Nathan Key

From Guest Blogger, Christopher Cocca

I heard today that consumer spending on retail rose 1 percent in the latest metric, despite projections of a .8 percent decrease for whatever period was being measured. People are still buying stuff. Decreased (on the whole) gas prices certainly help.

I got $50 from my grandmother for my birthday and tried really hard to spend it last night. It's still in my pocket. It's not that I'm cheap, it's just that lately, I'm finding it harder and harder to find things I actually want to buy. I'm not a consumer of art in the way some people are. I listen to new music for free on the radio (or on YouTube or seeqpod or Pandora or Facebook or Last) and I've never been one to hoard albums or books as artifacts or totems. Remember those 35 bones I had to spend on iTunes? I still have 15 left. I'm not against spending, but in the economy of gift money, the only thing worse than spending on food or bills is spending arbitrarily. You're supposed to put some thought into it. I put so much thought into it that the money usually ends up floating into the general account where it eventually becomes burger and wings money.

I blame my junior high religiosity (yes) for this: one year I gave up buying baseball cards for Lent because of how obsessed I'd become with them. When it was over, the collector's impulse was gone. I'd been going strong with sports cards and trading cards and comic books till then (oh, 90s foil-embossed, laser-eyed comics boom, how I do still miss you), but I never really got back into the discipline that enthusiast collecting requires. The bottoming out of the boom (next month: 11 variant covers!), my lack of funds, and the baseball strike also helped.

I don't need to buy music.I also don't need to buy books. There are libraries and, let's be honest, blogs. Wikipedia. Project Gutenberg. This guy. I don't need collectibles, and even though I like them, they're more fun if you're not buying them yourself. (The exceptions here are vintage, middle-grade comic books, like "Batman and The Outsiders #1" or other things from the 70s and 80s that don't cost a lot but look cool in your office). I already own "Watchmen" and "Heart of Darkness" and "Leaves of Grass" and 3/4s of the so-you-wanna-be-a-writer cannon. The truth is that I have a lot of stuff, but not because I enjoy collecting or even because all of these things are worth having. I've had a lot of birthdays and Christmases and interests and buy-one-get-one-half-off-at-Borders trips. I stopped buying movies a long time ago.

I'm thinking of writing a craiglist's post. "Wanted: a good, legal way to spend 50 bucks. Best offer of stuff for my half-bill wins." Nathan's readers, you have first crack.

Is my consumerist anxiety heightened by the economic crisis? Not really. It's more a poverty of enthusiasm for music or art or literature as products or for their creators as those with access to some sublime aesthetic I'm otherwise cut off from. Maybe I'm getting arrogant. Maybe I'm getting older. I think the more we practice our crafts, the less mystical these become and the less mystified we are with their processes. In the move from fanboy to artist, we lose things. If we're growing, the tastes and agendas and priorities of our heroes become more like those of our parents (our hipper, more famous parents) as we stake our own claims.

50 bucks. Seriously. Make me an offer.

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From Nathan: "My good friend Christopher Cocca was nice enough to let me borrow his words today so I can concentrate on another job interview. He's an amazing writer / thinker and you should be reading his blogs daily (if you're not already). Send him some love by visiting one or all of his websites:

www.christophercocca.net
christophercocca.wordpress.com
christophercocca.mlblogs.com/

"Thanks Chris! I owe you one!"