Object of My Affection - Domestic Machines Pt. 1 - Vintage Hobart Kitchenaid Mixer
The past month has been very disruptive, between changing jobs and continuing to downsize, in anticipation of a larger move sometime in the next six months. As I am surrounded by pack rats and hoarders, I have spent most of my life collecting objects, especially ephemera as comfort. While I am obviously conscious of the burden of material objects, I am not immune to ownership. I have shoeboxes laden with club flyers, some nights that I attended and others that I just picked up along the way in my travels around the world, and flyers that others gave me because they knew I liked the art. Are they mementos of a nightlife that once was not documented in the age before the intrusion of the digital and mobile phone camera? Perhaps - they are also reminders that even when I thought I went out a lot to see music, there were plenty of nights that I wish I had gone to - and I hoped I would have to return to fiction at a later point. As a writer, I always believed that you need physical things to trigger writing - and I still believe that they help - but in a digital age, it's photos, such as the one above that I find personally effective. As stories are not really about objects, but the memories and actions they evoke.
The subject of the Hobart Kitchenaid mixer arose as in passing tonight when Tristan told me about his new toaster oven. I've known Tristan since he was 1. I babysat him and happily we became life-long friends. He's truly like my brother from another mother. He told me the story of how he forced his dad to let go of his mother's vintage Hobart Kitchenaid mixer. It was a polished steel behemoth of a mixer. It was the one thing in the kitchen I was advised almost 20 years ago to never touch, as it was fragile. But over the years, when Anne, Tristan's mother, would take it out, I would marvel at its prowess, this sophisticated yet antiquated machine that made magic with whatever it stirred. I found it to be a kind robot, yet a highly intimidating one and I think except for one time when I helped Anne make something and was supervised, I never touched this reigning champion of domestic kitchen objects. But it lived on the counter by the back door for a long time and I always admired and respected it. I was under the impression it was Anne's mother's mixer - and over the years, I believe Anne told me a few stories about it in passing, but I didn't remember them - and I don't know - I just knew there was some family history attached to it. The knowledge that it was gone strangely upset me - I never voiced that I would ever want it as I hardly bake - I just always figured it was something that Tristan would want of his mother's. But our nostalgia for objects differs even if we often share many of the same memories from all the time we've spent together. I truly understand why it would have no use for him. Yet it was a physical reminder that an object that triggered memories of his mother, who tragically passed 2 years ago, was now absent. I awoke in the middle of the night imagining the mixer and being unable to fall back asleep, found myself in the dark, searching for replacements on Ebay.
For the past month, Sean and I have been watching "Battlestar Galactica" almost every night. In the show, one of my favorite sets is of a hallway of remembrance. Throughout the series, characters come to a makeshift shrine on the spaceship to post pictures of those that have recently died - and it is a recurring and moving plot device to set scenes there soon after a character has suddenly passed - in which the surviving friends and family decide where to place the photo of the deceased on the wall. In many ways, I feel that photoblogging objects mimics this act of coping for me. No longer do I need to collect if I can take photos or use others that already exist of common and uncommon items that resonate with stories of those around me, stories that I often feel conflicted developing as a writer.
In this instance, I believe the memory of the object may actually prompt me not to buy a mixer, but to bake with others that do. I have always found something zen-like in mixing - personally, that's the most satisfying part. My friend Rob once told me that it's impossible to write a perfect sentence, but easy to clean a toilet to perfection. I would like to add that I agree - I find writing an almost impossible feat that I am defeated by daily - but believe it's also not that hard to get the lumps out of the most stubborn dough, if you stir enough and every once in while, ask others to lend a hand.
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