!)

That's one example, of course, and you may be at a place to do something bigger. That's when it's time to look not just at your goals – those things way up high – but larger patterns. They're at the “product design” level.

I've got to admit, I've been feeling a little bummed lately. I've been more irritable, I've been exercising less, and my attitude towards my body has shifted to a negative place right now. And when I've had only now in focus, it's felt new and singular. I've wondered, “Wow, how do I get through this?” A few days ago I found myself rifling through old journal entries; I was very curious about what I was writing and thinking a year ago. And do you know what I found?

Much of the same stuff.

I wrote about very, very similar feelings on very, very similar topics. It was a small but important aha! moment. It started to reveal something bigger: this is something that happened to me last year at around the same time. So, what caused that? I was curious about it, so I read some of my other entries from around that time. I found that I had worked through some of these things. It gave me comfort and assured me that it was something that Past Me had also confronted.

Now, though, I'm able to see that this is something that has happened two years straight – so I can address it if I choose to. I might take action on this, or I might leave my future self more clues – more information about how this moment feels, how this all is going right now. But having that information and knowing the scale of this pattern is really, really helpful for me.

The Size of It

When it comes to our daily lives, then, how can we tell what kind of pattern we're in? How do we know if this is something small, medium, large, or even larger? Here are a few pointers.

  1. First off, notice what you're doing. When you're in the middle of something – anything – and you notice it, also take that time to notice the way you're feeling about it. When I was writing my journal a few days ago, I felt very wrapped up in the emotions I was capturing but – and this was key – I was also curious about what had happened before. And I let that curiosity assist me.
     
  2. Drill down into the “why”. Now that you've observed something about yourself, to borrow research lingo, it's time to analyze it. You don't need to write a 50-page PowerPoint deck on it... unless you want to, of course... but be present in that moment, with those feelings. What's really happening? Ask yourself “why” multiple times. Be honest with yourself and you will find that the answers get bigger and bigger.
     
  3. If you want to change it, design it to scale. Of course, you have to choose to want to change the pattern. You don't have to. You can do it later, or not at all. But should you choose to change it, brainstorm and think about the actions that can lead to what you want. In my example, if I don't want to get into a self-care rut right around late January maybe I need to do multiple things in order to improve my attitude – and it wouldn't hurt to do them in advance of this time period, either. But one change that I see as small probably won't be enough. It's an experiment I'm willing to try.
     
  4. Keep tabs on it. Obviously, I'm a fan of journaling. But one of the actions I can take to help me keep tabs on it is to pop a reminder for myself into my calendar ahead of time. That's a way to get it out of my head and let me think about it later. And in the GTD bonus round, I'll just make a project in my Someday bucket (or schedule it for much later this year) so I can proactively take care of myself.
     
  5. Do it. The hardest part. I know I'll be scared, or be tempted to brush it off. But now I know from experience what brushing it off has felt like!

You wouldn't redesign a microinteraction with the intent of affecting change in the entire system. As in design, it's all about the scale of the challenge.

Time is Tight

Let's talk about time travel. From my post on writing:

“I really took a knack to writing when I was in grammar school. I wrote a book for a Scholastic Book Fair contest called What Year is This? Of course it involved time travel. The lead character went back in time, met her own mother, and then the space-time continuum went kablooey. Happens!”

In reflecting on it, one of the reasons I liked time travel so much – and still do! – is that it lets us change something that people created as a concept but do not control. When I was younger, I wanted to travel into the future so I could skip parts of my life that seemed boring, uninteresting, or even painful. It would let me fast forward and savor the moments I have; it would give me that precious illusion of control, the idea that I'm in charge.

Naturally, as I've gotten older I've had to process the idea of limited time and death, and what it means to me. As I first began to confront it, I was overwhelmed. There's no telling when we'll die? And... I have no control? And... what's next is a mystery? That really bothered the parts of me that plan stuff out. Then, that swung back the other way for me. I only have so much time. I need to do everything. How can I do everything? Time isn't unlimited. When will I ever open that cookie shop? When will I skydive? When will I do all of these things I want to do? When will I....

It got overwhelming. Ultimately I chose to get to a place where I plan some things in my life, but not all. I can't say that I live each day like it's my last. I feel that's a little clichéd because if I knew this was my last day, I would be really selfish. But there's even something to take away from that silly statement: the selfishness. When do I take care of myself? When do I express myself? When do I spend quality time with my family, and my friends? When do I make those scary decisions?

Time is one of the few resources that we, as life designers, can't change. It's the most constraining constraint. But we mustn't live our lives in fear that we don't have enough (that's an assumption). Instead, we need to look at what we can do right now, in this moment.

And yes, there's no control. Achieving a state of mind where one accepts there is no control is not fatalist, at least not to me; it's honest and true.

From the 2005 Steve Jobs Stanford speech:

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

Thus, we are in charge. And we don't need time travel to show it to us.

(Still love time travel stories, though.)

Lists Rule

It's a harsh truth that out of the myriad things I want to do with my life – and there are a lot! – I won't be able to do all of them. Or, rather, the odds are extremely small that they will all happen. It's not due to a lack of interest on my part; it's simply due to prioritizing what's important.

I know, I know. The default response to, “How are you?” is, “I'm busy.” We've taken busy-ness to be a merit badge of adulthood, suggesting that we have so so much going on that taking on anything else is just too much and will be the one thing that will put us over the top. The truth is that I do have a lot going on... and so do you!

Letting Go of the List

For a list-driven person like me, getting to a place of letting go of the list has been very difficult. It used to be that when I set up my to do list for the day, I'd feel genuinely bad if I didn't take care of everything on that list by the end of the day. And sometimes, I'd sneak things in to my own detriment (like doing a chore in the early morning or late night before bed). This was really misaligned with what I needed but, because I felt so much self-inflicted time pressure, I knew I would feel incredibly good if everything on the list was ticked off.

So if I had that attitude for a day's worth of items, imagine how I started to feel about bigger things. The life things. Starting a family! Buying a house! Dealing with Comcast customer service! Doing a budget! Instead of plunking those on a Someday list (a prioritization) they'd sit around on this big list of unsorted, unprioritized things I was going to do, and I'd look at that list and... yes, that meant I actually had a scorecard to compare myself to! It was setting me up for the negative, and showing all the things I hadn't yet done. I didn't see it as inspirational anymore; I started to see it as a failure tracker.

Working with the List

I will probably never be someone who isn't list-driven. That, I understand about myself. But I've had to really sit with my emotions and let my brain take a breather in order to get to a more comfortable place with them. I need lists. But, I don't need them to drive me; I need to use them as the tools they are and rely on my self to guide me. A big leap! And, it requires changes in the way I feel and think about lists.

The first idea I've had to relinquish is that everything I think of can be done now, and is all highest priority. Silly, right? It was easy for me to talk about the importance of prioritizing a product backlog, but it wasn't easy for me to say that about my own needs and wants. Yet if I didn't even pretend to rank things – and I historically didn't – I felt defeated. Instead, I had to really comb through the list of items one-by-one and be honest with myself. Anything that I couldn't truly do today... I'd schedule for another day, throw into the Someday list, or – big scary one – take it off the list. (And yes, that last one hurts.)

Another very important change: I add and prioritize self-care items to my to-do list. I've also added inspirational messages to the items' descriptions. It's a small gesture but it's been a big help. I'm the only one who sees them, but it's just a nice heads-up from past me. I observe, however, that I'm still struggling with having self-care items get deprioritized or bumped. Worse, they're often the first to go for me, because my brain seems to find things that are more important to do. Definitely something I am still working on!

How to Prioritize

When reviewing my lists, here's what I ask myself about each item. And yeah, I'm breaking out a list.

  1. How much do I care about this?
  2. How much do other important people care about this?
  3. Can I see myself doing a good job of this (today/tomorrow/next month)?
  4. When this is done, how will I feel about it?
  5. Do I actually have time to do this (today/tomorrow)?

The first two work together: there are certainly things on my lists that are not of my own choosing, but other people in my life who matter are depending on them. I need to balance those priorities: it may be something that isn't terribly interesting to me (see #4!) but when it's done, I'll be glad that I helped someone else. If it's something I care about, then I should work to give it a high priority.

Question 3 is important too. If I feel I can't do a good job on something, then I ask myself if this to-do item is appropriate, really. Something like the fabled “clean out the garage” task is a bit large, and I might not be able to finish the whole thing in one fell swoop. Chunking something down gives me a better shot of doing a good job of it, which again, is important to me. This is also a prime time to ensure these actions line up with my overall intentions.

#4 is where my emotions come into play. If I simply will get the little kick from checking something off the list, that may be enough for some items (“Unload dishwasher.”) But for others it won't be. I try to imagine how I'll feel and react on the other side of that item. Will I be relieved? Stressed? Pleased? Proud? Sad? Thrilled?

And the last question: is there actual time to do this. That's where my calendar comes into play. I find it very helpful to actually schedule time on my calendar This puts my brain at ease and answers the, “But when will you do this?!” question. If I can't do it today, I notice a tinge of regret, but plop it onto a day when I think I can do it.

The End of the List

While I'm still a list fan, there are plenty of times and days when I give myself permission to go off-list and not do anything on it. When I first started this practice I felt immensely guilty, because I wasn't being busy nor productive. But now I see it as time to simply be, to simply exist, and let other parts of me take the helm for a while. This has given me a little more balance, a little more flexibility, and has improved my relationship with lists.

Give yourself five minutes

Before I started yoga and meditation, one of the notions I carried around was that these things were big time commitments. Many parts of me are big on schedules and efficiency, so those parts were able to readily dismiss those practices as "too time-consuming". Over time I realized was that this was also something other parts of me classified as selfless: if I chose to do something else (under the guise of helping others), then I could never be called selfish, which had been a big bad label for me.

But self-care is quite important and, really, vital to our daily lives. Sure, when someone says, "Hey, can you do a yoga class with me for 90 minutes every 3 days over lunch?" that might not be something that you can do. But I'm here to say: don't let this be an all or nothing event in your life. Find time to do self-care.

Let's start today. Let's try for five minutes. Just five! And that's all. When you're done reading this entry, five minutes or so will have passed. That's not much time. I know: I have a family and a job and a commute and never-ending laundry too. It's not going to be perfect. But it's going to be.

Here are a few ideas where and how this could happen:

  • During your commute: If you drive to work, give yourself five before or after you start the day. Radio off, eyes closed, and just listen and breathe. Easier on a train or bus.
  • At your desk: Work work work work work... pause. Stop. Take a deep, deep breath - you know, one of those super deep breaths. Go for it. And then let it all out, and chill.
  • Outside: If you have a desk job, take a brief walk around the block or in the parking lot. Get fresh air into your lungs - breathe all of it in.
  • In the shower: Awesome place to think, awesome place to take a quick moment for yourself and just be. There's a reason lots of people like the sound of running water: it's very relaxing.

And what do you do during these five minutes? Obviously I'm big on breathing: it helps with awareness, and forces me to slow down and be in the moment instead of elsewhere. But I have also found that doing one or two yoga poses is a great change of pace too. You may want to do a power pose (Amy Cuddy recommends two minutes. Just two!) Meditation is a great thing to do too. Or, listen to a song.

Don't let it go

Here's what I know is true: after even doing one of these small things, I feel much more centered and relaxed. I come back into the rest of my life feeling more refreshed, aware, and ready. Find something that sounds good for you - try things out! - and give yourself five minutes today.

Details Fuzzy

Yesterday on a rather arduous commute, I turned on the radio and heard a rather fantastic weather forecast. The weatherperson shared a poem about the cold wind, the freezing temperatures, and the sun overhead, taunting us. As I sat in my car a huge smile crossed my face and I chuckled. "Wow," I said out loud to myself. "Wow! That was great!"

I repeated one of the key phrases from his weather poem, and thought, "I can't wait to tweet this." That changed into, "I can't wait to share this with everyone at work."

But by the time I went to do so, after getting my PC up for the day, the phrasing was gone. The words were a memory at best, filed somewhere in my brain with many other forgotten things. I certainly could Google it - I remember the station I was listening to, and could research who said it, hoping to find audio - but the moment was gone, gone for all time, never to return. I chose not to share the story, as I had determined that the best part of it was indeed the exact turns of phrase this person used.

The whole thing started so strongly, and everything was clear.  The words were strong. I repeated them more than once on the short walk from my car to the front door at work. And within an hour or so, I had dismissed all of the details, whether consciously or not.

On thinking about it, though, those details were ultimately not terribly important to the moment. Yes, they happened, but the key thing is that I had a noticeable emotional and physical reaction. I smiled. I laughed. I talked to myself. It heartened my heart when I needed just a little bump, just a little hit of unexpected joy. And I still smile thinking about it.

But that moment was only for me. It was not planned, nor was my reaction. And my mind and body held on to what was most important... it just wasn't what I imagined it was.

2013

I'm tempted to write a year-end reflection filled with clichés, or a list filled with numbers, or a list of clichés filled with numbers. It's hard not to; please indulge me while I try to avoid both. (I'll succumb shortly.)

The summary, though: 2013 was a year in which I got to know myself better, and then began to work to satisfy the parts of me that had been underrepresented for a long time (possibly my entire life). That's no small potatoes. That's pretty big.

A lot of this manifested as change. I started a new job in August, one that has allowed me to remove fighting from my daily duties and focus on client work and business development. I passed the 300 miles run mark, and started to run outdoors - so much that I began to prefer it in October. I attended a few conferences and one of them, IA Summit, changed me forever. I played guitar as a part of a UX talk in February. I spoke at the inaugural UX STRAT conference. I started a podcast and finished its first season. My wife and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary. My son turned 3.

If I look back, I'm able to connect a lot of these things. There wasn't any one thing that necessarily allowed all of this to happen but there is one theme: I allowed myself to be more open to possibilities by improving my presence and awareness in the moment. It's this continued practice at being present that really helped me the most. Without it, I would be holding on to things I need to let go of and not be much of a participant in my own life. Notably, too, a lot of decisions I made in 2013 set me up for the future - later in 2013, and in 2014. It's thrilling to see how the little choices, and the big ones, can affect what's to come.

The Influencers

My biggest influencers this year were my wife and my son. They have pushed me to be a stronger, better, and more patient person. Without them, I would be a very different individual.

A lot of other people had big influences on me too. Here's where I give in and make a big list.

Massive professional thanks to, in no order: Kathi Kaiser, Lyman Casey, Whitney Hess, Karen McGrane, Carl Smith, Jenn Downs, Mike Montiero, Erika Hall, Sarah Emerson, Shelby Bower, Marteki Reed, Thomas Huls, Rebecca Griftner, Gina Trapani, Dan Klyn, Susan Rice, Pamela Pavliscak, Ryan MacMichael, Damaris Phillips, Kathy Sierra, Ashe Dryden, Paul Bryan, Roz Duffy, Steve Portigal, Anita Sarkeesian, Dave Raymond, Roman Mars, Jesse Thorn, John Hodgman, Amy Silvers, Christian Crumlish, Elysse Zarek, Abby Covert, Christina Wodtke, Margot Bloomstein, Lisa Maria Martin, Lis Hubert, John Jarosz, Peter Merholz, Gene Moy, Jessica Ivins, Leslie Jensen-Inman, Kristina Halvorson, Derek Powazek, and Cinnamon Cooper. You all have inspired me, motivated me, encouraged me, and pushed me to be better. Thank you.

In case you didn't want to read that entire list, I understand. Here's a smattering of the things that impacted me the most this year.

2014

I have no idea what's going to happen next. Life is exciting that way.

Thank you for being on this journey with me. Namaste.

There's always one more thing to do

It's no secret that I love lists. I've talked about it on my podcast and I've blogged about it forever. For me, there is something very satisfying for me to accomplish something and cross it off the list - or delete it altogether.

And yet...

In all this talk of making better lists and organizing one's self, one thing is true: the to do list never goes away. It never ends.

I don't see this as a fatalist thing, or a depressing thing. And, in fact, there was a time in my life when I felt so very overwhelmed and burdened by things to do that I prioritized them over everything else. Everything else. I could always find busywork in cleaning, or organizing, or doing project X that had been on the back burner forever.

I could also be distracted by tools: trying a system out (Things, OmniFocus, GTD) and then letting the tool be the focus instead of the things to do, or not do.

But in the meantime, I realized that choosing to do something on my list meant I wasn't doing something else. The list would live forever, and it would always be there. And as I sat with that I came to see that the list couldn't be my life anymore. So I worked on doing something very difficult: I started to let the list go.

That led to initial feelings of guilt ("Oh no! I'm not organizing the garage today EITHER!") and regret. Those feelings subsided over time to a place of acceptance, because it helped me refocus on the choices I was making at the time. Yes, I wasn't reorganizing the garage. But what was I doing instead? Something that was more important.

The to do list is never going away. You can recognize that and dive completely into the list forever and ever, never finishing, always busy. You can also recognize it and choose to live your life, and not let a list rule you.

FOMO

Yesterday I posted a simple tweet saying, "FOMO." You know, fear of missing out. 

It was a gut reaction to what seemed to be happening in everyone else's lives: fun things. Adventures. New opportunities. New kids. It felt a little weird to me, very uncomfortable, and right away a part of me brought up this invisible scorecard I have... and I wasn't "winning" (whatever that  means). Whatever I was doing with my life, in that moment, wasn't "enough".

Here's the thing: it's not true! Not at all. And I bet it isn't true for anyone reading this. Ups and downs happen, and they're as natural as the way water ebbs and flows. But we can strive to be mindful of these down moments, explore them, stand inside of them, and then take action on them.

When I really sat with my FOMO, a new fear spoke up: the fear of missing out on my own life. I was able to meditate on that very briefly and feel it: while present in my mind, it didn't ring true. I'm being myself, and still practicing being myself in each moment. Not fear - presence.

Presence is the opposite of missing out. It's being in. 

Take Me With You

As we share our work – our lives – with others, we have an option. We can take people with us on that journey, or we can go it alone. 

We are always connected to everyone, even the people who are no longer with us on our journey. Some people might choose not to join us. That's fine (it might sting a little bit). They may wander off, find something more or less.

But the people who continue on with us, the people who are there... those are the people who can foster deep and true connections. Those are the people who can push us to become better. Those are the people who we may admire, respect, love, care for.

Who is with you now? Who do you want with you?

Let's go.