Clueless Collector Part 2

Originally posted November 15th 2023

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1.

You can check out Part 1 here

In my previous essay about collecting, I said I would write a part 2 and preceded to completely forget about it until now. In the last essay, I defended the concept of collecting as a social practice. Learning from others and building from others collections and them yours. Its about give and give. Now I’m thinking more about ethics. How can you justify something that seems unpractical? How does one separate it from consumerism? You can collect fast fashion. You can collect MacDonalds cups. So how am I better for collecting something that is as mass produced as records and books?

The easiest way to describe this consumption is with food. Some food is made from a tortured cow who never stepped on grass, and you get a steak. Then there’s a cow who wandered miles and miles everyday, grazing and living a cared for life and then also is made into a steak. You could argue that in the end, you’re getting steak either way. But how that steak came to be is an important factor in ones consumption. Something I bring up time and time again is effort. It takes effort to collect (or consume) things meaningfully and in a way that aligns with ones ethics. There’s a difference between someone who has no choice but to eat the tortured cow and someone who’s not bothered to know. And I think a lot people are just not bothered. I also think the choice not to eat the tortured cow is being squashed down, affordability and ethics rarely go hand in hand.

I love books, I buy and read a lot of them. For the most part I read second-hand but even second-hand is not necessarily the most ethical. Abebooks is owned by amazon, there are warehouses of books rotting away, second-hand shops have to sustained themselves by becoming cafés and bars. Books are made from paper, paper made from trees, deforestation, you get what I’m saying.

Collecting cannot be self-contained and pretend it does not partake in over-consumption and unsustainable practices. So as a collector, I think you have to walk a very fine line. But when I say collector, I’m picturing a very particular kind of collector. A picky collector. Not a funkopop collector. I think there’s a difference between someone who buys vintage Star Wars toys and someone who just buys anything and everything related to Star Wars. When a musician releases a “limited edition” vinyl, if the stock is in the thousands, it’s not very limited. I see limited editions all over Discogs, the same record ranging between $5-$500. A lot of sellers, particularly in second hand, know that most people don’t know a lot about collecting. So they can try to sell a mass produced book at a high price because it’s a first edition. Someone will see “first edition” and gladly pay too much for it. The wildest price disparity I’ve ever seen was for a cookbook that was still in print, only in hardback, the first editions going between £20 and nearly £1000. All because they were first editions of a fairly popular cookbook by a celebrity chef who’d signed thousands of the things.

I often think about the limited run of vinyls for the emo band Armor for Sleep’s second album What To Do When You Are Dead. This band was never huge in the scene, they always tended to be openers rather than headliners. The album in the long run was quite influential but at the time it was overshadowed by the likes of My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy. This album was their big hit compared to the rest of their work. The album came out in 2005 and around 2015 there was small run of vinyls for the 10 year anniversary (the band did a small run of shows but had called it quits in 2009). It was impossible to get your hands on once they’d sold out. I saw one on Discogs for $60 (I think the original was around $30) and it quickly sold. In 2020 Armor for Sleep reunited and released what I’d called a divorce record and suddenly you can grab a vinyl of What To Do When You Are Dead anywhere. For a bit, it was a fun little novelty for elder emos to chat about but it no longer holds the charm of scarcity. It’s just an old emo album that doesn’t sound great on vinyl anyways because it was mixed for CDs and MP3. It’s a hipster sentiment, but when it’s rare and niche it’s a lot more fun because the quality of it isn’t actually that good. The album had always been readily available, just online or in a dusty sleeve in the car. It’s different when something like Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s Keyboard Fantasies is remastered and released in short runs to keep a balance with demand. His music was before 2015 not easily accessible, so in collecting his works one was partaking in the preservation of it. The original tapes still hold that wonderful collectors novelty because it does not lose it’s rarity by Copeland’s work becoming more available. It doesn’t come across as a quick buck off nostalgia.

I say this as someone who owns Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge by My Chemical Romance on vinyl. At the time I thought it was funny, because I’d argue it’s not good vinyl music. In my previous essay on collecting, I mentioned a Black Flag tape that was £50. At first I found it ridiculous but after talking to the shop associate about it we realised that a cassette was the perfect format for hardcore music. That these tapes still existing was a miracle, given how badly they age and how few of them were made. So £50 for a tape seemed reasonable. Buying a brand new, freshly pressed record of a My Chemical Romance on the other hand could be nothing but a flex in nostalgia. But someone else out there loves blasting MCR on vinyl. But I am not that person.

Collecting it all about taste. That’s why I’m against funkopop collectors. Anyone who’d buy those things clearly has none. They’re like NFTs or Beanie Babies. People betting on tulip bulbs being worth something. I wouldn’t consider that collecting, I consider it like those people who buy a house who only consider resale value when it comes to decorating. It has nothing to do with you. You have no faith in your own taste. Or you have none. With your fake marble grey kitchens. Even Ikea has more flare.

What I’m getting at is that a collector must have principles. You have to look at the things that might be easier or cheaper and say no because you wouldn’t be able to live with yourself. Because you care about the collection, be it for passion, curation, practicality. Are you someone who loves books because you read all the time, you collect and give away with ease, are you someone who has more unread books than read, believing that it is a library of possibilities? Do you even care to justify it under the guise of practicality? What is practical about philosophy? (that is a rhetorical question).

I wanted to mainly bring this up because I think collecting is wonderful, but I became concerned with it’s more harmful aspects. I must be critical of my hobbies, that is not to hate them or push them away, but to practice what I preach. To be a good collector I must collect less. I must love the rarity of collecting. It is about hunting, seeking out small corners to find something truly special. To be thoughtful.

2.

When I am feeling at my most disconnected, I often am the most active on social media. I know that’s become a cliché, but I think it’s because I’m in need of connection and unwilling to message first. I have always felt that I am the one to initiate, which I don’t know if that’s even true. Feeling forgettable, I try to remind people I’m here with pictures, memes, random bits of nothing. I do like sharing, I’ve always taken pictures and collected images, but there’s a head space I’m in right now and maybe it’s to do with the changing season. The loneliness is evident.

I see all these articles about the “loneliness epidemic” and I wonder where all these other lonely people are. I see people out with friends and family, posting pictures of the beach, traveling, singing, dancing together. I wonder if my loneliness is exceptional. And I wonder if that is exactly what loneliness wants me to think? That no one could possible understand, could comprehend how unlovable and too far gone I’ve become. It’s easy to find reasons to stay hidden.

As I am trying to climb out of the pit I’ve dug myself into, it’s harder to pretend I’m okay being alone all the time. At least I had an excuse for a while, that my loneliness was due to circumstance rather than a character flaw. Now I am forced to reckon with myself, with how I much I dislike myself. Which is hard, because I really want to like being me.

And this is how loneliness has warped my mind, because it makes you selfish. There’s a quote by Olivia Laing I came across that hit like a ton of bricks:

“You think you know yourself inside out when you live alone, but you don't, you believe you are a calm untroubled or at worst melancholic person, you do not realise how irritable you are, how any little thing, the wrong kind of touch or tone, a lack of speed in answering a question, a particular cast of expression will send you into apoplexy because you are unchill, because you have not learnt how to soften your borders, how to make room. You're selfish and rigid and absorbed, you're like an infant.” —Olivia Laing, Crudo

I may believe to know myself inside and out, but who I am is relative to who I am with. And especially what I’m spending too much time doing. Scrolling, as we all know, leaves you feeling like shit. For some reason, I am resistant to a version of myself I know exists, myself when left without the emotional whiplash of the internet. When I’m not looking at friend’s stories, refreshing the page over and over waiting for something new to envy. Which in turn makes me resentful. And then I feel bad about it, the cycle and refresh.

When I am doing the dishes, cooking dinner, not drowning out the silence, when I let the loneliness out and walk around, I feel a bit better. When the sun is setting, I often feel terribly alone, but it does not feel unique. The world is indifferent to me, which can be comforting, my sadness being totally unexceptional. My fears about dating means fuckall to a tree. The pigeons on the roof across the way are not worried about how I phrased something. I’m saying all this to comfort myself. I am still, maddeningly lonely. It feels ingrained. I can’t pretend I don’t need anyone, I cannot self love my way out of the need to socialise, to be with people. I need the balance, this apartment is too familiar. I want to let it get messy, to not have the time to hang up the clothes on the chair, let things get a bit out of hand because I’ve been busy doing other things. I want to see a band scream on stage, kids kicking about in a pit, I want to sit in a cinema and cry, I want to hold someone’s hand, I want to not be afraid to say how I feel, even when it’s not nice. I want to fall asleep not worried about dying, thinking about how no one would be able to make it to my funeral. I don’t want to be buried in America. I’d be very lonely being dead here, I wouldn’t know anyone.

Today I reconsidered my desire to one day have children. I thought that perhaps I should give up on the idea, which inherently means I’m giving up on the idea of ever finding anyone to have kids with. It’s a thought that dominoes into a million other things, because yes, I shouldn’t build my future around imaginary people, but it also would be like closing a door. It loops back to the idea of being unlovable, someone incapable of having a family, let alone a happy one. And maybe I need to stop conflating being lovable with marriage and children. I know. My worth shouldn’t be attached to the existence of other people. But at the same time, our self worth is attached to others, it just gets confused with what is good and what looks good. Partners are trophies, house wives as financial status, it’s nothing new. It looks good but at the end of the day, there’s probably a reason things like The Yellow Wallpaper exist. So I’m back to wondering what do I really want because ultimately I don’t know. But I picture myself, lonely on a train again, watching fields pass by, the pit in my stomach not so deep. I talk to the man working in the shop at Nunhead station, he makes me a mocha and says rain today, best be prepared. On the bus on a rainy day, the lights shining through as the rain drops race each other down the window, I feel the world around me and the loneliness is there but it is easier to bear. Something about being lonely on public transport seems easier. The world forcing me forward. The door opens.

3.

When this essay comes out, I’ll be headed to California in a couple days. I’d be lying if I said I have not been riddled with anxiety since the moment I got my plane tickets. I’m trying to trust myself. Trust that I’ll get in that cab, get through security, all on my own, and be okay. And be okay not being okay too. I’m allowed feel like shit while doing it. The important thing is that I do it. Because I want to do it. I want to go see my friend, wander around the bay again. See the ocean, stand among the redwoods. I’m lightheaded just thinking about it.

Thank you for reading,

Enya xx