Hey there! Welcome to Material Materials.
“Material Materials” can mean “Physical Media”: books, vinyl records, CDs, DVDs, film photography yes yes yes but also physical love letters written with fountain pens, piano lessons, live theatre, typewriters, and questionable crochet skills. I’m writing about the tactile and the sensual and the type connections that you can get when you are a regular at a comic shop or book store or karaoke lounge.
I’m going to write about the things I can physically touch, taste, smell, hear, and see. I am going to discuss ownership and ads while also recognizing the privileges necessary for having things like good record players or multiple shelves of books.
I will not be shaming people for things like using streaming services, as I still do. I’m writing this on the internet. You are reading this on the internet. For all its bad parts, I fucking love the internet. This is also not about all or nothing nor is it about “this” being superior to “that.” This is about finding joy in the pages of my CD binder that I never got rid of and joy in seeing some of my friends dive back into buying DVDs and joy in sending and receiving snail mail.
This is not about shunning. It’s about embracing. It’s about rediscovering things we have loved and through this, rediscovering parts of ourselves that may have been shelved for too long.
It’s time to dust some things off.