Davy Rothbart, editor of Found Magazine and author of My Heart is an Idiot. (Photo by Dan Busta)
Any survivor of an American high school knows the only joy greater than receiving a handwritten note from a friend or secret admirer is accidentally intercepting a note intended for someone else. Reading random strangers’ correspondence is a level of entertainment largely unmatched in culture. Perusing Craigslist “Missed Connections” probably comes the closest, but there’s a filter there—the writers know what they’re writing is public. Reading a found note, on the other hand, is an experience unlike any other: it’s doing something you’re not supposed to, without any chance of being caught. Ever.
Davy Rothbart, creator of FOUND Magazine, has made a career for the last decade of collecting submissions of found notes, letters and photographs and publishing them in FOUND’s annual issue. With the release of his first memoir essay collection, My Heart is an Idiot, the Ann Arbor, Michigan-based writer reveals in tale after madcap tale that is own life is actually quite a lot like an issue of FOUND. He befriends strangers who are hitchiking, strangers seated next to him on Greyhound rides, and strangers who cold call him for anonymous phone sex. To put it bluntly, Rothbart’s actual friendships are formed from the casual encounters many of us overlook and leave unexplored. Once, a Vietnam War veteran’s journal was submitted to FOUND. Rothbard tracked down the journal’s author on a whim. Then he spent Thanksgiving with him.
Currently on a US tour to promote his book and his brother and fellow FOUND editor Peter Rothbart’s new folk album, You Are What You Dream, Rothbart will be in Santa Cruz this weekend. We caught up with him over the phone on his way to a gig in Portland, Oregon. Here is an excerpt from the conversation:
Santa Cruz Weekly: Congratulations on the anniversary of FOUND. You’ve spent 10 years reading stranger’s found notes from all over the world.
Davy Rothbart: Thanks! For something that started out with no plan and no grand ambition, it has been really cool to see it grow, survive and endure from such a simple idea.
SCW: Have you noticed any recurring themes in the notes?
DR: There’s really a full spectrum of human emotion in them. Seriously, some will make you tear up. Others will make you laugh out loud. The main thing I’ve taken from all of them is the idea that for all the surface differences we have—we look different, we’re leading different sorts of lives—what really strikes me is how connected we all are and how universal are the emotions we all experience.
SCW: Some of those notes are straight up hilarious. They don’t seem real.
DR: I know. These notes are really raw, really personal. But we’re not laughing at these people, we’re laughing at ourselves. ‘Cause we’re all the same. I can relate to every one of the found notes in one way or another—I think we want to turn left here. Sorry, I’m on my way to a reading.
SCW: It’s OK. That’s a good segue to talking about your book. In the essays you seem to befriend a lot of unlikely strangers.
DR: Yeah…The found notes are so fascinating and I like the mystery involved in wondering what the backstories are. But I also like meeting real people and finding out about some actual person’s, you know, actual story.
SCW: You seem pretty trusting and willing to be friends with just about anybody. Do you feel like there’s an inherent goodness or badness in people?
DR: Sure, I mean there’s badness in people, there’s pettiness, there’s even evil, but what I see constantly is—I’m gonna attempt a complicated driving maneuver. I’m gonna try to back down a one way street. There’s a parking lot right in front of the venue.
SCW: OK.
DR: Anyways, I feel like the more that I find a way to just be open to people and open to adventure the more I’m rewarded and good things come into my life. I mean, what do you think?
SCW: Yeah, I think I used to have more openness. But as I got older I feel like a lot of people are telling me that things are dangerous or I should be more cautious. Like, for example at a protest I was writing about once I met a guy with paranoid schizophrenia, who told me the government was after him and all this stuff. But at the same time he was super cute and charming—
DR: Totally.
SCW: I kind of wanted to be his friend, or at least hear his story, but a voice in my head told me I shouldn’t because he might be dangerous.
DR: Yeah, trust your spidey sense. And it doesn’t always have to be a paranoid schizophrenic. I’ll get into a conversation with a stranger on a bus or at a bar. Sure, some people are not interested and they don’t want to engage. That’s fine. That’s their loss. I’ve made friends from people I literally just stumbled on in the street. Now they’re some of my best friends.
SCW: Cool. You also come off as pretty impulsive in the book. Flying places on the spur of the moment for a shot at a girl, things like that. Do you do much second-guessing?
DR: I definitely do trust my instincts a lot. More often than not I feel like I have the right sense, if someone has come into my life, if this person is going to be someone who is going to be an important person. So it may seem impulsive but I feel like it’s based on some deeper sense of connection with this person or situation. There are times when I’ve been completely wrong about something. But to that I would say what’s the risk/reward? To super break it down in a pragmatic way, there’s really nothing to lose. You may have wasted a flight or a couple days or weeks. But the gain is something really special, especially when it comes to romantic things. I’ll always take a chance and see.
SCW: It seems like you value adventure a lot.
DR: Definitely. I feel like I’m always enriched by having deeper and more wide-ranging experiences. They might not even seem fun for me. I’m just like, ‘I’m just going to try this shit anyway.’ You end up having some interesting experiences.
