Curation, Compilation and Consternation

 

I'm very much in project mode, as the MoGian year draws to a close, and the Year of the Dan approaches.

A couple of those projects seem similar - I am working on curating my music collection for the purposes of putting onto a - gasp - portable MP3 player, that I can use to solely focus on enjoying that music (and hopefully new music) again.
Part of which also includes a long-running plan to condense all of my years of musical listening into eight compilations.

Another project is to curate my remaining DVDs into a 'definitive' collection. IE taking a snapshot of where I am today, and all the films that have helped define me; and corralling those into some sort of collection also.

Aside from the obvious difference of medium - one purely audio, another audio-visual - they do feel similar, and both sit under the wider category of 'refining what I retain in physical form', by way of hopefully reducing the amount of physical possessions I have.

But what is curious are a few aspects of this process that feel familiar, but also can feel overwhelming:

Compilation

I am very familiar with the process of making musical compilations. I have been effectively doing so since the early days of the Monastery of Sound; most notably hosting a fictional radio show for the #Oceanborn crew, and compiling a wedding music playlist for two good friends.

And whilst this latest project of eight albums that summarise my musical history to this date, is not really different - I have clear themes for each compilation - they are more for my own benefit than others - so arguably less pressure!

And apart from the final sequencing of the final 'saving the best for last' album which I will take a day soon to complete; I'm there.

Curation

By contrast, reducing my DVD collection to its essentials has felt much more laborious. Not least because I haven't really had the appetite to watch a whole film very often [although this has recently returned; hopefully prompted by my departure from Netflix, and hopefully for the foreseeable future!].

And whilst I think the two approaches feel similar in terms of reducing my musical and cinematic tastes to their current essences, so I don't have to think about this too much going forwards; it is interesting that chopping and changing my musical pool of choice is relatively easy, whereas culling films is less so.

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I think the obvious difference here is length of media - just one film is a few hours, whereas if I am familiar with an album, I can skip through it in 15 mins or so. It doesn't feel like I can skip through a familiar film; part of the process is immersing in that world for a few hours.

And yes I will be doing that with the albums I transfer over to my portable MP3 player when it arrives; and then not skipping tracks - just listening from start to finish - but maybe the immersion is a bit more surface-level (if as equally enjoyable as films; just maybe in different ways?).

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I'm not really sure what I'm getting at here just yet. I think it's just interesting how whilst music and films both occupy similar areas of my self; it is interesting that it is much easier to shuffle through varieties of music and jump between genres, than it is to review and jump between films in my collection.

Maybe I need to strip right back and retain only the 20(?!) films that I must absolutely retain in physical media; and the rest can be preserved on the Monastery of Vision?

And don't even get me started on my DVD box sets...

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More to come from this train of thought!