As I mentioned recently, I’ve been trying to get rid of stuff as the result of moving to a smaller space.
It’s taken a lot for me to get this point, but, I now want to keep things only if I can state a solid reason:
- “This inspires me.”
- “This reminds me (in a non-depressing way) of someone I will never see again.”
and/or, - “I’m actually, for certain, going to use this, and it will happen on [this specific date].”
But despite this new sense of empowerment, I’m still struggling with a philosophical problem. Let’s call it “The Aging Hipster Faces Her Existential Angst.”
Chapter 1: Shirting the Issue
During the move, I unearthed from the back of the closet a bunch of concert T-shirts from shows I saw in the late 90s and the early 00s.
There, in a giant plastic bag, was a whole folded-up past; 100%-cotton, size-XL proof of once-passionate devotion (not to mention of disposable income) for bands like Wilco, Guided by Voices, and, yes, Dave Matthews Band.
And in sticking with my pledge to pare down, I knew that if I was going to move them to the new apartment, I’d have to find space for them or actually do something with them.
At first I thought about looking into having one of those memory quilts made. (But something about cuddling up on the couch under an ugly album-cover image by a band I can no longer stand just doesn’t quite go with IKEA decor.)
And, thanks in part to certain reality-television stylists’ sage advice, gone are my days of wearing boxy cotton T-shirts that reach down to my knees, (i.e., a fashion line called “The Alison, 1990-2002″).
But I’ve been saving these shirts for a reason. And now, somewhat painfully, I have to admit what–who–it is.
Chapter 2: Sweater Song
When I was in middle school and heard “Light My Fire” for the first time–and learned that my uncle in Seattle, my mom’s hip brother who I idolized, had been a fan when he was in high school–I was mesmerized.
By seventh grade, I had developed a full-blown obsession with late-60s and 70s pop counterculture. I’d ask my parents quizzically about why they hadn’t gone to Woodstock. How could they have lived through the Summer of Love without being blissed-out hippies or passionate protesters (rather than, say, a church-going prospective high school teacher and a Navy seaman)?
Still, in my late teens and all through college, when I would search rather desperately for jeans with a flared leg, my mom would lament, “Man, I wish I’d kept my bell-bottoms and disco shoes….Stuff always comes back in style.”
And all of this time, my uncle periodically shipped me cassettes and CDs of non-top 40 music, exposing me to Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins, Jimi Hendrix, on and on. Stuff that, not to be too dramatic about it, changed my life.
So I guess I’ve always expected that I, too, would someday be a passer-onner of the cool stuff from my own era.
I would never have to regret not having held on to such-and-such. Instead, I could say to the kid whose school was having “90s Grunge Day” for their week of “crazy” Homecoming days,
“Let me grab that hole-y green cardigan out of the attic, hon–you’ll have the best costume in the whole school!”
But as I’ve had to face plastic tubs of sentimental stuff I’ve kept from high school and college–I really do have an old-man sweater that I thought looked Kurt Cobain-ish when I bought it at the Salvation Army circa 1998–I’ve had to ask myself, “Whom, exactly, do I presume will be the recipient of all this ephemera?”
As every news outlet seems to announce on a monthly basis, women at my age are biologically supposed to be having kids by now (at least if they want to have a better chance at healthy ones).
And yet my husband and I–who’ve been married all of two months–happen to have other things on our immediate priority list than bringing a new life into the world (and hence changing both of our lives forever). Things like learning how to bridge our two single lives together. (Or at least finding a place for me to store my socks and underwear.)
Chapter 3: I’ve Finally Decided My Future Lies Beyond the Yellow-Pitted [war]‘drobe
I’ve come to realize that hanging on to stuff for the sake of my own nostalgia–or the sake of someone who might never exist–is actually causing me stress, rather than enjoyment.
The picnic basket I’ve had since seventh grade is stuffed with folded-notebook-paper notes my friends and I passed in junior high. I have all of them. No, really. ALL of them.
I still have every diary I’ve ever kept–and I started keeping a diary at, like, age 9.
Why–when I’d been alive all of a decade–did I feel a need, even back then, to document everything? Why this protective urge to be able to refer back to every lived moment?
It’s like whatever must possess people to carve proof of their existence into bathroom stalls and state-park trail signs: “I was here.”
And I guess I saved my Lollapalooza 1996 shirt because I wanted to prove to my future self what I was truly like at one time, not an edited, more flattering version of myself. (I thought I was so, so cool for getting to go that show–even though it was widely panned as “the year Lollapalooza sold out.”)
But I’ve got to free myself from this potential landslide caused by pieces of the past.
(And let’s say I do hang on to all this stuff for the sake of impressing my nephews? Ten years from now, if I relinquish my T-shirt from the 2001 Radiohead show, this is what I’ll hear: “That’s nice, Auntie, but…didn’t you ever go see Creed?”)
So, for now, (in a moment of strength), I’ve decided I’m going to get rid of as much of my memorabilia (or at least the wearable kind) as possible. Even if the only way I can get myself to do it is to stop to document it first, (as I’ve done below with a set of photos on Flickr).
(Now, don’t even ask me what the hell I’m gonna do with all those diaries.)
Tags: 60s, 90s, adjusting, adulthood, apartment living, apartments, bands, column, decluttering, essay, essays, getting older, growing up, hippies, home, kids, live music, mementos, memoir, memorabilia, not procreating, organizing, pop culture, procreating, Rock and/or Roll, self-improvement, T-shirts
OK, I confess. I have a staff shirt from the summer camp where I was a counselor in 1983-84. Can’t part with it.