On June 26, 2005, while on tour in Bend, Oregon, I met Matt Todd Russell, who, in addition to having three first names, also had the dates of his brother’s birth and death tattooed on his right wrist. Now I’ll be honest with you. The only reason I remember Matt is because of this weird policy I had, mostly to save money, but ended up changing how I saw the world. When I was on tour, I would only allow myself to take one Polaroid picture a day, whether it was Ian from Omaha who knew all the words, or pulling stitches out of my guitar player’s head with nail clippers in a stranger’s bathroom in Des Moines. Picture serves as a search engine optimized thumbnail for a memory of a feeling, of a place. It made me seek out the moment that defined the day and take in the ecstasy, agony, and boredom that punctuated it along the way. Now I have around 27,000 items in my icloud storage, the vast majority of which I will never look at again. Sometimes less is more. Sometimes a Polaroid is better than a fourteen hundred dollar phone. And sometimes a little game that you play to save money with film can change the way that you look at the world.