The cables strewn about the floor collect dust with great excitement. The bunnies scurry when the hound of a handheld vacuum comes howling. Its great heaving and huffing send them out, where its muzzle meets and scoops up the unclean creatures. A jungle it may be out there, yet these household beasts still crushed the hush. I considered my own collections as I scanned my place. Newspapers here, decade old games there. Film, in canisters, as undeveloped as my novel (for now) dotted the room, freckles on the face of an amateur portraitist. Why did I have so many magazines? I keep the clip full, in case, the writer’s block wanted issues.
My umbrella-tana would never.
Photography is a memory bank. Cheques made out to the future, customers stored all their fondest, in caches, to reference at dinner get-togethers and wedding toasts. I do not remember many things- like friends’ birthdays or what I had for breakfast last week, yet the bank, thanks to continued deposits offer much in the way of priceless recollections. As such, editions and prints offer a parallel: recollections of collective culture. Fashion & food to design & travel, and of course, gear for the heads who must have it. If life was for living, then magazines must be stores for lifestyles on camera.
Take the mother of invention, for example. Self-fulfillment, the most imperative necessity, took the spotlight as a viral spread of disease threatened lives and livelihoods. Coerced into communicating from indoors, escape must have been the number one search term after cute cat videos on the internet. How did one couple respond? With various views through windows, people could see what it’s like elsewhere and look into sights, even dreams from within the confines of home. Eminem, a word please? It’s called a window pane because it’s short for panel, an anagram of plane, as in a (flat) surface, not because you have relationship issues. Thank you, that is all!
In essence, magazines pack munitions from life, compact little kegs of powder, from the dust of dreams, things we wish to see, despite the fact we can’t look outside to behold it. Without these collections of collective and sometimes desired experiences, as social creatures, we would isolate ourselves further from each other, an option I believe we desire less than ever. At least, I have an issue with it.
