By Dennis D. McDonald

A.O. Scott’s New York Times article Shelf Life: Our Collections and the Passage of Time got me thinking about my own collections and collecting. I'm a baby boomer but missed a lot of the pop culture stuff others of my generation adored and collected. I collected music and books which might have been less popular overall but which did have an audience — at least to me.

One of the differences today is that it's not only easy to access works but it's also easy to share one's obsessions with others regardless of distance. The social experience around "collecting" has changed which suggests that eventual memories may also be different.

People "collect" stuff for different reasons. Some collect physical media (be sure to check out the pictures attached to Scott’s article or the myriad Youtube videos devoted to LP collecting) and take enjoyment from watching a collection grow. What that has to do with holding onto youth (Scott’s suggestion) is not clear to me. I do admit that the act of selecting and acquiring has always been important to me, regardless of whether the act is physical or virtual.

On the other hand as I've grown older my collections of stuff have actually grown smaller. For example, I have had no problem donating boxes of books to our local public or prison libraries or giving away CDs or LPs. I now tend to focus on stuff I actually use or touch. The physical size of a collection is of less importance than whether or not that old jazz-rock-fusion album is still listenable (in most cases I'm finding it's not).

Same goes for fountain pens. Collecting something and then just letting it sit unused isn't of interest -- I like to write. If I don't actually enjoy using that pen I'm probably going to let it sit unfilled with ink or else get rid of it.

Copyright (c) 2022 by Dennis D. McDonald