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Shelf Life

21 May 2009 663 views 13 Comments

I am not against the digital revolution. I adore the resources available  to artists and the fact that I can make a feature film for $1,000. That being said, I want to talk about two specific things that are being morosely affected by this new age. Books and DVDs.

I will break this down into three reasons, and when I’m done you can all nod or shake your heads. After that we’ll get on with the future. Deal?

1. The artwork

Amazon in recent years has introduced us to its digital book, the Kindle. While I agree this thing is nifty and space-age-riffic , it’s also cold and impersonal. One of the greatest joys of any book is the wonderfully ecelctic and unique cover art. To me this adds to the experience of the story. It sets a tone and gives it personality. When I look back on the books I have read, one of the first things that comes to mind is the artwork that graced the cover. Anyone read Stephen Kings, Night Shift? The cover with the hand and all the eyeballs poking out of the skin? “Holy alien dimmension, Christian Bale!” That thing was the center of awesome town! DVDs play a tad differently for me in this catagory. There are a shit-ton of great movie cover arts, but it seems in recent years studios lost the love for good imagery and have opted instead for how many movie stars can they cram onto a cover. But let’s be honest, a good movie poster is a good fucking movie poster.

2. The collection

I am proud of my movies, damn it, and I want to show those ladies off. If you come over to my place and I catch you scanning over my DVDs then I am going to get a bit excited. Movies are important to me and I enjoy watching people run their fingers down my lovers. Everyone does it. You check out your friends flicks. Silently judge him or her on their choices and taste.  Same with books. My mother fuckin’ stuff is on display. What I do NOT give two shits about is my collection on a hard drive or kindle. That, to me, is dull. I do not want to sit down at my television and scroll through my movies. NO! I want to stand in front of them. Say, “good morning, good afternoon, good evening and goodnight”. Study their spines, savor the taste of each one…and then, pull the perfect selection from the shelf…which leads me to-

3. The feel

This. Is. Everything. Fuck the Kindle with its spineless back and plastic smell. I don’t know exactly why I like a good book making love to my hands, but here is the only way I can desribe it. Feeling the bulk. Turning the pages. Smelling the paper. Bookmarking my progress. A book in your hands is more than just a story. It brings a sort of comfort. It individualizes the artist and their message. It is a piece of art. There is a great sense of accomplishment when you finish the last page of a book and then CLOSE IT. Soemthing you will never feel or achive with a Kindle. I once finished a book in which I had tears in my eyes. I held the book in my hands and stared at the art work. I felt the weight and the pages, recalling the adventure I just went on. I opened it back up and read the last page. There was no list of other stories to choose from, only this one. The one that affected me this way. My friend, the physical book.

So there’s all that. I won’t be laying down on the tracks of the future because I know that train will not stop for me. I love the technology, but I will be sad to see books and DVDs slowly vanishing.

Much Love
Travis

  • Regamom3

    Well said my friend!!! I love to read books and buy movies. I have little time to watch tv and commerials. I do love youtube because I found some really good channels.

    Reading books is my passion. I too love a good book cover, it lures us in as do really great movie covers. But all that soon will be history, it is unfortunate. I’ve read many Stephen King books in my past, he let me down by not finishing the Dark Tower series in a timely fashion. I really think you should dedicate some time to writing a book, I realize you do screen plays. But I a great book is such a valuable treasure. Sorry about my rambling, on to the fun.

    Reggie

  • Tamsin-Emillie

    I have been trying to explain to people for years my reason for not getting books from the library and I think this basically sums it up. To read a book you form a relationship, an experience with that book and I think it is crazy to shove them all on a hard-drive and be done with it. Not to mention the fact that so many of my books I have chosen because of their cover and cover judgement despite what they say is pretty darn good!

    DVD’s are the same, I too LOVE having a collection which my friends and family alike envy. To be able to put them in order by actor/director/alphabetically is the best thing in the world! Even if I download a film it would only be something semi-permanent before I buy the actual DVD which I can hold and love!

    Tamsin-Emillie

  • travis

    Well said! May our collections live on!

  • travis

    Hopefully sooner then later on the book. We shall see.

  • http://wwwpolychom.blogspot.com Rob Anderson

    I couldn’t agree more, Travis. Especially regarding books. I LOVE the smell of paper, the tactile groove of opening a book, holding it and reading it.

    A bit off-topic, have you seen “Dante’s Inferno” with James Cromwell and Dermot Mulroney? If you haven’t you should check it out. It’s right up your alley (you’ll know why in the first minute of the film).

  • ryles

    i whole-heartedly agree with you. in my mind, i believe the Kindle will die off in a few years (although i had the same feeling about the iPod…) but movies really hit me hard. i have friends who scoff at me blowing my cash on cinemas and DVDs when there are scores of websites and torrents that could provide me with the same services at no charge. but it just doesn’t feel right to me.
    like you, i also have an extensive DVD collection that i have spent years working on and am damn proud of. i doubt i would be as excited looking at stacks of DVD-R discs with titles written in Sharpie.
    sure you essentially get the same product, but it’s not about the product, as you said. it’s the experience and the sincerity in the art form. books and films deserve to be felt as well as seen.
    very nice entry sir!

  • travis

    HERE HERE! Right on, lady.

  • travis

    I don’t believe I have seen that, but I’ll throw it on the NetFlix!

  • flamingcat

    I have grown up getting teased about never, ever leaving the house without a book (or five) in my hands. This was easy when I was a child and my parents drove me everywhere, but it became much more complicated when I moved out and started driving myself around or, worse, taking the bus. I’d end up forgetting the book I was reading (agony!) or losing it (horror!), or wrecking it by having it fall out of my pocket into the foot of slush-snow on the ground (noooooo!). Also, I should point out, I am one of “those people” – the kind that have six books on the go at any given moment,constantly replacing the last one finished by starting two more. I HATED the limitations of paper books when I was out in public.

    This was when I discovered the electronic book. Somewhere, somehow, I picked up a little wannabe palm pilot for under a hundred bucks. I stumbled on ebooks. I hated them. I downloaded a few and started carrying it around when I knew a book was going to be too big or unwieldy. I took it on the bus, where not having a book was torture. I fell in love with ebooks. At some point, I realized I could not truly live without ebooks.

    And yet, I still feel the same way as you mention in point #3. *Just* yesterday, I finished a story that left me breathless with how perfect it had been, and I went straight over to my computer and wrote a long, somewhat crazy letter to my friends regarding that unique feeling of finishing a perfect story for the first time. But before I did that, I, too, sat in my bed just staring at the book for a moment. I, too, went back to the last page and enjoyed that ‘new story’ feeling for a moment. I put my hand next to the sole illustration in the book – at the very bottom of the very last page – and came close to worshipping it for a few seconds.

    So what can I say? These days, I have a ‘hard copy’ library at home – by which I mean there are books on every unoccupied surface of my home, and several shoved into places where I find them years later and go “ooooooooh YEAH!” like I’d just found a five dollar bill I’d forgotten I had. I also have ecopies of most of them, for when I go out. I unplug my palm, slap it into the little belt-clip case I picked up for it, and go out knowing that whatever I end up feeling like reading that day, it’s going to be there for me, and it even automatically bookmarks where I stopped reading.

    So – well, I’m sorry we disagree. But – if you’re not going to use it – can I have *your* Kindle?

  • travis

    Seems like a good balance. I just fear a day when they stop printing books. I hope there will always be a market for them. A world where books and ebooks can live in harmony.

  • danisuperhero

    haha, so true (:

  • http://www.youtube.com/lunerrrrs Luna

    I agree with you about books. I don’t think I’ll ever read one off of a tiny hand-held device.

    I do like WATCHING things on a tiny hand-held device! I take 5 hour bus trips to visit my parents sometimes and its nice to watch the Daily Show or Funny Face on my Ipod classic. Plus, it stops people from talking to me.

  • http://youtube.com./user/nightie82 Hanne

    Oh, how I agree.. I feel the same way about my music, what fun is it browsing through the tracks on an iPod when you can stand in front of shelves filled with wonderful cd’s and vinyl instead?
    Hard copies are sexy. Digital ones.. not so much.