Never Can Say Goodbye
I have a lot of a lot of things in my room. Books, clothes, ephemera, breakfast trays with pictures of fruit on it, shoes, postcards, knick knacks... I also have a lot of records. Not too many, but enough to be proud of my collection. I sort of secretly love this quote by John Waters "If you go home with somebody, and they don't have books, don't fuck 'em!" It's not incredibly eloquent and it is incredible corny in a "I'm an edgy teen who likes reading books" sense - it's probably the most seen quote in Facebook's 'Favourite Quotations' section. Anyway things are getting desperate when I start talking about Facebook.
So I think that quote should be about stuff like records and CDs and films and collections of love letters and stuff, as well as books. Sentimentality, brains and taste - when you go into someone's room you want to see evidence of this, of life, of thinking, of activity, of travels and experiences through sentimental souvenirs. I couldn't think of anything worse than a stark room with no space for feeling or anyone to leave some kind of mark in your life.
It is great when people come over to visit, and they come into my room and I haven't had time to clean up or move anything and they pick up like a book that's lying around and I launch into some rambling rave about it and end up being like "Just take it home! You'll love it! Borrow it for as long as you want!" I love lending people things and I love being lent things. This eagerness means that I often lose many, many books, CDs, movies etc to people that come in and out of my life.
I compiled a list of things I have lost to people because I thought it would be funny but then I realized it was intensely personal so I deleted it. It did include however a copy of Annie Hall on DVD and Bessie Smith CDs (x2) among other things. I will never see these things again but I don't mind, if anything I think it's nice. Also, one often forgets about the things that have come into their own life through similar transactions, most recently for me a copy of Neil Young's 'Harvest' and Elliot Smith's 'From A Basement on a Hill', a book by Bruce Daw (I DO intend to give that one back) resting among not so recent stale love 'poems' from when I was 16 and a particular little drawing with witty captions and a box of matches from a dear friend of mine.
I have always felt that objects in our possession should be sentimental and tender and evoke pangs of a connection to another human being. What is literature and music and art if we can't egotistically relate it back to our own lives after all, and how else are we expected to parade our diverse and edgy taste? Ahh, just kidding. That's what the Facebook 'Favourite Quotations' section is for. But I encourage this circular sharing of good literature and books and music. It's something for you to cry over when you lose touch or break up or move to Alabama.