« 45365 FTW | Main | Pretty Close »
March 9, 2010
On Possession
Possession has become a curious thing. I can glance to the shelf of DVDs at my left and see evidence of a time when the procurement of physical media meant more to me than it does today, and I can pull up iTunes and see what it largely amounts to today. I'm the sort of person who values texture and mass, the artful occupation of space and the extensions of my ego represented by manifestations of my taste. Commensurately, it would seem my ego is shrinking.
On the other hand, the value I place on the act of possessing has not diminished; it has, apparently, simply shifted into the abstract.
Let's set aside the psychological impulse to collect, which is another matter. What is happening in the general sense is this: those textures, masses, monoliths and physical imprints are being trumped by the dissemination of the art or media (I shun the word content) to which they merely serve as wrapper. In other words, while I may love the design of a record cover, or paging through a well-conceived booklet, it is ultimately not as important to me as having that record. To have music, in its purest form, is to hear it; to own a film is to have seen it. And so, if I'm able to hear or watch what I want to, at the drop of a hat, then the firmaments to retail provided by deluxe packaging and the promise of a shelf well filled begin to fall away.
And once that dike is broken, and the act of possession floods out into the more general realm of experience, its more gainful aspect immediately falls into even greater flux. The monetized value one assigns to possessing becomes an individual decision, one whose fickle economics have been put under the microscope ever since Radiohead released In Rainbows, but which isn't limited to the Pay-What-You-Can model made popular by that record. The traditional model of exchange has already been twice compounded: once by the dissolution of the physical, and once more by the availability of the art, media, etc. through alternative channels. Hence, the model can be more accurately articulated as simply Pay, or Don't.
The resulting experience is the same on either side of that divide. I will hear this music whether or not I purchase it on iTunes or download it from a filesharing site; I will see that film regardless of whether I buy a ticket to see it in the theater or download a DVD rip. The old satisfaction of possession no longer lies in the art of acquisition, for acquisition is now a foregone conclusion. Instead (and here I begin to feel a bit of straw under my feet, but hang tight nonetheless) it can be found in the compensation one offers for it. The relationship between the producer and purveyor has been reversed: we do not pay for what we hope to like. We pay for what we've already enjoyed. So, taking an artists' livelihood into consideration, what was once a simple economic stipulation now becomes a moral one. And what was once an object, possessed, now becomes a meta-object, bifurcated but no less owned; there is the media, in its immaterial and immanently ownable form, and then there is the even more abstract sense of satisfaction that comes part and parcel with having offered something in exchange for it.
And now I'm going to step back from the empirical tone of this piece now and begin to work backwards. Not here, in this predicative body of text, but over the coming months, as we prepare to take St. Nick out into the world in a more intimate form. We'll be exploiting antiquity with a lovely DVD; we'll be testing the waters of the future with a digital release - and through it all, we'll be hoping that everyone who wants to see it - everyone who's already seen it, everyone who will see it - also sees fit to own it, however they so please.
All of the above was actually inspired not by St. Nick but by my purchase of Ramona Falls' new album Intuit last month, brought about by repeated viewings of this stunning video:
Posted by David Lowery at March 9, 2010 7:15 PM
Comments
Lovely meditation, David. And, as you specified, killer video.
Acquisition insinuates time spent coming into possession of something; access something immediate. There's so much to access nowadays that there's no time left to acquire anything.
When I was young my mentor Lee cautioned me about my unbridled hunger for experience. I wanted to possess life. He told me a time would come when my memories and the things I've collected would weigh me down.
I measure all I possess and never use against the uselessness of something desired. These days, in my middle years, I want less, desire little, and admire all that is misplaced, lost, given away, forgotten, erased. Morning feels better that way.
Posted by: Maya at March 10, 2010 3:34 AM
What a beautiful perspective, Michael. Indeed, I've got that same voracious appetite for experience, and can always use a reminder that the world won't end if I sometimes rest a bit on those I've already had instead of forgetting them in the mad rush for more.
And the concept of access, as opposed to acquisition, was what I was grasping for last night in writing this and not quite finding!
Posted by: David Lowery at March 10, 2010 1:05 PM
While I freely admit that my desire for access has grown substantially in the last few years, when I think back I can recall in vivid detail nearly every CD I opened for the first time. What it felt like to press play and hear those first few bars of music seep through the speakers, and feel the booklet in my hands. This goes for nearly every DVD I own as well (which may explain why I always hated not getting a booklet). And yet, I can't recall that same detail when I play a song or watch a video that I acquired online.
There seems to be a ritual to it all that has been lost in the transition.
Posted by: Aaron at March 10, 2010 9:34 PM
Aaron, I know exactly what you mean. I valued - value! - those rituals tremendously! I have so many wonderful memories wrapped around the actual process of driving to the record store or a DVD retailer to get a new release. But whatever importance those little rites of acquisition held has evidently not been strong enough to weather the onslaught of availability. I'm the type of person who one would expect - who I would expect - might hang onto such things, but by and large, I get my music on iTunes and my movies from Netflix.
Of course, I don't actually watch many movies at home - a byproduct of the one ritual I still hold sacred above all others: going to the theater. That one still holds sway.
Posted by: David Lowery at March 11, 2010 12:28 AM