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Non-Film Score Discussion: To Have or Not to Have - That is the Question

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	Posted:	Apr 30, 2016 - 11:42 PM
	By:	Howard L (Member)

You know I'm really glad y'all have come to my office. Let me start with a favorite quote pertinent to the subject title:

Hey, Grandma! I brought a little bunny rabbit for you - TO HAVE!

Then there's one of my favorite moments from To Have and Have Not (Hemingway!) and I hope you like it as well as I:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9C1vJ2Z8aI0

But seriously, folks, nostalgia and keepsakes are not such bad things--that is, unless we have reached the second plateau with only the past to look forward to. Not healthy, for as the Good Book says:

Do not be overawed when others grow rich, when the splendor of their houses increases; for they will take nothing with them when they die, their splendor will not descend with them.

Of course, a Moss Hart character said pretty much the same thing, just in more colloquial terms. Anyway, I see our time is up so let us depart with a prayer courtesy of that great psalmist of more colloquial elegance, Grandpa Vanderhof:

Well, Sir, we've been getting along pretty good for quite a while now, and we're certainly much obliged. Remember, all we ask is to just go along and be happy in our own sort of way. Of course we want to keep our health but as far as anything else is concerned, we'll leave it to You. Thank You.


	Posted:	May 1, 2016 - 5:48 AM
	By:	Graham Watt (Member)

I dunno about you bunch of psycho analysts, but I love my collection of John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith and James Horner CD's, plus all my other composers..and my vast collection of film books and magazines and movie brochures..not forgetting my Robert McCammon and Stephen King novels. I love looking and playing through them from time to time. I will be 51 in May and apart from the odd purge of some discs now and again, hope to have many more happy years with them.

Thanks Kev, you simplistic ray of sunshine! Yeah, I've had enough of trying to analyse psychos in my life - I'm just gonna let that go, and simply drift where the wind takes me from now on. If it takes me back to Square 1, well, those are my roots and so be it. What I'm trying to say is I'm OK now. It was just a bit of existential angst. Happens to us all, doesn't it?

Jim - I'll have you know that I have been paying my taxis religiously (every Sunday when I catch one to go to chapel) since 1990. It's hard to avoid when the cabs have those new-fangled "video cameras" installed in order to prevent anyone doing a runner.

Interesting comments throughout this thread about the nature of nostalgia, hunting, gathering, accumulating, collecting... there is indeed a streak of nostalgia which runs through my veins, but it doesn't (really) stop me looking forward to the future, or - more importantly - enjoying the moment.

So basically I had a weekend of momentary self-doubt. What's it all about, Alfie? But I'm OK now. I'm looking around me now and I've got much less "things" than most people I know. And I actually DO like the look of my 600 CDs and my 200 books. And I really DO enjoy being touchy-feely with them. I was never a huge collector anyway, but any new stuff I get can go in to the new cupboard I bought for the living room, a room which was far too minimalistic with just a table in the middle of the floor until now.

Everything in proportion though. I had a nice balance the last few days of going out for walks amongst the trees, listening to the radio, reading about the new "nature literature" which is becoming popular apparently in the UK. Robert MacFarlane? Is that the name? And I got in touch with old friends, one of whom is an Irish singer-songwriter, and I went out to Santiago de Compostela to meet him and see the shooting of the video that will accompany his album. We just really got blootered on wine, but we had a laugh. And then I made plans to see some other friends soon near Paris. And I tried to read up about the Brexit/ Brentrance situation, but I couldn't really make up my mind one way or the other. After that I went on with H.P. Lovecraft's "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward". One of the longer stories in the beautiful leather-bound "Necronomicon" tome I have of his works.

And then I came home, and a ray of sunshine was illuminating my bed (no, it wasn't Kev, thank feck), and I felt like lying in/ on it. And so I did, spontaneously picking Jerry Goldsmith's score for THE ILLUSTRATED MAN off the shelf. I hadn't played that for a few years, and it was just absolutely brilliant. Brilliant score, and although I thought I "knew" it, it was almost like hearing it for the first time.

So that's that then. Thanks for your time and comments, and sorry about the "me, me, me" navel gazing.


	Posted:	May 1, 2016 - 6:31 AM
	By:	Grecchus (Member)

You may have picked the perfect score with which to fix your scars, er I mean, stars.


	Posted:	May 1, 2016 - 9:27 AM
	By:	edwzoomom (Member)

Back in 2004, Mother Nature took care of all of the "stuff" we had accumulated and stored on our second floor. She actually took care of more than half the "stuff" on the first floor as well. She decided to send a storm with record breaking lightning. A tree in our neighbor's yard was struck and the lightning arced, hit an old TV antenna on our roof and imploded in our second floor. The fire burned for 15 minutes before anyone called 911 due to the fact it was burning from within. Fortunately, we weren't home at the time but our pets were. They were all rescued, suffered smoke inhalation but survived.

The entire second floor burned down to the few floorboards that were left. The only distinguishable item left was a box spring balancing precariously on a portion of the floor that remained. My kids lost every single item they owned and loved. I lost every single physical memory of my children's, my husband's and my childhood. We were able to salvage some items including all of our family pictures that were stored safely on the first floor.

It was devastating at the time but my children were my heroes. They were sad and overwhelmed at first, but they never once complained about their loss. I am sure that the fact that all of their precious critters survived played a huge part in their attitude.

We all pulled together and rebuilt our lives. Along with the realization that our family is stronger than we imagined, we realized that "stuff" is not that important. We no longer hang onto things like we used to. I don't find myself taking pictures and videos of every single moment as before. My memories are stored in my head. Sure I have my music collection but if I lost it tomorrow, I would survive. Moving my mom-in-law has actually encouraged me to start thinning out what I have right now. This experience brought our family even closer and changed our perspective of what is truly important.


	Posted:	May 1, 2016 - 9:30 AM
	By:	edwzoomom (Member)


	Posted:	May 1, 2016 - 1:26 PM
	By:	Graham Watt (Member)


	Posted:	May 4, 2016 - 7:45 AM
	By:	Jim Phelps (Member)

I take it that the majority here hang onto their things and always seek out more. That's fine of course, but man it must be a pain dragging stuff out of those corrugated, air-conditioned storage units or mom's house whenever one wants to hear, say, a Leith Stevens or Pete Rugolo album every other June. I don't know about the rest of you, but my family wouldn't cotton to playing unpaid storage unit to my CDs, books, clothes, and longboxes of comics while I was ostenisbly living a grown-up life elsewhere; but then you people have better families than I did.

Graham, I have idealized your being a tax exile just as I have Michael Caine and Sean Connery, so you are in august company, old sport.

Here's an amusng site of a philosophy I don't necessarily endorse discussing a film I've never seen but it is interesting to read about people who are clearly not FSMers:

http://www.theminimalists.com/fc/


	Posted:	May 5, 2016 - 5:49 AM
	By:	Graham Watt (Member)

Thanks for the link to The Minimalists, Jim. I particularly liked Numbers 25 and 26 in their manifesto, although the words don't make any impact unless you've read the previous 24.

Having read that, and typed this, I am now three minutes closer to the grave - without having achieved anything.

I shall now go out and start a brawl in the street.


	Posted:	May 5, 2016 - 7:21 AM
	By:	RoryR (Member)

I don't want to think about FIGHT CLUB. I hated that movie and I think those think it points to an enlightened attitude towards life are dummies.

Anyway, isn't the point of this thread kind of moot? Eventually we are all "have nots." We all live with this annoying thing going on called "the passing of time." It eventually takes everything. The only constant in the universe is rot.

So, I say enjoy things... while they last and while you can.


	Posted:	May 5, 2016 - 7:27 AM
	By:	Solium (Member)

I don't regret much, but when I turned 18, I wanted to get rid of my "childhood". I tossed out hundreds of drawings and paintings that I did growing up. Letting go and regretting it can be just as bad as holding onto things that hold no special place in your heart. If I was to let things go today, I would probably first pack them away, out of sight and out of mind and see if I'll miss them first. If I'm still not sure then I would give them to a friend or family member knowing it's possibly I might reacquire them at some point. I will also add sometimes you may have something another family member might have sentimental feelings for. Ask them if they would like it before you chuck it out.


	Posted:	May 5, 2016 - 7:45 AM
	By:	RoryR (Member)

I have a box on a shelf in one of my closets that has stuff in it that I had as a kid back in the sixties. I don't think about it much, but I couldn't throw it away. When I've moved, that box has moved with me and then been put up in yet another closet. I like knowing that it's there and that there's still this connection to the child I was, so that my life isn't a kind of disjointed thing. It's sentimental clap, but whatever. The box doesn't take up much space.

However, I have thrown out many things I've collected, from DVDs, back to laserdiscs and VHS tapes. I once had a collection of "Famous Monsters of Filmland" magazines. When I went to college it was like, "Am I going to drag this stuff with me?" Out it went. Today, I could probably sell them on eBay. I'm lucky I wasn't into comic books.

I generally try to get as much use out of the things I buy as I can. I've only owned four cars in my life. I drove one car for sixteen years, but when it came time for it to go, I got rid of it in a day.


	Posted:	May 5, 2016 - 7:58 AM
	By:	Ado (Member)

Human beings have a unique capacity for nostalgia and sentimentality. It is often made fun of when it is deployed in entertainment. But there is something to be said for our capacity to have emotions triggered and memories recalled by looking at an object, a scribble on a piece of paper, the smell in a piece of clothing, a favorite food from childhood.

As a parent I have to confess I am pretty terrible at getting rid of things. Oddly, I think, I am far more sentimental about these things than my wife. Also, when I became an adult I acted out along the lines of running away from my childhood and leaving behind innocence as fast as possible. I later learned that this was a serious mistake, springing out of my occasionally miserable upbringing with a father with a lot of medical issues. So I related all of my youth to that suffering, then much later I realized twinkling memories of youth that were indeed pretty sweet; my friend and I romping through the woods on our bikes, building forts, building legos, Christmas, sitting on a hilltop behind our house listening to the pines whisper in the Colorado winds, endlessly playing Goldsmith.

Anyway, I would say do not be in too much of a hurry to toss things out. And I think that like Solium said, you could toss out a little drawing you did that would instead be enormously satisfying to your family


	Posted:	May 5, 2016 - 9:20 AM
	By:	RoryR (Member)


	Posted:	May 5, 2016 - 10:18 AM
	By:	Jim Phelps (Member)

Ed - I've had that "lightning-bolt-coming-down-the-chimney" scenario as a kind of recurring thought. It hasn't happened (yet) in real life to me, but I'd like to think I'm as strong as you were. And with age I think I am beginning to put things into perspective. There are people and then there's "stuff". I probably always realised that (it's not a difficult concept to grasp), but I never really felt how comparatively unimportant "stuff" should be on the scale of things. Oh, and my cats! They're more than "stuff", so I'm attributing human values to them. At least a bit more than to my bits of plastic and paper.

That doesn't mean to say that I WANT to lose my "stuff"! Not now that I've come to reappraise the joys of "having" THE ILLUSTRATED MAN and the Necronomicon (the original, by Abdul Alhazred) after a weekend of self-doubt and '60s hippy nostalgia-wallowing.

Just a random thought with perhaps no real point, but I've already typed it, so...

Years ago, I would often compulsively write a list of ten books/cds/"precious" items that I would "rescue" from my home if an act of nature put me in that position. A friend of mine also used to do this and we would razz one another over the fact that we both thought this way. Later, we had a conversation where we both talked about getting up in the middle of the night in our respective homes, wandered into whichever room that held our precious stuff, and, as the Brits say, "funnily enough", we both said to ourselves while looking at all this accumulated stuff, "What a waste." Now we had something else with which to kid one another.

That friend of mine has been dead going on two years now. He suffered from a lifetime of physical illnesses and one day, just a few miles from his home, he dropped dead on the side of the road, with his wife by his side. He no longer has to ruminate about what a waste all his stuff was or to ruminate about anything else. His widow offered me a bunch of his books and cds. I only selected a few things that we both shared an interest in, for sentimental reasons (Hemingway). The rest of his massive dvd collection and library will either hit the heap or be picked at by his other friends or family.


	Posted:	May 5, 2016 - 10:51 AM
	By:	Rameau (Member)

That friend of mine has been dead going on two years now. He suffered from a lifetime of physical illnesses and one day, just a few miles from his home, he dropped dead on the side of the road, with his wife by his side. He no longer has to ruminate about what a waste all his stuff was or to ruminate about anything else. His widow offered me a bunch of his books and cds. I only selected a few things that we both shared an interest in, for sentimental reasons (Hemingway). The rest of his massive dvd collection and library will either hit the heap or be picked at by his other friends or family.

Yeah, that's what I was going on about a few posts back. It's funny to think all the stuff I have hunted down & love so much...will go down to the tip or charity shop (I don't know what you call them in the States, Thrift Stores?) after I've breathed my last, but I've come to terms with it...I won't care as I won't exist anymore. But right now, I'm sitting here surrounded by all my lovely junk, film posters, old cameras, a yellow teapot the shape of the sun with a smiling face, a white spitting image Ronald Reagan coffee pot, enough stuff for a junk shop. I have a lot of stuff upstairs that's gotta go, I'll sort it out sometime.


	Posted:	May 5, 2016 - 11:00 AM
	By:	Ado (Member)


	Posted:	May 5, 2016 - 11:19 AM
	By:	Jim Phelps (Member)

I realized twinkling memories of youth that were indeed pretty sweet; my friend and I romping through the woods on our bikes, building forts, building legos, Christmas, sitting on a hilltop behind our house listening to the pines whisper in the Colorado winds, endlessly playing Goldsmith.

That's one of the reasons every year I still watch bits of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and "How the Grinch Stole Christmas." They don't entertain me like they used to, but I remember and it's nice. You just have to keep nostalgia in check. There really is no going home again, but you need to look back every so often.

Rory, I know where you are coming from, these are the delightful irrationals that make us human, and I do the same thing

I'm sure many of us of a certain age did those kinds of things; I know I did. I even lamented the fact that more recent batches of kids don't have those cool experiences in that "Goonies and Childhood" thread I statred here years back. I loved building tree forts, staying out until dusk, and even having a "Tom Sawyer"-style experience of going along the canal that was just past my back yard and throughout the neighborhood in an oil drum barge that some enterprising kids built-at least we thought some older kids built it---and left it along the banks for whoever wanted to sail around on the thing.

But in my view having the memories of those experiences doesn't justify owning 6,000 cds, thirty-three of which are multiple releases of the [name of sci-fi franchise] scores. I know if I had half or most of my stuff stored anywhere but in my own home I would think it was time to trim the fat.


	Posted:	May 5, 2016 - 11:56 AM
	By:	RoryR (Member)

Yeah, when you have to start renting storage space, that's a warning sign.

But still, if you enjoy collecting something, and there's really nothing negative about it, why worry?

I've been a film buff since before I was ten, and I've obsessed about collecting movies on video since I first heard of a Betamax machine in the mid-seventies. I never really had that large a VHS collection or even laserdisc (LDs were expensive, still I had about 300), but it really exploded with DVDs. Now that I mostly collect Blu-rays, at least I generally throw out the old DVD when I upgrade to a BD.


	Posted:	May 7, 2016 - 4:29 AM
	By:	Jim Phelps (Member)

The fact that only a few have posted on this thread tells me that anyone who hasn't posted on it are the ones with massive amounts of stuff in ma and pa's (pa is usually dead first, so just ma's) basement, public storage facilities, and stacked to the ceiling in their own coldwater-hotplate flats.

This of course begs the question which concerns 97% of all FSMers: what is the proper safe distance between one's sickeningly large CD collection and one's hotplate where many a Spaghetti O's feast commences?


	Posted:	May 7, 2016 - 5:30 AM
	By:	Graham Watt (Member)

In memory of
A very fine thread
Which ran for years here
There is one thing
Which I have
At the moment
But which I didn't use to have
In fact it grows
To quite some length
And then disappears
To virtually nothing
At the moment
It is quite long
And people are intrigued
When stroking it

Non-Film Score Discussion: To Have or Not to Have - That is the Question

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