Messes of Life Mixed Up with Systems of Messes

One mess of things to take and another of things to leave behind. Packing up a life into a couple of suitcases just isn't possible. I guess that is why we have family members - to store what doesn't fit.
Why am I keeping all of that crap? Why am I still collecting crap?

This leads me to think about something I heard recently that collecting and individuality aren't as interesting as system and principle. So collecting is synonymous with individuality? Is that true? I had always thought of collecting as about groups, but each component of a collection is individual. Usually people say that the individual components make up a whole. Can the individual components stand on their own?
You ask that question often as an artist, especially if you work with dipyichs/triptychs, or anything that may be a series. Can those pieces stand on their own? And do they need to? If they stand on their own, does it make the whole piece redundant?

But back to this whole more interesting thing. System and principle are more interesting than collection and individual. The principle for your system of collection; you collect individual things.

...

I tried to write a story about this. I do mean "tried". The concept of deconstructing collection and system seemed so abstract as to not lend itself to narrative. Now this seems odd. Narrative exists in everything, even non-narrative (I can touch on that in a later post).
Here is an except: I didn't think that any of them were particularly interesting. The seemed pretty boring; a few were gray-ish, some were brown-ish; some were large-ish, some were small-ish. From what I could tell he may as well have collected them moments before our encounter.
I plan to finish that story one day. A narrative must exist somewhere. Even if it is only a non-narrative.

...

This begs the question: what is my system of collection? is it still valid? WHAT NEEDS TO BE THROWN OUT?