Collector’s Items

I have begun to collect things; and before you say I am sentimental, I need you to know that in my head this is the least sentimental thing I could do.

It is tactical, it is strategy, it is calculated. I am preparing for the apocalypse.

Earlier this year, The Week published a story on the ‘comeback’ of physical media. “Physical copies are the "only way to ensure you can always watch them” the article mentions, talking about the rise in DVD and CD sales over the past year or so, with many preferring owning rather than having an online subscription service.

I have become a hoarder of sorts over the past year. After two moves, out of Austin to Marfa and back again, I finally have a full 860 square feet to conquer and make all mine. I have been given a bit too much freedom with an apartment all to my lonesome. Fortunately, in case you were worried, it has been an easy task: I have filled every table, nightstand, and floor crevice with books, vinyl records, CD’s, cassettes, oddly shaped mugs, and fabric scraps in less than 7 months.

Especially since the election ramped up everyone’s fight or flight drive, and heightened the female rage I have stored in my collarbones, the need to own things has increased. Now listen, I am all for the demise of indulgent consumer culture, a good shake to the shoulders for the undue praise we give to those who own certain items we deem to be ‘aesthetic’, and I gnaw at the bit for the upheaval of our capitalistic economic scarcity mindset; HOWEVER, I am only an American. Egregious as it is, I love things! As I fear the rise of Trump as his office day looms and what that means for creative outlets and voices, I have collected a whopping total of 30 books since November 6th. This adds to the collection of another hundred or so already passed out on the couch. Many of the new arrivals pertain to political insights—the far right, women’s subjugation, black and queer movements— and a handful were lighter fiction reads to keep me company as the dark days of January creep up. I justified these purchases with the logic of the slight chance these books would be unavailable down the line, or that the continued education I wanted on certain subjects would be censored. So, like a true pack rat, I frantically have searched far and wide for the things I love the most, or want to love someday. I now have a plethora of books, and a stereo system to play all my cassettes on, and a separate old boombox for CD’s (why have one when you can have both?). I can host any midwestern grandparent in my studio and they would be able to work every piece of equipment I own— right down to the old gas stove as most gadgets now predate 1994.

A note: there is an undeniable aesthetic foothold in this endeavor. It looks cool! A true writer’s apartment, right down to the moping dog laying on the linen duvet. It makes me look cool, more specifically. Of course I am aware of this: someone could walk in the front door and immediately get a good read on who I present to be. It is easier too: I have less explaining to do. My obsessions are splayed out in the daylight, with no concealment. No one needs to pry in order to pull out a book from the pile, or a cassette from the case.

Not to mention the sensorial experience linked to physical media, too; it is not always simply a means to express domination over a favorite Cameron Crowe film. Investing in stereo sets, books, or records are ways to physically “be able to see, smell, and explore our obsessions, and be taken in unexpected directions by undiscovered titles and talent”.

To see or smell our obsessions.

I fall into this category as well. I love the smell of used bookstores— having secondhand books with notes in the margins by someone far gone is the closest thing I have to a live-in library. I love the crackle of the cassette tape as it plays some old Emmylou Harris. The faint swsshhhh as the record gets pulled from the paper protector. It is euphoric how much those little moments can bring immense joy. I get to look, every day if I want to, at the worlds I have visited, the hymms I’ve loved, or the cover art that delivers a punch now that I own them. My hands can remember what the John Coltrane CD cover feels like, or the final page in City of Night. Thumb and forefinger receptacles.

Okay, so, maybe, I am sentimental, and two things can be true at the same time. I have lied to you; as Virginia Woolf said in To The Lighthouse, I presented a “half-truth” of my collector dreams, and thus a foggy mirror of myself. It is unfair to you. It is not just strategy, it is also sensation and rememory (a very Proustian word to describe illuminating moments in time by being with physical items or places). As I write this, I am looking at one stack situated on my IKEA wood dresser— I am transported to the moments reading those novels and poetry collections. My confusion, naivety, misunderstanding, and longing. The chair I was plopped on. Which hand held my head up from the pillow to see the words better. Who I was with. If I lost the game of chess right after (I always do). A journal of sorts; a treasure map for the little moments I forget otherwise.

Physical media, particular my collections, longs for this kind of nostalgia I never had in the first place. A return to a time I can never remember, only sense. It doesn’t exist. I am trying anyways.

But it is also simply a means to an end; an archive for the unknown world ahead. I am creating an underground bunker in my Austin studio apartment in case of emergencies, with labels like “Eat Last” or “Only Open if Death Should Come For Me.”

There is no sentimental meaning in a want to be remembered when all the rest is forgot.

It is fear.

A wooden lifeboat with one oar left.