On 'Stuff'

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“Sounds of nature on tape such as rivers and rain

Paint by numbers and Duraflame

Pre-fab houses and astro yards

Collagen lips and credit cards

Is just some of the stuff which I think is grand

Alternative crab meat makes me one happy man

Santa Ana’s at Christmas won’t ruin my plans

I got a video fireplace and snow in a can”

    ~ ‘Snow In A Can’, by Camarillo Eddy

from the Swirling Eddies album “The midget, the speck and the molecule”, 2007

I’ve never had a great sense of sentimentality.  It’s a blessing and a curse.  On one hand, I don’t seem to freely make memories of events and occasions that others often find important.  Many’s the time I’ve found myself in strife because I’ve neglected to remember a birthday or I look blankly when someone asks if I “remember that thing at that place that one time?”.  I have kept few memories from when I was younger, which I guess is any time prior to the present.  The past is something I’ve left behind.  On the positive side, I also keep only a tenuous grasp on ‘things’, the material stuff that one surrounds oneself with a sense of ownership.

What I mean by tenuous is that I try not to hold too tightly on to anything that I own.  I’m calling it a positive because attachment to ‘stuff’ merely causes pain should you lose it.  I found myself in a nasty position in my late 20’s when in the space of a few short months, I lost my partner, a new job I was really starting to sink my teeth into and enjoying, and my home.  Losing things I was attached to hurt.  A more jaded me emerged from this episode hoping to not again feel too attached to things that can be lost.

Value is what we determine it is.  In essence, everything is worth exactly the same amount - what someone is prepared to pay for it, or give up for it.  Not a bit more.  

There’s a great piece of stand-up comedy by the late comedian and social commentator George Carlin (second time I’ve quoted Carlin in a couple of weeks…) which he entitled ‘A Place For My Stuff’ which I’ve always found hilarious and illuminating.  Carlin asks his audience: 

“Have you noticed that [other people’s] stuff is $#!% and your $#!% is stuff?”  

It’s perhaps the most pointed (and funny) observation Carlin makes in the routine.  He goes on and later brings the issue of one’s home into cynical focus:

“That’s all your house is, it’s a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get... more stuff!”  

He goes on to discuss the necessity to move house because you’ve got “too much stuff”.  Of course, Carlin uses exaggeration to great effect, but like all good satire, there’s truth to be found amongst the guffaws.

Chuck Palahniuk’s dark, nihilistic 1996 novel Fight Club has quite a bit to say on the topic too.  The book’s narrator loses the majority of his worldly possessions fairly early on in the book.  He speaks of a “nesting instinct” and states:

“You buy furniture.  You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life.  Buy the sofa, then for a couple of years you’re satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you’ve got the sofa issue handled.  Then the right set of dishes.  Then the perfect bed.  The drapes.  The rug.

Then you’re trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you.”

Later on, he is encouraged to remark to a policeman investigating the apparent arson of his home:

“ ‘The liberator who destroys my property,’ Tyler said, ‘is fighting to save my spirit.  The teacher who clears all possessions from my path will set me free.’ ”

I read stuff like that and it smarts a tad.  Good satire, again, shines a light in places one may not feel comfortable.  Despite my attempts to keep ‘things’ at relative arm’s length, I’ve still got plenty of stuff.  Would I mind seeing it all go?  Would I be emotionally torn asunder by having nothing besides the proverbial shirt on my back?  It’s the things that have so-called ‘sentimental value’ that would be the trickiest of things, photos and relics and things irreplaceable.

I’m a collector and sometimes trader of small plastic toys that turn from robots into cars and trucks and things.  It’s a reasonably expansive collection when viewed from the perspective of one who is not particularly interested in such things but modest (no, really) when I compare it to the really freaky, hard-core, obsessive collectors – believe me they are out there.  Despite my labeling of the collection of modest (yes, OK, I doth protest too much), it gives me pause for thought when I consider: how much are they worth to me really?

I am seriously mod-conned out.  I’ve got nifty gadgets and modern knick-knacks that do all kinds of fun things.  While it’s awfully nice to have cool stuff that I can use, or a cool home environment, things like the TV and the stereo and the computer are not really necessities, are they?  Virtually none of my stuff is absolutely necessary for my survival.  I’ve spent long periods of time with little or no TV and it makes you realise how little it actually contributes to your being on a fundamental level.  Same with all my stuff.  I’m probably overdue to do a serious de-clutter of my house and I wonder why getting this done has been difficult in the past considering I don’t really view any of it as being essential to who I am.

I’ve made the conscious choice to try not to deliberately place the label of ‘sentimental’ on anything I own.  I say that without pride, as it probably means that I live a less rich life than I may otherwise have if I surrounded myself with objects that prove a life has been lived.  It also means I’m less likely to inherit a collection of spoons or postcards or decorative doilies or other heirlooms from my parents one day.  A curse or a blessing?  I’m sure you can decide for yourself.