my affinity for the tangible
My mother has a box filled with handwritten notes, dated in pen, written on the back of photographs. Keepsakes from the younger years in love with my father while living an ocean apart. It takes up space on the shelf in her closet, instead of a new bag or an old pair of shoes. It’s a dedicated corner committed to their relationship. And I always thought how beautiful it is to hold space for the tangible proof of their love.
The box I have on top of my bookshelf does not hold memories of a romantically destined type of love. What it does have are all the tickets to every concert, play, broadway show, museum, and convention I’ve gone to since I was kid. The packaging for a journal my brother gifted me now holds every postcard I’ve collected while on my travels. The box in my closet has the miscellaneous high school performance memorabilia. A jar on my shelf has petals from every flower someone has gifted me. A plastic bin in my desk drawer holds the last cards written to me by my grandma who passed a few years ago along with the earliest cards created by my cousins when they were just learning how to write. Both with their own spelling mistakes, both with their own shaky handwriting.
They are things I could never willingly part with. Even in knowing the item will eventually have an end just as humans do. A letter worn down at the folds and torn at the edges is no less valuable than the letter just being received in the mail. Open and reread its words every day, every week, and you’ll leave your own marks on the page. A photograph is just as beautiful with its stains and fading colors as it was first printed and pressed into the album for safe keeping. The yellowing a sign that is being seen, remembered, revisited.1
My need for the tangible supersedes the wish to immortalize. Let it age.
I was young when I fell in love with holding on. I fell in love with keeping it all. I fell in love with loving things for all the memories, moments in my life, and emotions they represent.
I am not a hoarder, but I am one sentimental bitch.
This post was inspired by a quote from the movie Kodachrome (2017). It got me thinking about how much I’ve always preferred having something to hold and to touch and to experience over living in a digital world, especially as a photographer. To preface, the movie is about a world known photojournalist/asshole of a father who is dying of cancer and road trips with his son and assistant to the only remaining lab in the world that will process Kodachrome film for the very last time. He is a stickler for the analog lifestyle, preferring maps over GPS, cassette tapes over the radio, film over digital. Anyway, here is the quote:
“People are taking more pictures now than ever before, billions of them, but there are no slides, no prints. Just data. Electronic dust. Years from now when they dig us up there won't be any pictures to find, no record of who we were or how we lived.”