Collecting vs. accumulating
I've been meaning recently to do a little entry here about the difference between collecting things and the kind of accumulation I am capable of, and since that very topic came up in an email with the always provocative CLD this afternoon, I figure I'll just present a lightly-edited version of that rather than reinvent the wheel (a workmanlike planing job is probably in order for this wheel, but I only do entries like this when I'm feeling lazy, so that's not going to happen right now).
MWR: The Chihuly tour was very cool. I shot a couple of rolls of slides. It's not really about seeing them make the glass. It's about seeing some of the quarters they have over there, the swimming pool with glass on the bottom, the aquarium, the huge long room with the giant slab table made from a single slab of old-growth trunk, all his collections (800 vintage Pendleton Indian blankets, etc., etc. It's almost excessive. There is something very alien to me about the impulse of collecting. My impulse is much more one of having things I like around, which sometimes entails accumulation and accretion, but I never have a collection or "completist" mentality. On the other hand, more money equals more cool stuff to some point, and how can any of us say where it would end with unlimited resources?
CLD: I think you have the collector's impulse... think about your cookbooks (and your expensive NYC ties!) I don't see much difference between someone who likes to read/collect cookbooks and someone who has more money and chooses instead to collect vintage blankets. Am I missing something here?
MWR: I think I'm going to have to do a blog entry about my distinctions between accumulation and collecting. I think they are real and meaningful. Most basically, I think, there is a real difference between the collector—who places some psychic value on the collection, its value, its completeness, its rarity, the search for the next things in it, etc., etc.—and someone who just tends to accumulate things he enjoys. If you look at the things I have in excess—neckties, cookbooks, fragrances, fountain pens, cameras, etc.—I acquired them following a purchase psychology that is not much different than what I, and most others, apply when deciding on what day-to-day purchases to make. I value things idiosyncratically, and see important distinctions in kind where others just see two blue ties, two vetiver fragrances, two old cameras, etc., but my ideas about utility are pretty normal. I don't buy things I don't expect to use and I have pretty normal ideas of diminishing marginal utility. I would be glad to have a black Nikon F2AS or a silver Leica M5, but because I have each camera in the other color, getting a second cosmetically different one is WAY down on my list. It would be high on a true collector's list.
My cameras, even though I have about [WOULDN'T YOU LIKE TO KNOW?], really DO all do different things, and the differences are significant in my use. With neckties, accumulation comes at first from building a wardrobe, later from changing taste and from having buying a tie as a form of retail therapy at times over the years. My tastes never would change enough to suggest I get rid of what I already had (and it is an INTP trait to think that if something has interested you, it will always interest you and should be kept around—again, accumulation is the result). I almost never buy cookbooks anymore. Much of the cookbook buying was really about building a library, which I think is very distinct from collecting. If six cookbooks come out every year that I think should be in my library, well, when I start out there are quite a few years to catch up on. I always chose my cookbooks with a lot of care and I saw each of them as an individual object/item rather than "another cookbook". Someone with no interest in cooking—or French cooking, or New York City—might not understand why I needed a book by Andre Soltner if I already had one by Jacques Pepin or whomever, but to me they are not the same at all. And, by the same token, I had exactly zero interest in well over 90% of the cookbooks out there. A cookbook really needed to be "in my wheelhouse" to get my attention even in my heyday.
Accumulation is also somewhat self-limiting if you have normal ideas of diminishing marginal utility. Sometimes it's necessary to learn what your utility curve is for some genus of interest, but it does become clear. I tend to get more and more selective and eventually stop accumulating things when it is obvious that new additions just aren't going to see any use. A collector would continue acquiring items even if they would see no use. In most cases, the experience gained from using the accumulated items gives me a lot more wisdom about utility than I had at the start of my interest in whatever. I could probably deaccession half of every accumulated type of stuff with almost no practical hardship to how I use this stuff ("obviously," you say ;)). There's no way to do that ex ante. I wouldn't be happy to get rid of half my camera equipment, but I could tell you almost to the item what 50% I would keep in order to be able to do 90% of what I can do with all of it. A collector, though, would be traumatized.
Collectors often display or showcase their collections, which I don't do (except as necessitated by limited storage space, or if they are good decor items). Many collectors are "completists" who would like to have a complete set of whatever, or multiple complete sets, or a complete set in mint condition, or a complete set mint in box, or shrink-wrapped, or with the original receipts intact, etc., etc. This kind of behavior really shows that fundamentally different notions of utility are at work. It's more like the satisfaction an OCD person gets from his or her little rituals. Mine is more like the satisfaction of having a valued book at my fingertips, or the right knife for the job, or whatever.
Your point about money is well taken. If I had a ton of money, my indifference curve would be such that, sure, why not pick up a black F2AS and a chrome M5. But it would take quite an interest in blankets for me to assemble 800 of them. I think if you had tons of resources, you might start to see things in a different way, because if you had some idiosyncratic interest or appreciation for something not in, or yet in, the mainstream, you really could envision building a collection that would have real, objective value later on, more than the sum of its parts. Maybe I would want to develop the most complete chronological collection of spiders preserved in amber, which future generations of students at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology would revere as the "MWR Collection of Spiders in Amber". But it's hard to project something like that with any certainty. And then I think the impulse would be more curatorship than collection, and I think there is a difference there too.
Labels: composition fatigue, INTP, scenes from my outbox, what passes for introspection
posted at 10:02 PM
2 Comments:
This discussion led me to ruminate on my own tendency to collect vs. accumulate for use. Years ago when I began second-hand shopping I purchased favorite items indiscrimately. If it was a brass planter, I bought it. If it was wooden candleholder, I bought it. If it was a lion, I bought it.
This rather OCD-related shopping changed as I matured and learned to select only the best examples of such items. Adding to this new awareness: the hassle of moving, storing, cleaning and displaying large collections. Bit by bit I was able to stop these purchases and to divest myself of all brass, most lions (chosen to begin with as a tribute to my birthdate), and tho I no longer buy candleholders, there remain over 50 stored in the basement. I'm working on this.....
I find myself continuing to get rid of possessions quite easily these days, discovering this rather odd reason: When I give bags of stuff to the Humane Society Thriftstore each month, it assuages my guilt about not loving pets. And yesterday I took 3 bags of stuff to a White Elephant sale at the Unitarian Church which nicely balanced my discomfort with organized religion, even the UUC.
The irony of the last example, however, is that on the way home from the Unitarian sale I stopped at Salvation Army and had a great time filling 3 bags with new incredible bargains. What's a girl to do?
Damn. That would be "indiscriminately". Sorry.
Post a Comment
<< Home