Welcome to Documented Life

The Seven Chapters of My Life to Date

I have heard it said that the human body completely renews its cells (except perhaps the neurons) every seven years or so.

By that standard, we are each a new person every seven years.

I don't know if that is true or not.

I do know this. When I arranged my life in seven year periods each of those periods seemed to represent a broadly coherent chapter.

In contrast, a decade by decade arrangement produced no such coherence.

Why does seven seem to be a good number to order the passage of time, whether the days of creation, the weeks or the years? Does the number seven really represent something deep about the structure of time? I don't believe that kind of thing, and yet...

William Shakespeare, As You Like It, (Act II, Scene 7)

All the world´s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse´s arms.
And then the whinning school-boy, with his satchel,
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woful ballad
Made to his mistress´ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon´s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin´d,
With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose well sav´d a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends his strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

I'm always trying to stay right square in the moment. I don't want to get nostalgic or narcissistic as a writer or a person. I think successful people don't dwell in the past. I think only losers do.

Bob Dylan, 4 April 2004,
LA Times interview concerning his autobiography

Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, Verse 1

I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air, Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same, I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance, Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten, I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard, Nature without check with original energy.

Practicing Human Being Since 1959

Dear Visitor,

Welcome to Documented Life, a photographic representation of my 48 years of life - an exploration of virtual identity.

Here are a few words about why and how the Documented Life autodocumentary was created and what it might mean.

I originally thought of calling this site "An Ordinary Life." But really, who am I to claim to be ordinary? Even if mine were an ordinary life, I've messed that up by documenting it so thoroughly. To observe reality is to change it, and my life has already been changed in subtle ways by this website.

Miles Hochstein in Venice California, 2004

However, I would claim that this may be the single most complete (by some standard) visual representation of one person's life available online. (Counterexamples are welcomed and encouraged - send 'em along!)

In these pages I have tried to make a documentary film, dedicated to getting the facts right, including the boring ones. My goal has been to say nothing false, first, and to say something interesting, only secondarily. I make no apology. I find small facts interesting.

I have not tried to tell every truth and even for those truths that I do tell, perfect objectivity has not been my goal. It is enough for me to avoid serious misrepresentations. I think I have done that. The photographs help keep me honest.

I don't have a specific agenda that I'm aware of, other than a belief that the facts of each and every life are interesting and important. If seeing my life or a representation of any life tells you something about your own life or how you might represent it then I'm happy.

I admit that I have sought to avoid overtly embarrassing myself, or others. I have wrestled with the right balance between exposure and privacy. In my life there are at least a few things better left unsaid, and certainly a number of moments better forgotten. (You too? Yeah, I hear you. Join the club.)

Beyond personal history, these pages are also about family history. My genealogy work reflects the multiple cultures and multiple histories to which I am heir.

I trace two broad cultural streams, one that includes Protestant Germany, Colonial America and England, and one that includes Eastern European Jewry. Since childhood I have lived my life in deep awareness of the contradictions, feelings and sometimes painful histories that connect Jews and non-Jews. Having grown up in a "mixed" family and having lived on both sides of the line between Jews and non-Jews in my own life, I have found meaning in exploring the lives of all of my children's ancestors.

Although I have not taken up ancestor worship, I have come to understand ancestor worship better now. I like my own ancestors because they are so ordinary and imperfect, and because they are both so familiar and so foreign. In telling their stories online I feel connected to their lives. I think of them often now that I have gathered the material with which to imagine their lives

Telling the story of my ancestors on the web forced me to think about the ethics of making them public figures. They now find their images ensconced in a medium that they could not imagine. How would my ancestors comprehend the fate to which I have subjected them? I don't know, so I justify myself by asking "Would a person of the 19th or early 20th century want to be forgotten?" Let's just say this is my bid to give them the eternal life that they surely prayed for in another form. Here's hoping there are no hard feelings among the departed. I mean well.

I hope that you enjoy this exercise in the representation of identity, this "autodocumentary." If it encourages you in your own effort to represent yourself, to yourself or to the world, whether on-line or in-life, that would make me happy.

Perhaps this site is a message in a bottle. Perhaps, if you are reading these words, it means you have found the bottle you were meant to find.

Sending me e-mail is the step that completes the communication loop. What was your response to Documented Life? Or how's the weather? Let me know.

Sincerely,

Miles Hochstein

You can go home again, but I'm not allowed to tell you how......

Revised June 2007