The note was found in a burnt-out, abandoned car in Hawaii. It was a letter to God, essentially, and its author was trying to make sense of her two miscarriages.
The writer who was questioning her faith and strength to move on may never be found, but her words are available for all: It’s one of the many scribblings to make it into Found magazine’s sixth volume.
“It’s a very powerful, poignant note,” says Peter Rothbart, who translated it into a song he’s performing as part of Found magazine’s 2009 tour.
Reached before a show in Oakland, Calif., he’s on a 57-city whirlwind. This is tour number eight with his brother, magazine creator and editor Davy Rothbart. Davy will also take the stage to read some of the better recent submissions his publication and the Found website have gotten. The two also encourage attendees to bring their own discoveries.
“Please, please tell people to bring stuff,” Peter pleads. “We love to share finds with people after the show.”
It’s a kind of show-and-tell for people who don’t mind touching stuff they’ve found in grocery store parking lots, laundry mat bathrooms, crusty bus seats. Abandoned cars.
“You can only imagine how it got there,” Peter says of the letter to God. The same is true of all the wacky, sad, hilarious, creepy pieces of people’s lives Found gathers. Managing editor James Molenda estimates Found receives 30 to 50 finds per day.
Thinking that the stories behind the objects were just as interesting, Peter recalls, they contacted some of their favorite artists to write about the circumstances surrounding their own favorite finds. The result is “Requiem for a Paper Bag,” with essays from nearly 70 contributors, Chuck D., Andy Samberg, Tom Robbins, Sarah Vowell and Devendra Banhart among them
“Seth Rogen told this great story about when he was a kid, he found a porno mag, sopping wet, in the street,” Peter says. “He had to hide it in a tree to keep it from his parents.”
Being able to solicit anything from someone at Rogen’s level is years away from Found’s humble beginnings, in 2001. Peter remembers how he helped his brother piece the first issue together in Chicago (Found’s headquarters are now in Ann Arbor, Mich.), how handmade it was back then.
“We really didn't have much ambition for the magazine...We really didn't have any idea that people would be so responsive to it. We’re really glad so many people have felt connected with it.”
And the connection isn’t just one-way. Found receives submissions of everything from everywhere—a photo of Cameron Diaz with the words “you will never be this skinny” written across it from a restroom in Washington, DC, a note with an almost-haiku that reads, “The bark on the tree/The snow beneath my window/My sister still bitching,” uncovered in a library in Alaska. Photos (including the ones that go into the volumes of Dirty Found), homework, love notes, they take it all.
In addition to the latest book and the magazine, which published volume six in December, are many other publications from the hoarders at Found. “Found Polaroids,” for example, is a collection of photos that slipped out of purses and pants pockets to turn up on subways and city streets. Our lives, it seems, are incredibly scattered, incredibly available.
Found helps to reign things in. Peter’s theory is that because humans are pretty disconnected from one another these days, Found “offers people a little insight into what other people’s experiences are,” he says. “It just offers people the reassurance that other people aren't so different after all.”
Of course, Peter keeps a special eye on his own scribblings, so don’t expect a note to slip out of his back pocket.
“In particular, some of them are very incriminating...”
