Being where I live, I don’t meet a lot of mail-artists. I’ve met a few in such places like Thomasville North Carolina (Richard C.) and the Temple of Apollo in Greece (Katerina N.). Things seem to happen socially in the mail-art world, but they always happen over there. The kids like to gather in NYC or Chicago, places that are hard for me to get to. I’ll get to one of these meetups at some time, but I haven’t yet. I text pretty frequently with a couple mail-artists, which feels slightly more personal than sending weird things to them, but not by much. In some ways, I feel like I send from a far-off planet, an outpost. Not exactly a land connected to a larger artistic community.
One meet-up randomly happened at a Stereolab show at the legendary Cat’s Cradle in Chapel Hill North Carolina. I was a little sick that day, hanging out at Weaver Street Café listening to Lætitia Sadier talk on the phone. She was a few tables over from me and talking loudly. It sounded like the tour wasn’t going well. Thankfully she was speaking in English. After finishing my coffee, I went down Franklin Street to the club. I made it through the opener and then most of Stereolab before I decided to move towards the back. I felt like I might need to leave quickly.
While I made my way through the crowd, someone stopped me. I had no idea who they were, but they knew my name. At first, I thought this was my assassin sent to kill me. Maybe from the future, maybe from our time. After a few quick words, I learned it was Tim Collapse…from mail. He recognized me because of all the silly stuff I send with my face on it. If he had done the same, I might not have worried about a potentially assassination attempt. Although I was happy to meet him, it wasn’t the place to have a proper hang. Nothing worse than yelling in a loud club followed by screaming, “What!” over and over. It was a quick meeting and then I made my way to the back of the club. Over the next couple of years, I continued to send mail to Tim, even picking up his phone number along the way.
Out of the blue he sent me a card asking if I wanted some of his mail. Yes! A little while later he followed up with some texts. “It {the collection} does contain a few Richard Canard pieces.” / “It’s around 4-5 medium sized priority boxes.” / Do you ever get to Reconsidered Goods in Greensboro? That might be a good meet-up spot, so you haven’t got to drive so far.” Reconsidered Goods it was. We organized a date to meet, and I drove directly there from class.
Tim.
Tim and I talked a little bit before loading the six or seven boxes into the back of my car. Although he mentioned that it was a lot of mail, I began thinking about what I had stacked at home. When he said this, a slight tinge of anxiety ran through me. I have more stuff, more paper, and more weirdo garbage than I would ever be able to work with, and now I’m taking on more.
Tim talked about his kids and showed me pictures of his daughter’s drawings. We went over stuff about music (Einstürzende Neubauten being one, thus the title of this piece) and a few mail-artists that we’ve both sent to for years, one of which has been a problem in the network for decades. He told me about his job and the weird and surprising sprawl of Mebane North Carolina. Of everything he said to me, he said, “I only keep the materials I’m working on…except for glue and what not. I’ll buy stuff, make something, and give the remaining materials away.” It was the most impressive thing I’d ever heard before. How is that possible? How can you not hoard tons of 19th century paper?
The two of us wandered around the creative reuse store looking for materials. I found the usual paper for broadsides and some mailing supplies, while he focused on the ephemera section. While I was digging through things alongside him, I had a strange flashback when the UNCW radio station liquified all of their records, CD’s, and tapes. There, digging day after day until they tossed what was left, I’d dig through box after box with another weirdo. Since then, the accumulation of records and of paper have almost exclusively been a solitary one. Never dug through boxes of someone’s school photos (lots of pictures of Matt) or discarded bits of paper before with someone else. Unfortunately, I was on the clock. I had to get back to my house at my usual time, or the mess would have accumulated. I bid farewell to Tim and went back towards Winston-Salem.
When Miles was firmly engaged with his episodes, I started to bring in the boxes, first looking through them before taking them upstairs. The quick look was impressive, lots of zines and lots of meticulously organized pieces of paper. All of the Mike Dyar works were in one large envelope. All of the Ryosuke Cohen braincells were beside one another. I was impressed by the organization. Someone with such organizational skills could be disciplined enough to only keep the materials they were going to use. Once everything was upstairs awaiting further thumbing through, that feeling of anxiety started back up. What am I going to do with all of this new stuff?
Since writing the above, a couple days have passed. I finished up the last thing for this year. The desk is clean. The desk was clean. It took a few hours to sort through everything that Tim gave me. I made piles that I was going to donate, piles that I was going to keep, and piles that I was going to cut up. The latter part is going to take forever. I’ve already started. An hour of cutting barely collapsed the pile. To start, I’m going to make my usual brand of collages and then move out collaboratively. Might just send big piles of what I cut up for others to reassemble and then send around.
Thanks, Tim, for your generosity.
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