Articles

For The Hoard-er

WRITTEN BY Dave the Drummer

A lot of people have called me a hoarder. I don’t see myself as a hoarder. More a collector. I just happen to collect basically everything. Musical equipment, broken electronic stuff, toy ducks, trash, dead batteries, costumes, comic books, cigarette butts, whatever that shit under my couch is, photos of people I don’t know that I find in the street, I collect it all. People get weirded out about my collection of things that used to be attached to me, like hair. Look, you guys, I’m gonna do something with it once I figure out what I can use it for. No, I don’t have too many pizza boxes, records or empty cans. If I had too many I wouldn’t keep getting more.

I’ve always had this issue of not throwing things away. When I do it’s instantly regretted and I’ll almost always figure out what I could have used it for. Like this little metal disk with a small hole in the middle, I could really use that to make my robot suit! That’s why I have all this other broken shit. I know I should just ditch all this crap. I’d love to live light, minimalistic. In “He Died With A Felafel In His Hand”, Danny has a box, his typewriter and a guitar. It takes me a van to haul all this shit. I live on the fifth floor, and
dreading moving out because it was Hell bringing it all back down. You have any idea how much a box of 150 12″ records weighs? It’s a lot. I have six of them.

I also have empty wrappers, boxes and assorted junk. I dunno why I have a problem getting rid of them. Possibly laziness. Laziness mixed with an odd fear of losing anything I have some sort of attachment to. I mean, that wrapper served a purpose. Now it’s just kind of there and that’s sad. Papers that I drew one line on seven years ago and still have because it was going to become art but I fucked up.

I’m not gonna lie, when I’m in a relationship I don’t collect nearly as much. Bringing a chick here will be preceded by a massive fucking clean up where I all of a sudden discover I really don’t need the vast, vast majority of my collection. A huge collection of effects pedals is kind of impressive, I huge collection of sandwich bags is a little less awe-inspiring, at least in the same way. More like “I am in awe of how much crap you have pretty much everywhere. I gotta go, now. If you manage to find your phone under something, don’t call me.”

I like the “Lived-In” look, but where’s the line? Is a jacket thoughtlessly thrown over a chair enough? How about that, plus a couple of unwashed mugs?

Fuck, I really need to buy a mop……………..