The Living Museum of Modern Antiquity

I have always been an amateur collector of fine things, a collector of rare finds. Amongst my most prized possessions are my many typewriters. They are all analog typewriters, and in fact most of what I collect is either analog or long past its due-date, if you will. I have had old telephones in the collection, everything from staplers to an abacus to old apparel from the Age of the Library Card Catalogue.

In essence, I am surrounded by old forgotten things, objects lost in time. I surround myself with objects from another time, another era. Primarily, old books line the bookshelves one finds against every wall. I collect old filing cabinets, other historically relevant Office Supplies, from old file folders to old agendas, calendars, and notebooks.

I am in The Living Museum of Modern Antiquity where everything is so ephemeral, it is already useless once it comes off the shelf. But what these objects, these things, lose in utility, they gain in sublime beauty, of being physical memories from another era. This is the archaeological context in which I live: The context of Modern Antiquity where the Modern itself is ancient history.

At the same time, the typewriters still function properly. The abacus is still quite useful. Nothing changed, nothing happened that made these things obsolete. The times never changed, they could not change, only people changed, habits changed. The Perennial Typewriter Keyboard is the same keyboard found today on most mobile computing devices. The same old ideas are simply recycled, given a fresh Veneer of Newness, sold at ridiculous prices for something you already had 100+ years ago.

You are foolish not to love History, when History is all around you. The Daguerreotype process still produces the most profoundly beautiful photographs. For a time, the Daguerreotype might have fallen out of use, was temporarily replaced by bolder, newer methods, but now, after all this time, it suddenly begins to shine with such intrinsic worth. The Daguerreotype is Sublime, as ancient ruins are sublime. You latest gadgets are out-numbered, it is them who are out of place in History, for they have not yet found their place in the historical record.


https://chumly.com/n/212ad34