curation and archiving

So it's one thing to move house, and obviously quite another to totally put everything you own in the right place. I'm really lucky (or canny) because this apartment has a lot of storage space, even not counting the second bathroom which I do not use as a bathroom. But I did of course stash stuff away in places that it didn't necessarily want to be permanently and so this morning I thought I'd address a bit of that. Mainly, all the 7" singles I had in the cupboard, just stacked up willy-nilly (there was also an unexplained handful shoved in a box I unpacked which I then put in the upstairs bookshelf- random). So, with a view to perhaps relocating the cupboard all the 7"s were in, I started pulling them out and going through them. I had actually thought about them in the abstract some time ago in a kind of almost out of sight, almost out of mind kind of way - do I need them? Maybe I don't. The thing is, I could kind of sell them, I guess, but I don't even really need to do that - I suppose I would rather have the money than the space they would take up, yeah. I have some singles that I bought new in the early 80s and have played once or twice. One in particular I came across and remembered that when I bought it from the artist I wrote them a letter saying, I don't regret buying it (which was about the nicest thing I could say) and they responded: that's not a common response (or words to that effect). Anyway, that single is now worth over $100 (discogs says it's worth $125, less their $10 of course. Others have paid more for the same thing). I suppose I don't mind getting that kind of money from someone to be relieved of a record I actually think is kind of shit, but at the same time, I feel bad that someone is so dumb as to think it's worth owning. By the same token, I am obviously that dumb too (now I think about it, had I looked it up on discogs and seen that no-one's ever paid more than 20c for it, then I'd just throw it out like I threw out the really scratched up copy of William Shakespeare's 'My Little Angel', a song by the way I adore, but I have it on at least one LP, maybe more, and don't need it on a 7", that's for sure. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to sell a bunch of these singles somewhere - not online, but to a shop I trust, so I won't make a huge amount but nor will I have to have a little place to keep these things and fret over their condition etc - and use the money wisely, probably putting it towards one of those albums I've been meaning to put out for years, perhaps the asylum seekers fundraiser record I made with Mia ten years ago. It has some good stuff on it, seems a shame to let all that effort go to waste, not just my effort. 

As I went through all these records I found a lot of junk too including broken and otherwise fucked records like the one above. I don't know what it is, where it came from or how it came to have a bite taken out of it, but there you go. Luxaflex claims to have 'all the answers', I actually thought they were the company that made the flexi, i.e. a luxaflexidisc but looking them up on line I am now of the opinion that more likely it's Luxaflex the awnings/blinds company, not directly connected with the manufacture of the record. Anyway, it's broken, I should just throw it away shouldn't I. I actually find that kind of thing hard to do. Conversely once I do it, I don't think of the thing ever again, so that's a bit ridiculous.