My #ReadIndies book today is from a publisher I only came across recently – Cōnfingō Publishing. Based in Manchester, their website states that they “create beautiful editions of new fiction, poetry and art in all forms. Twice a year we produce a unique collection of previously unpublished works”. The book which caught my attention was “My Second Home” by Dave Haslam, a wonderful work which captured Sylvia Plath’s time in Paris – I wrote about it here, and loved it so much that I had to buy a signed bundle of Haslam’s works!

So I thought I would pick up another of these for #ReadIndies, and chose the first of his titles “A Life in Thirty-Five Boxes”; subtitled “How I Survived Selling My Record Collection”, it’s a work guaranteed to make any book or record (or indeed *anything*) collector stop and think about the stuff they store in their home…

Few of us own only a few possessions. We hold onto things, even when we don’t really know why. If you don’t throw things away, you’re collecting; by default.

Haslam is of course a DJ, so vinyl records have been his stock in trade. In the book, he explores not only his own collecting impulse but that of many others. What *is* it that makes humans want to collect stuff? Why do we have this need to gather the complete works of a music maker or author? Is it logical or even controllable? As someone who definitely has the collecting gene, if such a thing exists, I’ve definitely been prey to the irrational, emotional need to obtain a specific item, and have looked at it years later and wondered why I felt it was quite so essential…

Why do so many of us hug pieces of vinyl to our hearts? Because we know that each record is so much more than a hundred and twenty grams of treated and pressed polyvinyl chloride resin. Each record is a tangible token of who we were when we fell in love with that piece of music. The collection, however small and disorganised, represents a personal journey through music, our changing passions, our pleasures, our life. Our moments of rapture, and moments of regret.

As Haslam talks to other collectors and considers his own tendencies, it’s very clear that as human beings we get really strong emotional attachments to the objects which make up our lives. Certain records, certain books are connected with particular periods of our lives, becoming part of what makes us what we are. That attachment is what makes it hard for some of us to let go of our possessions as we get older – they’re something fundamental to who we are and so letting go is letting go also of our identity. I understand this feeling completely, as it’s something I struggle with when trying to thin my own collection of music and books. Some titles have been with me for most of my life (my original PIL Metal Box, the first single I ever owned which was bought for me by my grandmother, the Emily Dickinson Selected Poems I acquired in my teens). It’s definitely harder to part with things you’ve owned for decades, and I find more recent acquisitions can be passed on with less trouble…

The Confingo bundle!

Nevertheless, Haslam *does* sell his record collection, is happy to have found a good home for it, and feels lighter for taking this action. Getting rid of a big chunk of your life like that is a radical action, yet he’s able to move on, experiencing music in different format and resisting the inevitable temptation to start yet another collection…

So my second Cōnfingō/Haslam read was just as satisfying as my first, albeit the books are very different. One of the thing I love about the indie publishing model is that slim, thought-provoking works like this can make it into print in lovely editions and reach a wider audience than they otherwise might. Cōnfingō is another indie I can highly recommend and you might want to take a look at their website here – there are some very intriguing titles!