A Thing
Item No. 1
“We want things (at first). But what happens when we don’t want them anymore? Where do all the things go? What if we live in the peak time of too many things? After all, a thing is just an object, it seems.”A thing is just an object, it seems. An item. It is rather generic, even bland. We use the word thing when we don’t have another word to describe something. Some…. object. So we call it a “thing.” But isn’t a thing a little too obvious to be listed as the first “thing” in The (Death of a) Thing? In the original writing, the thing wasn’t at all obvious, or was it? We’ll leave it to you to read that and decide. Find The (Death of a) Thing: A curation, a musing, a monologue (a manifesto?) here. Meanwhile, to list a thing here, as the first thing, in The Last Catalog, seems a bit recursive. Or worse, blatant, even. Doesn’t it? But. Wait. Stop. Look around. How many “things” can you count right now? One. Two. Five. Ten. Fifteen. Fifteen hundred. Keep going. If you had to count the things in your home, how many things would there be? Or start with just your desk. That’s the thing. We live in a time of things. Things are — every—where. But the thing is that we really don’t need too many things, really. To survive, that is. To survive, we need the basics–food, water, air, shelter, healthy lives. Those things. But not very many more things. Beyond our basic survival mode things — are things we desire (See Catalog entry: Shopping.) Things we want. But the things we want rarely satisfy, like the survival mode things do. And when we don’t want them anymore, where do all the things go? Therefore, we’ve listed the thing here. We think we might live in the peak time of ((too?) many) things. The future of us might look back on the past us, sitting on the mountaintop of our things, and wonder why it is we had so many things. When, there are other things for us to pay attention to. Like fireflies. (See catalog entry Fireflies.) Like the salamander. (See catalog entry Salamander.) Like friends. (See catalog entry Letter writing.)
We’d seem to gain space were we to really rid ourselves of so many things. Were the surrounding objects to disappear, though, we might lose something more in addition to clutter. For a long time now, we’ve attached ourselves to things. We’ve ascribed value to seeking such things (and buying such things.) The ego fortification we’ve achieved by differentiating ourselves from others with the things that we’ve owned might also be a cost. If we’re not trying to own so many things, we might not need all that shopping, all that buying, all that arranging. So shopping, buying, and arranging might be costs too. What will we do with our time if we’re not trying to shop for so many things? In a time of fewer things, perhaps we’ll also miss the reminders of experiences and emotions that we’ve ascribed to certain things. Perhaps we’ll be left with just our feelings.
Other specifications:
(No)thing.
ps. What was the original thing that prompted the feeling that inspired The (Death of a) Thing which inspired us to write this catalog? Read our Artist Statement. Read The (Death of a) Thing.