What do you collect? What do you keep about you that rewards you just in the keeping?
I have never considered myself to be a collector, but not for a lack of trying. I have gathered lots of things over the years, but I have also discarded most of them. There is a coin collection, made up of random international coins and quite a few U.S. coins. Yet they all fit into one small box that was easy enough to fit in one of my suitcases when I moved to Europe. The stamp collection is even smaller (collecting it lightly occupied me for about 1 year as a young teenager), with just a few inspired or opportunistic additions more recently. That is all as far as traditional collections go.
On the nontraditional side, I have about 15 half-liter bags of sand of different colors, from black to pink to almost white, from different beaches around the world. These are meant for a future artwork of some kind, but they function more like a collection, just sitting there for now.
Should I include movies and music? If so, then perhaps I underestimate myself. However, my iPod is less then half full at 60 Mb of music. How many days would it take to listen to all of that music? Well, on a long drive a few years ago (just under 1000 miles/1600 km), I started to listen to all my songs—in alphabetical order. I barely made it into the B’s during the return trip. So maybe that makes it a collection.
I am a lover of film, and yet my DVD’s fit into a small cabinet and just a few boxes in the basement cage beneath my Versoix apartment. iTunes holds more, but these amount to just over a hundred. How many days would they take to watch? Well, I suspect I could suffer a serious broken leg and not run out of films for a while. Do I need this many movies and this much music when I have Netflix, Spotify, TV and radio? They mostly sit idle, so perhaps these also comprise a collection. Yet like all collections, they somehow assert a power, a potential.
And then there are books. I forgot to mention that I have a small but not insubstantial number of cookbooks, even though I rarely use them anymore, preferring spontaneous creations with web search inspiration. I also have books about the countries I have visited or want to visit, but my books on art and film are the most substantial category. I do not care to calculate how much they cost to ship to Europe, but I do refer to them from time to time, which makes it worthwhile (more than just a lurking power). The books line 3 large bookshelves, but many also remain in boxes locked in the cellar cage, like most of the DVDs, and the LPs I forgot to mention.
As I write, I am looking at the line of plants (flowers and herbs) at the edge of my balcony. Additional dried herbs and spices in the kitchen occupy one large tray near the stove (those most used), and one additional drawer containing less often used Mexican chilis and the curry mixes that were spontaneous purchases (and will eventually by thrown out in preference to freshly made ones).
I became curious, and found that I have 9,909 photos in my iPhotos collection since I began using it in 2012. That is approximately 2500 per year. Before that, I did not count, but I have an external hard drive somewhere with an equal number of photos, no doubt. And there are boxes of traditional printed photos as well, as yet un-digitized, and therefore innumerable.
I live in a small apartment, or I would collect more I suppose. It is our nature.
Collections are a passion for many people. They collect memorabilia related to sports or other disciplines, or items generally representing certain decades, forms of fine and folk art (some of which are produced specifically to be collected, and even numbered to help collectors). Some collect common souvenirs from as many places as possible (pins, buttons, spoons, postcards, refrigerator magnets, shells, etc.), specifically named “souvenirs” for their power to recall events and places visited. Souvenirs can hold power even if the visit was made by family or friends—it is still a connection. Some are more interested in collecting the places themselves, and do so with photos, air tickets, or just memories. Many tourists rush to visit as many famous places as possible for the photo opportunities they present during their too brief holidays. While I try to avoid that kind of travel myself, I do have an up-to-date Virtual Tourist map that shows I have visited 38 countries and all 50 US states. I keep count at Virtual Tourist. Some put pins in a physical map.
And that is part of the fun of collecting I suppose, counting what you have and hold. Collecting is a way of getting your hands around some aspect of life—of quantifying it and also possessing it. Collecting can help you learn, leading to new knowledge through comparisons of the things you collect (consider the natural philosophers’ collections of fossils), and deepening your understanding of a particular facet of life. Collections also can support identity-building through maintaining a connection with something meaningful to you and to others with similar interests--which can help build a learning community. Collecting is an aesthetic activity, offering no personal gain (see the disinterest theory of art), frequently based on a desire to engage with life within a manageable scope.
Artists also collect at times. Writers and filmmakers may create story collections centered around a theme, such as Kieslowski's Decalogue and Three Colors series, Wallace Steven's poems, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, or Monet's haystack series of paintings under different lighting conditions. Some contemporary visual artists have made the act of collecting a subject of their work.
Collecting begins in childhood, perhaps because it is a natural and intuitive activity. We might collect stones, cards, toy soldiers or stuffed animals. Maybe this desire was born out of the need to collect food and water, or raw materials useful for survival—hoarding for winter, perhaps. If this is its source, it has evolved to become more about meaning. Some collections are composed of things from outside everyday experience, things that bring the remote closer (stamps, coins, minerals, historic items, rare minerals). Alternatively, some collections are composed of things representing notable personal experiences that one wants to recall (photos, awards, souvenirs, autographs, jewelry, or even the chocolate wrappers and beer cans recalling other pleasures). Others represent exquisite examples, works of great craftsmanship and effort (art itself, but also finely designed practical objects, and even the tools for creating them). But others are just about enumerating some subset of innumerable things (from butterfly collections to stones and grains of sand).
These four categories, the exotic, the personally meaningful, the exquisite, and the innumerable, do cover a lot of ground, but I suspect they are not exhaustive. I will conclude with a list (a collection) of additional things not already mentioned directly that might also qualify as collections, fitting in these categories for the most part, but suggesting others perhaps. Even if such a list could never be complete, it is interesting to consider the range of possibilities.
I have never considered myself to be a collector, but not for a lack of trying. I have gathered lots of things over the years, but I have also discarded most of them. There is a coin collection, made up of random international coins and quite a few U.S. coins. Yet they all fit into one small box that was easy enough to fit in one of my suitcases when I moved to Europe. The stamp collection is even smaller (collecting it lightly occupied me for about 1 year as a young teenager), with just a few inspired or opportunistic additions more recently. That is all as far as traditional collections go.
On the nontraditional side, I have about 15 half-liter bags of sand of different colors, from black to pink to almost white, from different beaches around the world. These are meant for a future artwork of some kind, but they function more like a collection, just sitting there for now.
I am a lover of film, and yet my DVD’s fit into a small cabinet and just a few boxes in the basement cage beneath my Versoix apartment. iTunes holds more, but these amount to just over a hundred. How many days would they take to watch? Well, I suspect I could suffer a serious broken leg and not run out of films for a while. Do I need this many movies and this much music when I have Netflix, Spotify, TV and radio? They mostly sit idle, so perhaps these also comprise a collection. Yet like all collections, they somehow assert a power, a potential.
And then there are books. I forgot to mention that I have a small but not insubstantial number of cookbooks, even though I rarely use them anymore, preferring spontaneous creations with web search inspiration. I also have books about the countries I have visited or want to visit, but my books on art and film are the most substantial category. I do not care to calculate how much they cost to ship to Europe, but I do refer to them from time to time, which makes it worthwhile (more than just a lurking power). The books line 3 large bookshelves, but many also remain in boxes locked in the cellar cage, like most of the DVDs, and the LPs I forgot to mention.
As I write, I am looking at the line of plants (flowers and herbs) at the edge of my balcony. Additional dried herbs and spices in the kitchen occupy one large tray near the stove (those most used), and one additional drawer containing less often used Mexican chilis and the curry mixes that were spontaneous purchases (and will eventually by thrown out in preference to freshly made ones).
I became curious, and found that I have 9,909 photos in my iPhotos collection since I began using it in 2012. That is approximately 2500 per year. Before that, I did not count, but I have an external hard drive somewhere with an equal number of photos, no doubt. And there are boxes of traditional printed photos as well, as yet un-digitized, and therefore innumerable.
I live in a small apartment, or I would collect more I suppose. It is our nature.
Collections are a passion for many people. They collect memorabilia related to sports or other disciplines, or items generally representing certain decades, forms of fine and folk art (some of which are produced specifically to be collected, and even numbered to help collectors). Some collect common souvenirs from as many places as possible (pins, buttons, spoons, postcards, refrigerator magnets, shells, etc.), specifically named “souvenirs” for their power to recall events and places visited. Souvenirs can hold power even if the visit was made by family or friends—it is still a connection. Some are more interested in collecting the places themselves, and do so with photos, air tickets, or just memories. Many tourists rush to visit as many famous places as possible for the photo opportunities they present during their too brief holidays. While I try to avoid that kind of travel myself, I do have an up-to-date Virtual Tourist map that shows I have visited 38 countries and all 50 US states. I keep count at Virtual Tourist. Some put pins in a physical map.
And that is part of the fun of collecting I suppose, counting what you have and hold. Collecting is a way of getting your hands around some aspect of life—of quantifying it and also possessing it. Collecting can help you learn, leading to new knowledge through comparisons of the things you collect (consider the natural philosophers’ collections of fossils), and deepening your understanding of a particular facet of life. Collections also can support identity-building through maintaining a connection with something meaningful to you and to others with similar interests--which can help build a learning community. Collecting is an aesthetic activity, offering no personal gain (see the disinterest theory of art), frequently based on a desire to engage with life within a manageable scope.
Artists also collect at times. Writers and filmmakers may create story collections centered around a theme, such as Kieslowski's Decalogue and Three Colors series, Wallace Steven's poems, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, or Monet's haystack series of paintings under different lighting conditions. Some contemporary visual artists have made the act of collecting a subject of their work.
Collecting begins in childhood, perhaps because it is a natural and intuitive activity. We might collect stones, cards, toy soldiers or stuffed animals. Maybe this desire was born out of the need to collect food and water, or raw materials useful for survival—hoarding for winter, perhaps. If this is its source, it has evolved to become more about meaning. Some collections are composed of things from outside everyday experience, things that bring the remote closer (stamps, coins, minerals, historic items, rare minerals). Alternatively, some collections are composed of things representing notable personal experiences that one wants to recall (photos, awards, souvenirs, autographs, jewelry, or even the chocolate wrappers and beer cans recalling other pleasures). Others represent exquisite examples, works of great craftsmanship and effort (art itself, but also finely designed practical objects, and even the tools for creating them). But others are just about enumerating some subset of innumerable things (from butterfly collections to stones and grains of sand).
- Animal and bird sightings: Many people expend significant effort to record their sightings of animals, trying to collect as many as possible. On African safaris, the goal is to see the “Big 5” most dangerous animals. For birders, the ultimate sighting goal is one that can never be accomplished, with almost 10,000 species of birds in the world, but more limited local goals are within reach. Others tackle even more enormous tasks, collecting butterflies and other insects, which comprise 950,000 species (approximately 250,000 of which are butterflies and moths).
- Physical achievements: With new technologies available in the form wrist devices or cell phone apps, many are encouraged toward healthy habits by counting steps or kilometers of running, biking or running. While it does not count as a disinterested activity per sae, the counting is fun on its own, and quite motivating (similar to games). Others set their sites much higher, counting mountains ascents or oceans sailed. Other health oriented collections include number of days not smoking or drinking, or years as a vegetarian.
- Games: It is almost cheating to count games as aesthetic, because they embody meaningful engagement, even if some question the importance of that meaning. Games usually include some form of collecting and counting of items or points as part of their engagement strategy. Gamification is catching on as a way to enhance motivation in many activities not typically associated with gaming, such as learning and job performance, and a central part of games is collecting badges or points.
- Connoisseurship: The collection of artifacts that represent epitomes of human creative ability can take many forms. Oenophiles keep cellars of many wine vintages, and some collect things as expensive as cars, finely crafted swords, jewelry, or, of course, works of art. Rare books, maps, and historical mechanical instruments fill other connoisseur collections.
- Membership: Particularly in these days of computer-based social networking, but also going back to clubs like the Masonic Temple, connecting to societies and contributing to them can be seen as a form of collecting. How many friends do you have in Facebook? How many LinkedIn connections? How many follow you on Instagram? These connections help to define us, and always have. Collections themselves can be a communal activity.
- Records and awards: Another form of collection related to gamification is setting personal or competitive records. Numbers of “wins,” even if personal, contribute to the ongoing motivation to engage with life, symbolizing, if not exemplifying, success.
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