When Record Theater in Midtown starting dumping their 8-tracks they poured boxes of them in bins and kept reducing the price until they were gone. We still had an eight track player in our car so I was picking up all the crazy stuff for 50 cents. I still had boxes of them when we moved but no player so I gave them to my brother-in-law, CalZone, all but one that is, Sun Ra’s magnificent “The Magic City.” That artifact is sitting right next to me as I type this.
There is very little reason to own anything anymore and I love it. My favorite possessions are all digitized. Music, photos, memories. It’s all going to the cloud. Let’s say I want to play this Sun Ra eight track. It is at my fingertips.. Together we can reduce clutter.
At Record Theater we eventually got rid of the boxes and just piled the tapes on the floor in a big random mound. You couldn’t give them away at that point.
I remember when you had files and files of type fonts stored like rare possessions necessary to some ardent future. The REFRIGERATOR was forged out of that stock pile, layout and words, and a voice of reactions to the present. I don’t think you knew that time would lead to the clutter free zone, though now it is apparently embraced. Are we striving to believe it is alright to place our memories in the cloud? Are we sufficiently giddy? On such a flying carpet?
I still love the clutter!