Forgetting You Is Like Breathing Water
Are Those Who Erase The Past Better Off?
Throughout the course of a regular work day, the chime alerting me to a new email is easily ignored. I would go so far as to say 85% of the time my computer *ping*s at me (and the sound isn’t turned off) I am unfazed. Mostly because it’s only a promotional offer from a company who has (or has purchased) my information. But also because I don’t receive a lot of time-sensitive messages. For example, since 3am this morning my Gmail account has received 43 emails and I only opened five of them. Four were almost immediately deleted. It’s quite rare that I actually receive an email that warrants more attention than just clicking “Delete” and continuing my day.
On Tuesday, though, I received an email from Squarespace asking my to review the domain information for my old blog. I was confused at first, because I thought Google was my domain registrar — or maybe BlueHost — but definitely not Squarespace. I’m often confused about “web stuff” like this, because once I decided I didn’t want to major in Computer Science in college, my brain permanently shut itself off to learning anything new about technology. No more programming, no more web design or development, no more energy to waste on such trifles. Also, I’ve always had friends to help me if I ran into any issues with my websites. Hi Ken, hi KT, hi Shanon, hi… IONOS web support?
The email from Squarespace served as a reminder that I’m still paying to host the original Swan Fungus, even though it hasn’t been updated since 2022.
I am once again contemplating deleting the old website. Please allow me to use the rest of this post to hash out some reasons why, and maybe come to a conclusion once and for all about the future of my now-20-year-old domain.
I’m not going to sugarcoat this. More than 50% of the old Swan Fungus posts read like the missives of a budding incel. I’m not proud of it. For every three or four posts devoted to “edgelord shit,” there might be one post that has real-world value. Honestly I am not comfortable with many of the 3,314 posts I made over the course of 17 years on that site. If I’ve signed into my Wordpress account ten times this year, nine of them were to mark posts as “private” because I don’t want those words and thoughts out there in the world anymore. At some point I started going through the archive post-by-post and hid over 800 problematic ones from the public. And that only got me from like, 2005 to 2009.
It could be argued that the only posts remaining on the original Swan Fungus of any value would be the year-end album lists, some travelogues, the concert reviews, and interviews. By my count that adds up to 383 posts. Less than 10% of the entire site. If I made every other post hidden, would that really be worth paying for? Personally, I don’t think so.
There’s an argument to be made that one of the most popular features on the site were the “An Album A Day” or “Treasures From The Collector’s Slum” series, where I basically let people download hard-to-find and out-of-print records for free. None of those links are still functional. I don’t even think MegaUpload or RapidShare or any of those sites still exist. The MP3s I posted are no longer online because I killed all the links a week after each post to protect myself from DMCA takedown notices. That’s almost 1,000 posts with literally zero present day value.
There’s also the issue of cost. My last bill from BlueHost was for $286.20 and covers three years of web hosting. That term ends in September of 2026, so I have about a year to decide if I want to renew again for 36 months or not. I have no way of knowing if I get a refund should I choose to cancel early. I also just paid for a year of domain renewal in May, which cost $15. So if I’m going to blow it all up I really have until May of 2026 to decide. If I thought there was something on value contained within the original Swan Fungus, the cost would not be what’s holding me back. Neither of those fees seem exorbitant to me. Then again, I don’t keep up with domain renewal and web hosting fees, so maybe I’m overpaying. Who knows?!
There are a couple solutions I can think of, and probably several more I can’t think of because my pea brain won’t allow for it.
First — and since I don’t understand the Internet as well as I used to this might not be possible — I could terminate the contract with BlueHost early but continue to pay the $15 a year for the domain. I think that would allow me to forward people who type swanfungus.com directly to Substack. Right? That seems like a not complicated thing I should be able to do without too much work?
Or, I could delete the blog, give up the domain, and just stick with Substack. If people Google Swanfungus they’ll probably end up here, and shouldn’t miss the other site much because nothing new has been posted there in three years.
Lastly, I could just keep paying for it in perpetuity, and really go through each post with a fine-tooth comb to scrape and hide anything I’m not comfortable with being out in the world. This isn’t really a solution so much as it is keeping the status quo, although it would force me to spend way more money and spend way more time going through thousands of old blog posts to see if they’re problematic or not.
That’s obviously not my ideal solution.
The perfect scenario would be to find a way to keep the blog in its original form offline so that I could access it forever if I wanted, but not have to share the ugly parts with the world. Anything of value I could re-post here (either edited or expanded). I’ve long dreamt about sharing my full 2005 road trip book in some kind of serialized form, with the addition of audio I recorded along the way. No one but me has ever actually heard my interviews with folks like Jason Molina, Steve Albini, and Tim Midyett because I didn’t have the ability to share long-form audio back then. And — much like I’ve already done — I could reassess my year-end music lists, or share more photos or recordings of old concerts I only blogged about in the past. That would allow me to basically host the good content here, while eliminating the bad content.
Now, I don’t know if there’s much of an appetite to re-read my old missives, but maybe one or two of you reading this can help me out. I know there are less than 100 subscribers here, but surely some of you either migrated from the old Swan Fungus, enjoyed the old Swan Fungus, or at least knew of Swan Fungus before arriving here. What would you like to see happen with the archives? Do they even have any value anymore? I’m genuinely asking, as I might be too intimately involved to make a rational decision.
I don’t know. These are my thoughts on a Saturday afternoon as I watch the Mets and contemplate life. On an unrelated (but related!) note, I think I found an office furniture solution so I can have an actual work space again. Think about how much easier it will be for me to scour multiple hard drives when compiling mix tapes. I’ll once again be able to share old recordings and photography. Once the setup is done and all the components purchased/installed I anticipate more frequent and nuanced posts. Just like the old days, only I’m twenty years older and wiser.
Seriously, please let me know what you think. Drop a line, leave a comment, shoot me an email… it only takes a few minute and your feedback is invaluable.