Physical Media Is A Privilege

and it's not the cost I'm referring to...

Every time I open my phone lately I see a talking head video, an article, or post, about the shift back towards physical media. The fatigue with the internet and digital everything has really set in, and so has the rot that comes along with it when we feast our eyes on our phones for hours on end.

This desire to get offline is being talked and written about endlessly and I’m not really looking to add to the pile of comments in that regard.

I get it, you get it, we all get that it’s not normal to be stuck to our devices scrolling, the same way we know it’s not good to drink coca cola or eat Mcdonalds, despite those things being consumed on the daily by millions of people, as is Instagram.

Just as the food debate is fraught when it comes to the question of what is healthy, what is not, and what we should do about, so is the question of what do we do to lower our screen time?

Go for a walk, spend time with actual people, read a book or, I dunno, bake a cake?

There are many things you can and could do as a human being and there are also millions of reasons, or rather excuses, not to. This is the curse of being human and why it’s so awfully hard to get anything done, because we largely live in our heads. At least I know I do.

So these article writers and trend setters have championed physical media and told us all to buy DVD’s, books, magazines, vinyl records, CDs and basically anything that we can touch with our two fair hands to stop us from picking up our phones.

I’m not going to get into that part though. The part about how all of that was just how people used to live and enjoy their hobbies because I’m not looking to slam younger people for thinking that a CD or a flip phone is novel. If it’s offering them even a moment of solace from growing up in the metaverse then GO FOR IT!

The thing I haven’t really seen or heard anyone talking about is the privilege, and therefore the problem, that comes with physical media in the modern age, and I’m not necessarily talking about the cost of it.

I’m talking about the cost of housing it.

People say time is money, and this is true, but space is also money, and in this current climate with house prices higher than ever, space is something that comes at a premium.

Maybe this is on my mind more than ever because we are (fingers crossed) going to move soon and we will be forced to live in a MUCH smaller abode than what we currently reside in. Not complaining at all, just airing my thoughts on what that looks and feels like for a family that quite enjoys, maybe even obsesses over physical media.

Where do we put it all if we live in 50 square meters?

I feel as though we own 50 square meters of physical fucking media.

Avid thrifters, prop gatherers, hi fi enthusiasts, camera nerds, notetakers, magazines as references, endless books full of photos and/or words, boxes of childhood lego, CD’s in the CD stacker, Live concerts on DVD, shoes…..so.many.pairs.of.shoes.

Okay, so shoes don’t count as physical media but to me they are as important and value adding as my record collection.

Hoarder is another word that could be coming to mind here as you read this and if you are a Marie Kondo tidying up type I do apologize for how stressed you feel right now reading how my family chooses to live.

Some simple answers here are, maybe just don’t be such a freak and buy so many things… and yeah totally. But also when you indulge many hobbies you end up with this giant pool of interests and hobbies = stuff. Unless your hobby is minimalism.

My husband’s life long love affair with fishing and music has resulted in a garage full of stuff and it’s sad to cull that down because space is now a very finite thing if we ever want to embark on homeownership. A price we are both happy to pay by the way, but it doesn’t make it any less sad. Our camera collection is also going to be a HUGE problem…

Obviously everyone reading this has a different idea of space and home, when it comes to size, but here in Australia the “Aussie Dream” and the idea of a family home has always been a house with a porch and a backyard, two things I don’t actually care for much because I want more inside space to put my shoes in, but the idea of a “normal” sized home to fit a family was what I assumed we would one day own I guess.

Much like what I hear of from movies about the “American Dream” it’s something that seeps into your brain and is sold to you as a right that you should have, or at least the destiny that awaits you if you work hard enough. Both nations’ dreams now seem like a lie to be honest, or at the very least, totally and utterly out of reach for the vast majority.

Apartment life is how many of us will live in the future and this leads to questions of families. Will people have less children, or perhaps no children at all considering how unstable housing has now become?

Putting aside the question of children though, what about my DVD’s?

Some would argue that considered spending and curbing of acquiring various items can only be a good thing, but exercising restraint can be difficult when something brings you so much joy.

The purchasing of physical media is one barrier, especially in this economy, but if we also have to consider and navigate living in a very small space then that adds another barrier to procuring physical items over digital ones.

I can’t remember which YouTube video it was but there was some famous person showing how they stored their journals. They kept them all in boxes labelled in this room and I thought wow, I would love a journal room, or just the space to house and organize the things to me that are precious and part of my creative process.

That kind of privilege is one that isn’t spoken about enough. We talk about money making things easier but it’s more so that money affords you time and as a creative person time is more valuable than money. Time allows things to come to fruition and one could argue that this time will make the work better and make you more money perhaps, if it was something you do for a living.

We don’t all have the same 24 hours in a day and we don’t all have enough room to keep and store all the things we love, or will find and grow to love in the future.

Engaging with physical media or hobbies isn’t about consumerism, at least not at its core, it’s about owning objects that offer rituals along with them. It’s about picking something up and putting it on and really hearing all of it. It’s about turning a page and seeing an image and running your fingers over it as you take in each layer. It’s about displaying your shoes as objects like art as well as functional items that get you from A to B and crafting a story around who you are in those shoes and letting that inspire the rest of your creative practice.

I love stuff. I love objects. I love considered clutter. I love having more chairs than people to sit in them. I love the inspiration that comes with viewing and handling something in real life. I want my home to be a shrine to the things I adore and give my life meaning. I want my house to look like the haul of a lifetime, a haul that took a lifetime to gather together and reflect who we are as a family.

I guess I’ll have to keep watching those NEVER TOO SMALL videos on YouTube and hope that I can one day afford some chic architect to bring my families creativity hoarding dream home to life.

Right now it feels like trying to fit a square into a circle so I should probably get back to listing things on facebook marketplace and sizing the fuck down ready to live a more small, but hopefully still very creative life.