And, if I can play my own devil’s advocate, some of the music I began listening too during the transition, so to speak, was very repetitive. Electronica, Steve Reich compositions…

The idea of repetition isn’t bad, of course, not at all. One of the many lessons I still remember from Pete Pinnell’s ceramics classes was when we talked about theme and variation. He played a few minutes of a classical work to demonstrate the idea to us as prospective potters. And the idea extends beyond pottery, with its practical roots, to what are traditionally called the fine arts. Iteration is important for craft and concept.

Your comment on ease of reproduction and distribution makes me wonder if anything else falls into the same category. But it gets hairy in a hurry. Written text, music, 2-d art, sure. Time-based 3-d art, performance art, sculpture… not quite so easy. And at the less-than-rock-star level, it’s relatively easy to reproduce and distribute music, but artwork that wasn’t in a digital format to begin with… not so easy. So I’m not sure that line of thought got me anywhere.

Just to make trouble… what about hymns? Verse-verse-verse-verse. Or maybe verse-chorus-verse-chorus-verse-chorus-verse-chorus.

Is music different, though, perhaps, on account of being so easy to reproduce and distribute? Something I still have to think on . . .

Odd that you mention DVDs: we have satellite cable and internet, here, so physical media is the way to go. Nonetheless, I’m considering canceling Netflix in favor of whatever the university library has on tap.

I like that idea in principle, and I suppose it got the guy a [semi]-lucrative book deal, but I don’t feel the need to live with that kind of legalism. We’ve collected some DVDs of late and those, those I wonder why we’re keeping around. But that’s partly in light of how easy it now is to stream movies. If we can watch what we want via Hulu or Netflix instant watch now, why bother storing and moving the discs?

In the realm of personal objects, I’m not precious about things I’ve created. They get pitched easily, though your model has made me remember that I’ve recently wondered where my portfolio for application to 3rd year of the architecture program ran off too.

As we’ve moved we’ve culled quite a bit. I’m hoping first of all that this rambling comment makes sense, and secondly that we’ll eventually have a collection of objects that are more meaningful and worthwhile to have around. More handmade artifacts, for instance, more objects with a bit of history behind them . . .

My pottery collection (pots in the kitchen, that is) is now packed. It’s another seven milk crates and five clay boxes. Whew.