It had been a grueling month at work, a place long since discarded, but… that seemed important at the time. We were at war with another department over some petty digital policy. Relationships were strained, tensions were high. Waiting for the next round of skirmishes, we stewed in mutual discontent. When the weekend arrived we scattered and, no doubt, spread the collective misery to our families. Venting ensued. Energy was expended. Irreplaceable time together was squandered.
On a mission to retrieve more ice and help stoke the fire, I ventured downstairs and into the basement of my parent’s house. Wandering past rows of forgotten videotapes, three wooden, dust-shrouded, boxes caught my eye in the corner. Old, battered, and mismatched, I abandoned what had, mere moments ago, seemed like a vital task and feeling compelled, opened them one by one.
Inside, glistening like treasures in tales of old were totems fashioned from wood, iron and steel. I was very young when the man who owned them died, but… in a way I know him.
These were his tools and they speak for him.
Not because of any digital product I could hope to build or any platform I could latch on to lamprey-like, or any other number of exhausting and fleeting squabbles we as social creatures tend to focus undue importance on. None of that will matter to those we leave behind when we return to the earth. Mere screens cannot adequately convey our struggles or transfer, through touch, our spirit or hard-won scars.
What can connect us to those who lived before and survive through the fog of time to become part of a shared, illuminating, and useful experience must be more tangible. Must be more deeply felt.
Risk. Toil. Betrayal by a business partner and, through sheer will alone, conjuring something far greater from the ashes.
These are the songs, the objects he left behind sing for him.
We are all hunting for meaning, we seek shared context. But for those of us who grew up in the digital divide and increasingly disposable cultures.. The truth is….
No one passes on their Grandfather’s Tweet.
Artifacts, real artifacts, must speak for themselves. An object becomes thus transformed and treasured when scars are well earned and outrageous experiences imbue in it great meaning.
Legacy goods and the stories they tell transcend time and space. I have his name, a handful of photos and whispered anecdotes, but more importantly… I have his tools. I have a part of him to pass on.
What’s your totem? What remains of you?
