“Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss” - Joan Didion
When the old art college in Leamington got shut down and relocated I thought it’d be a nice idea to go and have a look around the place whilst there was nothing inside and no renovation work going on. The building had stood for a long time, and many years before it became an art college, it was the Leamington public library so it’s got plenty of history.
So, on my way to a gig at the Well I stopped by the place to have a browse around. It looked much sadder than the last time I’d visited, maybe it was missing having people busy studying inside its walls, after all those years the walls would be longing for some sort of action. Anyway, I hopped the fence and walked down alongside the place, on the basement level and searched for a way in but it looked quite impossible without a crowbar. Everything was tight shut. No loss, I thought, I’ll just have a quick look in the huge 10ft high skip in the car park instead.
So I did that, I climbed up the side and pulled myself over and into the skip. I couldn’t believe what I saw inside. It was half full of old Apple Macs, broken chairs, old art portfolios (what a waste), other assorted artwork and tons more bits and pieces. Straight off, the Apple Macs looked soaked through, I could only presume they were ruined but I did manage to bring a reel to reel tape player, some huge plastic sheets with orange and green swirls printed on them and also a whole ton of Letraset home with me. Where did I put it? In my room, of course, it just got added to my ever growing collection of things which I think have some importance or, as some would have it, junk.
I’m getting low on space in my room amidst the collections of records, zines, postcards, flyers, badges, books and musical equipment. It’s not that I even intended for all these things to grow into fully-fledged collections, but it happens. You get a postcard from here, and another from there and you don’t want to throw them away because they have that tiny amount of sentimental value, not only to the person receiving the card but also the sender. Everything in my archives holds some form of sentimental value to me, even if no-one else can see that value. This is what holds me back from throwing anything at all out. Every single flyer I have holds a memory, maybe of receiving the flyer in the gutter outside the gig, maybe of being at the gig or maybe even the walk home from the gig. As my collections grow I find myself taking on some sort of position as keeper of all local punk ephemera, which not only holds memories for me but also the lives of my friends with whom I shared those times with that are trapped inside my archive.
I am not only holding onto my archives because of their sentimental value and memories, I’m holding onto them for easy reference. I have all my books and zines within arms reach in my room because fairly often when I need to reference such and such a weird passage in an equally weird and obscure zine I can do it at ease. When friends come over they can’t believe that anyone held onto this crap and the extent of it, they can’t believe that it’s in order, some of it even alphabeticalised. They fumble through my box of flyers asking about bands, times, places. They ask questions about old zines that were never even printed in double figures and I rush around answering their questions and searching for more little bits and pieces that make up the rest of the story and I realise that I am deeply in my element.
I haven’t hoarded all the pieces that make up my archive just for sentimental value, but because one was never enough and I would look through my Dads archive, made up of fairly similar bits and pieces, and just be absolutely fascinated just like my friends are when they dig through mine. It all makes me start to wonder. Was my Dad in his element when I prodded and asked him questions when I dug through his archives?
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