The White Stripes Were Right

The White Stripes made some of the wildest musical art of the 2000s with two people, three colours, and one guitar. Red, white, and black. Guitar, drums, vocals. That was it. No bass player. No keyboard. No string section. No second guitarist filling in the gaps.

They contained themselves. Deliberately. And then Jack White bent every rule he could within those limits — octave pedals, slide guitar, double tracking — making two people sound like a full band. Out of that constraint came something nobody else was making.

I think about that a lot.

The Paradox of More

Here's something I've noticed about myself.

When I have unlimited options, I choose nothing. When I have one option, I engage with it fully.

My Steam library has hundreds of games. I scroll through it for ten minutes, play something I'm not really into, and then put the whole thing down. My YouTube music has every song ever recorded and I listen to the same playlist on repeat until I get bored and move on, and then those songs disappear into a playlist I never look at again.

But when I put a single cartridge in my Game Boy, I play that game. I actually play it. I get invested. I explore. I make progress. I care about what happens next.

That's not a coincidence. That's the White Stripes thing. Constraint doesn't reduce what you can do. It focuses what you do.

What Happens When You Limit Your Library

I've got a Miyoo Mini Flip. Lovely little thing. It gives me the experience I missed out on — I never had a Game Boy SP when I was younger. It can emulate everything up to PS1. Thousands of games at my fingertips. And I used to have all of them loaded on it.

Guess how many I played? Three. Maybe four. And not well. I'd start something, play for ten minutes, switch to something else, play for ten minutes, switch again. When I go to a buffet my whole meal is mostly spent taking from the starters and that comes across in a lot of other things in my life.

So I tried something. I condensed my library. Five games at a time. That's it. Five. I had to choose which five, and those five were what I was playing until I'd finished at least one of them.

Something changed. I started focusing and finishing games. I started caring about what happened. I started looking forward to my next session because I knew exactly what I was going to play and I was invested in the story.

Less playing the library game. More playing actual games. More freedom to play, less library browsing, and more stories.

The White Stripes were right. Limiting your options doesn't limit your creativity or your enjoyment. It gives it somewhere to go.

Choosing a Record

It's the same with music. I'm moving toward cassettes and vinyl. Not because I think streaming is evil. I use a music subscription. It's fine. It's there. It's convenient. I have no loyalty to any one platform. I've migrated between several and currently on YouTube Music. I'd leave that too if it wasn't for the ad-free YouTube — once you experience it, you won't want to go back.

But here's what streaming does to me. For example, I love A$AP Rocky's album Testing. I'll start listening, get distracted, flit from one song to the next, drift to something random, then end up bored on my 50th YouTube Short. An album becomes background noise while I think about the next album. Nothing gets a proper listen.

When I choose a record and put it on the turntable, something different happens. I've committed. This is what I'm listening to. I can't skip with a button. I'd have to physically get up, lift the needle, put the record away, get another one out, put it on, lower the needle. That's effort. That's deliberate. So instead of skipping, I listen. And by the time side A finishes, I know the songs. I'm humming them. I'm invested.

Music can have that kind of impact. When a song catches you at the right moment — the Pixies drifting back into focus when you weren't paying attention — that's not background noise. That's something you were present for. And streaming doesn't let you get there, because you never committed to the album in the first place.

Choosing a record is the same philosophy as choosing a fountain pen. Or carrying one game instead of a hundred. It's choosing the thing. Making it deliberate.

Choosing a Fountain Pen

I carry a fountain pen. Yes, to work. Yes, in front of people who ask me about it regularly. No, I will not stop.

The reason is the same as everything else. A fountain pen makes writing a deliberate act. You fill it. You choose the ink. You write. You can't just click and scribble and throw it away. You're invested in the act of writing itself.

I've tried regular biros. They work fine. They do the job. If anything better because I'm left-handed and fountain pens are a constant potential hazard. But I don't think about what I'm writing with a biro. I just write. Which sounds like a good thing until you realise that half the notes I take with a biro I never look at again. The physical act of writing with a fountain pen, the slight feedback of the nib on paper, the choice of ink colour, the ritual of filling it, that makes me remember what I wrote. Not because I'm trying to remember. Because the act of writing became something I was present for.

The fountain pen isn't better than a biro in an objective sense. A biro is more convenient, more available, more disposable. But a fountain pen makes me choose to write. And choosing to write means I write better notes and I remember them better.

That's the White Stripes thing again. Constraint. Deliberation. The thing you choose is the thing you engage with.

The Same Thread

Geocaching. Dice. A mechanical watch. A Game Boy with one cartridge. A cassette tape. A fountain pen.

They're all the same thing. Choosing the thing. Making it deliberate. This isn't something I originally intended to do. It's something I've ended up falling into over time.

The White Stripes contained themselves and made art that still sounds fresh twenty years later. I contain my game library and I actually finish games. I choose a record and I hear the album. I carry dice and I'm present with the people I'm with.

It's not about having less. It's about having enough. And "enough" turns out to be plenty.

That's Mint That, things I tried, kept, or binned, and why.