I listened to the Divine Comedy's album, Regeneration for the first time in ages the other day and I was once again moved by the song, Lost Property. It explores the very human need to accumulate as a means of somehow creating an identity for ourselves and the subsequent feelings of sadness that grow within us when those objects that are often only meaningful to their owner loses them. The song progresses like a lament to loss and culminates with the narrator experiencing a vivid dream where he progresses to a utopian land where all of the lost items have magically coalesced and he can once again behold the infinitesimal wonders of 'postcards and letters' and 'Blue Rizla packets'.
The song has acted as a catalyst for this blog and a consideration of why we place such value on objects that others may consider menial and also conversely, why found objects are so important?
Personally, I define myself as a collector. I live in a world of sequential artefacts. I like to see how stories finish. Closure is important up to a point but rarely happens in the comics that adorn multiple boxes. Indeed, as I have got older closure represents something more meaningful, scary and fatalistic than the happy endings in fairy tales. In the other cultural artefacts that I consume, a break of any sort so long as it conveys a change of some description satisfies. Happy endings are for kids.
Anyhow, just like your good self and millions of other people, I have lost things. The weirdest thing I ever lost was a set of keys. As I walked to the railway station, the keys fell out of my pocket and I heard them hit the ground or road yet never found them. I assumed they fell down, hit the road and ended up in the drains.
In many respects, it is important to consider those items that are permanently lost from those items that we temporarily mislay. The permanent losses can be like mini-bereavements, if only for a short time. They hit us emotionally in the same way as missed or wasted opportunities. The gift that is given to you that is irreplaceable that disappears.
Oddly, I have objects that I have been given that have assumed the symbolic and emotional equivalent of talismans or good luck charms. When I was a child, my Grandmother gave me a little blue imp made of plastic (possibly, a Christmas Cracker toy) explaining to me that I was as mischievous and cheeky as this imp. My Grandmother died but the imp still keeps popping up sometimes. It disappears from my view and then all of a sudden, it reappears. I recall using it as a good luck charm during exams.
Then there are those items that are still around but not immediately locatable. I have a couple of manuscripts written by people who have played a role in my life, one now sadly deceased. If these documents come to light, one will upset me and the other one may incite feelings of anger. Objects in themselves hold no intrinsic emotional value beyond that which we imbue them with (although, manuscripts do if they are written by someone we care or have cared about. Also creative works in general).
I was given a poem once written in pencil by a friend I had lost touch with as he had moved to Spain. He returned to the United Kingdom for a visit and gave me a card with a poem about a Butterfly. Once again, this is temporarily lost as it is hidden in one box or another. If you collect or hoard, you are opening yourself up to moments of discovery, both pleasant and depressing.
Conversely, one person's lost object is the source of another's development or pleasure. At one point, I was in Brighton and bought a selection of second hand books, mostly Hermann Hesse as they are not always easy to locate in bookshops. Upon getting them home, in a copy of Knulp, I found a poem called La Vase Brise (The Broken Vase) handwritten in French. I have done a bit of research and the poem was written by a French poet and essayist called Sully Prudhomme. It uses the metaphor of a crack in a vase that gradually grows as a symbol of how subtly we can be transformed by the love of another, either for the better or for the worse (well, that's how I view it anyhow). I was left to speculate whether the book (and poem) had been given as a gift to a significant other back in the year I was born (there is a name inside the book). Is the poem a love poem or a student trying to improve their understanding of French through the act of writing? Why is the poem slipped into the book? Was it a favourite book?
Found objects are part of the joy of being alive. Think of the art works that have been created as a result of chance encounters with random things. For example, Marcel Duchamp's Fountain, a ceramic two fingered gesture to a staid art world and the beginning of a movement towards the beauty of the mundane and utilitarian often later seen exemplified by the Pop Art movement. The objects that we find can also hint at sad stories too. The cat scratching post left outside a house, perhaps suggesting either a dead or lost animal? The educational or cookery books, the end of a dalliance with some new interest as temporal as the children's books that the little ones outgrow on their passage towards Dan Brown and Tolstoy.
However, we view them, lost and found objects speak of the passage of time and the essential meaninglessness of all possessions. Our emotions are the only things that matter, the objects merely stimulate their appearance or reiteration. In the final analysis, people matter, objects don't.
Barry Watt - 29th January 2022 and 5th February 2022.
Afterword.
The Divine Comedy are a rather lovely band that I have been following since the 90s. Regeneration was an album they released in 2001. It has really grown on me recently. Lost Property inspired this blog. The phrases from the song are copyright to the band and their publisher. They have a website. Rizla is also copyright to the company that produces rolling paper for cigarettes. They have a website:
Official Site of The Divine Comedy | The Divine Comedy
Rizla is also copyright to the company that produces rolling paper for cigarettes. They have a website but as they need you to verify your age, have a look at this Wikipedia entry instead:
Hermann Hesse is one of those authors that you tend to get introduced to either through reading other books or through friends. I can't really describe his work in detail as the beauty of reading them is to explore self-development and personal understanding/growth. Knulp was pretty much in the same vein. Stepphenwolf is still my favourite of his work. Don't assume that your identity is static then life becomes bearable and goals can be achieved. His works are available from various publishers and are copyright to the publishers etc.
Sully Prudhomme (Rene Francois Armand (Sully) Prudhomme) was a French poet and essayist. The poem in question, La Vase Brise (The Broken Vase) is beautiful. I have uploaded the poem as I found it for illustrative purposes. It is copyright to the publishers etc. There are a number of translations available, subtly different. I was surprised to discover that songs etc have been created from the poem. It's worth exploring You Tube for some versions of the poem. A link to some further information about the poet is below:
Marcel Duchamp was a very creative individual/artist associated with many of the art movements of the 20th Century such as Dada and Surrealism. Fountain was an example of what Duchamp referred to as "readymades" essentially random items that he personified by either adding a signature or subtly changing in some way. Please see below link for more information on Duchamp and his work:
Pop Art is something of an umbrella term for a number of disparate artists. Please see the below link for more information:
Dan Brown and Leo Tolstoy are both authors. You probably don't need me to provide links but here goes anyway:
BW.
Photos (Taken by me).
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The Blue Imp.  La Vase Brise by Sully Prudhomme & Mysterious Cartographer (Page 1).  La Vase Brise by Sully Prudhomme & Mysterious Cartographer (Page 2). |
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