On People vs. Things

I watched the Bryan Cranston film “Wakefield” tonight and was interested in the way it portrayed the role objects play in our lives.

The protagonist “Howard” leaves his family and work life to live in the attic above his garage for six months. He spends his time dumpstering food and communing with raccoons. His only social outlet is a voyeuristic relationship with his old family and a couple of kids with intellectual or emotional disabilities who bring him food when he is about to freeze to death. He basically has traded his life of making memories for a situation where he is surrounded by the remnants of an existence he once knew. A wedding dress hangs symbolizing the loss of love. A pair of binoculars highlight his new role – on the outside looking in. All of the objects that he was able to cloister in this forgotten chamber he is now forced to live with and experience every day.

I visited a friend’s storage unit in Queens once and thought it was a very sad place. All of these families aspire to unpack and move in – to finally have space for the objects they believe to be worthy of retention. A guitar, a bike, books looking for a shelf; they are all insignia of the tribe of lackaspace.  We grab what we’re looking for and get the hell out – it’s dark.

My own relationship to objects is complex. I can be a bit of a hoarder admittedly I hold onto things too long and my closets are cluttered. My mom has a lot of stuff of mine in Pittsburgh also but I am committed to simplifying these things I don’t use and mostly don’t even know exist. There are a lot of people in our society with very different approaches to belongings. People who have less value the things they have. Similarly the outlook on wealth and possessions simplifies as people age. They recognize the most important objects in their lives are ones with emotional salience.