A boxed and labelled life

Back in 1995, I vis­ited an anonym­ous indus­trial build­ing in an anonym­ous corner of Wemb­ley, to view an art install­a­tion by Brian Eno and Laurie Ander­son (both cel­eb­rated post-modern artistic egg­heads) entitled Self Stor­age. Set up like one of those huge stor­age ware­houses where people can file away unwanted rem­nants of their lives for as long as they want (at a price, obvi­ously), I found the install­a­tion fas­cin­at­ing. It par­tic­u­larly sat­is­fied the part of me that is always inquis­it­ive about people’s lives — but done in an art­ful and arty way, of course.

Seven years on, I feel sur­roun­ded by junk. I’m attempt­ing — for vari­ous reas­ons — to have a major clear-out. But there’s always that prob­lem about what to keep and what to throw away. No, I don’t need those two files of painstak­ingly writ­ten lec­ture notes from the four-term course cov­er­ing the his­tory of theatre. I’m not going to read through them again — cer­tainly not in the imme­di­ate future — but I want to keep them, because each sheet of yel­low­ing A4 paper rep­res­ents the nights I spent in my dingy stu­dent bed­room, painstak­ingly copy­ing out the sali­ent points of lec­tur­ers’ ram­blings as stored on the cheap dicta­phone I owned at the time. That’s important.

And that’s just one example. You can also include two boxes of degree set texts (and even some A-level texts); pro­grammes from theatre pro­duc­tions (both those I’ve seen and those I’ve been involved in); old presents which have no prac­tical use, but that I still value because they remind me of the people who gave them (includ­ing a Furby, for heaven’s sake); even, God for­bid, old clothes that I would no longer be seen dead in, but that I want to keep because I can occa­sion­ally unpack them, stare at them in dis­be­lief and think: “Did I really used to wear this junk?”

Pos­sibly the most ridicu­lous items I keep are old cards — birth­day, Christ­mas and even hol­i­day post­cards — that con­tain mem­or­able or par­tic­u­larly spe­cial mes­sages from friends. I have a small col­lec­tion of cards that date back to my 18th birth­day — thir­teen long years ago — if that’s not too hard to believe. Sen­ti­mental fool beha­viour all over again, then.

A few times over the past few days, I have sat on the edge of my bed with one or other of the above items in my hands, poised between a stor­age box and a black refuse sack. To be fair to myself, I’ve been more prac­tical than ever before, and have got rid of a num­ber of things that in pre­vi­ous years I would have retained. But still I find myself cling­ing to other items, just know­ing that they’re going to take up valu­able space, yet unable to part with them.

That’s why the Eno/Anderson install­a­tion has sud­denly resur­faced in my mind. In the future — hope­fully the near future — every­one will be given their own stor­age area, free of charge. When we reach 18, just as we start col­lect­ing our own belong­ings and bring­ing together parts of our per­sonal his­tory, each of us will be issued with a few cubic metres of stor­age space in which to store our lives — the aspects of our past that are gone but not for­got­ten; the aspects that no longer need to be car­ried around as bag­gage (emo­tional or oth­er­wise), but that we should always have the pos­sib­il­ity of eas­ily revis­it­ing whenever we wish.

Like the Self Stor­age install­a­tion, the stor­age units con­tain­ing our lives will (if the owner agrees) be made avail­able for inspec­tion — not for snoop­ing around, open­ing boxes and pick­ing over items, but just for a glimpse through the grille at the vari­ous labels and a tan­tal­ising impres­sion of what lies within. Schooldays, fam­ily papers, cer­ti­fic­ates, uni­ver­sity, gifts — moments of our exist­ence, packed and sealed. If you want someone to really get to know you — who you are, where you come from and the things that made you who you are today — you can sup­ply them with the key to your stor­age area and invite them to browse. Not that I would ever agree to the lat­ter, of course.

Name:: V Simons
Box no: 22356104517
Born: 1971
Stor­age unit began: 1989.

Notes: Brows­ing rights only avail­able to author­ised key­hold­ers (none at present). Con­tents checked annu­ally by owner, dur­ing his sud­den fren­etic period of spring cleaning.

What would you put into your self stor­age unit?