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Author
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Topic: Questlove on the art of collecting
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mode1charlie
Member Posts: 1320
From: Honolulu, HI
Registered: Sep 2010
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posted 03-26-2022 06:58 PM
   
I’m not the biggest connoisseur of hip-hop the world has ever seen, but I found this NYT essay by the artist Questlove to be an interesting and intelligent rumination on collecting: what motivates it, and what meaning it has both for the collector, his/her audience, as well as for posterity.I particularly like his observation that... As a very young child, when I listened to music, read interviews or watched movies, they lingered in my memory, and I didn’t want them to leave me. Eventually, I got to thinking about the physical objects that brought me those experiences — vinyl records, print magazines. Collecting those items became a way to prevent the past from slipping away. A collection starts as a protest against the passage of time and ends as a celebration of it. |
randy
Member Posts: 2570
From: West Jordan, Utah USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 03-26-2022 08:08 PM
I agree. My collection is my way of preserving the past so that I can relive it and I can teach others about it. |
Jonnyed
Member Posts: 536
From: Dumfries, VA, USA
Registered: Aug 2014
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posted 03-27-2022 06:25 AM
I have not read the NYT article yet and I agree very much with the posts so far but I want to point out that "so that I can relive it" only applies to the old folks like me who actually did see the events on TV in real time. What about all the younger collectors who were not alive at the time?For those collectors, owning the objects is not about reliving the past. For them, it is probably more of a feeling like we might have if we found a civil war item or revolutionary war piece to collect — it's a way to connect to human history that interests us and/or defines us (as we see ourselves) way before we even arrived. For example someone may hand me a postage stamp from 1805 and I react by not giving a damn while that same item may absolutely thrill the guy standing next to me. So there is this dynamic of "significant articles from the past that fit into my own narrow interests of what is really cool from the past." So it is not just about broadly "reliving" — certainly an element, for sure — or connecting but quite a bit about projecting my current hyperfocused interests back on the past, by which I'm making a statement about how I view myself today. I don't mean to play psychologist because I am not one but in many ways when we show someone our collection we are (nonverbally?) revealing things about ourselves... at least for me there is a huge sense of "cool individual" wrapped up in it and it is how I see my fellow collectors. A cool club. That's more than wanting to relive the past right and a lot of specialized elite interest? A way to say, "This is who I am." So what we save or gather from the past is a statement about our own current values and how unique/outstanding our perspective is. compared to all the noncollectors (the unwashed  ). Again, sorry to play an untrained psychologist! |
ea757grrl
Member Posts: 773
From: South Carolina
Registered: Jul 2006
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posted 03-27-2022 11:57 AM
I read that yesterday morning and really loved it, because it reminded me of the reasons why I collect the things I do. What looks like a trinket or a piece of junk to anyone else is something that can stir deep emotions within me - of something I experienced, of something I wasn't around for but wish I could have experienced, a reminder of a certain time in my life, or maybe just some emotion I can't find words for but feel deep within.There are as many reasons for collecting as there are collectors, and for every item there is, I hope it finds someone who will cherish that thing. Those things, and the meanings we attach to them, are all part of being human. |
Skythings
Member Posts: 259
From:
Registered: Jun 2014
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posted 04-02-2022 08:40 PM
A collection starts as a protest against the passage of time and ends as a celebration of it. Thank you for this quote which so eloquently describes the reason I collect. I have now printed these words and mounted them on glass which now sits amongst my treasures for those who see my collection to help them understand why. |
Gordon Eliot Reade
Member Posts: 103
From: Palo Alto, Calif.
Registered: Jun 2015
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posted 05-01-2022 01:05 PM
I can remember the exact time and place the collecting bug first bit me. It was three weeks after Apollo 11 and I was ten years old. I walked past Mac's Smoke Shop in Palo Alto California (it’s still there) and in the window I saw a Zippo lighter showing the moon landing with the words "July 20, 1969." I remember thinking, someday that’s going to be worth a lot of money. My parents weren’t going to buy me a lighter but I was right about its future value. Here’s the same lighter today via eBay.  |
Jonnyed
Member Posts: 536
From: Dumfries, VA, USA
Registered: Aug 2014
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posted 05-01-2022 05:22 PM
Gordon-- that's a great memory to share on the Zippo lighter when you were 10. Fun story!I was 6 at the time of the first landing and still remember how all the souvenirs flying around at that time were fascinating to me at that young impressionable age. |
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