cars and calories

somehow, i have surrounded myself with friends who are rather pop-culture object oriented. i am, to my knowledge, not anti-pop-culture. and i am an object fetishist myself (count the books, count the pairs of shoes etc). but there are things that bother me, and definitely things that make me feel like there is extra distance between myself and the people around me.

the collections. holy fuck. yes, so many people with so much stuff. CDs, DVDs, videos, records, games, toys, computers, books, magazines, comics, porn, art supplies, pants, shoes, t-shirts, fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuccccccccccccccccccccck.

and i do it too. ask me why i don’t get rid of half the books on my shelf. go ahead, ask me.

i have no intention of rereading 90% of them. a few of them i have never read at all. but if you ask me where each of them came from, there is probably a little (or big) story to go along with it. i also keep books that fit in with my ‘image’. i would love to say that wasn’t the case, but it’s true. you’ll note an obscene number of radical/ anarchist feminist books. you’ll note an obscene number of books on counselling/ social work. you’ll note an obscene number of books on culture/ politics/ gender. you’ll note an obscene number of obscene books. if i ‘trap’ those books in my house, i somehow believe that i have trapped the qualities that i like/ admire about those books into my sense of self. no, really. i am pretty sure that’s how my mind works.

those books don’t make up for the areas of knowledge that i lack. but it kind of feels like a shortcut, you know? i can buy the book and have ownership over a style, a genre, an area of understanding. if i ‘lose’ the book, i might lose my ability to remember what i know/ what i have read. i will certainly lose the g33k cred that i get when someone asks me if i can recommend a great introduction to foucault or weil.

i wonder if people are feeling so bored with themselves and so out of control that they need to ‘anchor’ themselves with objects. and if those objects (like DVDs or computer games) can serve as an enticement for others to hang out with us (or as a mediator between us and our friends) do we end up taking those items on as part of our identity? weird.

i would love to hear some comments from people in the ‘it’s cheaper for me to buy things, in the long run’ camp. those of you who collect because you feel that you are making a valued entertainment/ research/ business/ education etc investment for yourselves. (i cannot join this camp. i *do* have a library card, after all).

don’t read too deeply into all this. i do not claim to be an anti-materialist. but seeing movies like ‘vinyl’ kinda set me off. i watched that movie and was like “some of my friends are like that, and they don’t even know it. am *i* like that?”. i wonder if someone i know has ‘vinyl’ on VHS, so i can watch it again and again and again. heh.

thinking about my brother’s post (below), i *know* the feeling of that dog eared thrasher magazine from july 1987. i know the feelings that rush to the surface, of long summers spent trading tricks and coming home late for dinner. faces of people that you had uncomplicated friendships with come in to your vision. i know that feeling, and i value the objects that serve as a marker in time.

we *can* use that thrasher magazine to remind our bodies and minds what it felt like to possess certain qualities in ourselves and our lives. that magazine reminds you of what it felt like to never fear that you would lose steam, lose desire, lose hope, lose your friends, lose your mind. it reminds you of all those things, but it does not reinfuse you with those qualities. use that object to gauge if you are getting close to gaining those feelings/ that atmosphere in your life again. yes? the object is a marker. not a replacement for feelings/ experiences.

do all 27 pairs of my shoes hold profound rememberings? nope.

ultimately, most of us would agree that the ‘stuff’ doesn’t matter. then why? why do we do it? why do we ‘treat ourselves’ to a magazine or CD or whathaveyou every payday? why do we get so excited about 3/$12 movies? do we still have any grasp on what objects are relatively meaningful to us, and what is just padding for our lives?

does the behavior of collecting mean anything? does it mean anything to *you*?