Dear Reader
For the past few months, the exterior of the Brooklyn Library’s main branch has been covered in Jay-Z lyrics. It’s part of a tribute to the man and mogul, created (without his prior knowledge) by his company Roc Nation. Inside, The Book of HOV is filled with artifacts of his story, physical manifestations of Shawn Carter’s life’s achievements so far, a literal rundown of the pillars of his existence. Aside from being an engaging look-back at one of the most influential rappers of our time, it also made me think about the things that go into a life’s collection — hip-hop titan or other.
The Book of HOV is available to view online, if you don’t happen to live in New York, where it’s staged just a few miles away from where Jay-Z grew up in Marcy Houses. But it’s not as rich an experience as walking through the two floors of the library that feature the “chapters” of the exhibition, weaving in and out amongst the ephemera that together add up to the sum of his work. From the lobby, where you can see artist Daniel Arsham’s cast of Hov’s Hands throwing up the roc in fool’s gold, to the numerous tickets and lanyards from tours over the years, and the various media his hits have been recorded on, this is a very tangible exhibition that is best seen IRL.
There are newspaper articles and magazine covers, some of titles that don’t exist anymore (RIP Q). There are DATs — of “Can I Live” and “Meet the Parents,” VHS tapes — of the “Run This Town” music video, DV cassettes — of “The Gift” (the clean version) and even floppy disks — from 1997 with “Where I’m From.” Each has little details written on them about the producers and engineers involved; little pieces of history on technology no longer used today. There is a Magna Carter setlist, a handwritten letter from Nancy Sinatra, the mic stand from his 2008 first-rapper-to-headline-Glastonbury show.
To be sure, there is also a plethora of items which the I’m a business, man has created to expand his empire, along with rows of his Decoded memoir. There is also a whole white-walled area of HOV-recommended books to browse through and, should you wish, check out. And there’s a full-scale replica of the room where he recorded some of his best-known songs. If not for the glass coverings over most items, this is a very tactile exhibition.
Walking through it, I wondered about what musicians and artists coming up through today’s digital airwaves would likely put together if they were awarded such a tribute. That opens up a whole other conversation about the stature of today’s entertainers, and so I began thinking about collections on an smaller scale, everyday ones. Like mine.
Having made a giant move from Johannesburg to New York City over a decade ago, I had to downsize my life’s possessions a while back. With the help of a dear friend who is brilliant at organizing a panicked mess, I whittled my life of 29 years down to one big suitcase, one small suitcase, a laptop bag and a backpack. I can barely travel to the Cannes Film Festival with that small an amount of luggage, but somehow I moved to New York like that. I had to give away most of my books, magazines, vinyls & CDs, and trinkets collected from over the years. In a New York apartment, there is just nowhere to put them. You can store them, sure, but rent’s already too damn high.
After all the consolidating, there were three boxes left that I absolutely couldn’t part with. They stayed in one friend’s basement for eight years before moving to the spare room of another. I kept meaning to send for them, but before I knew it, 12 years had passed.
Even though I haven’t used their contents or have needed to use them over these years doesn’t mean I don’t want them. They are what’s left, the essentials, of me. If you laid them out, they’d tell a large part of my story. The first award I won as an arts & culture journalist. The journals I kept from the age of 12, with Tracy Chapman lyrics scribbled inside and pasted letters from overseas pen-pals (remember those?!). Baby pictures of growing up in small-town Benoni (the same place Charlize Theron grew up!), and pictures of family members who are no longer around — photos taken in a time before digital snaps ensured we’d have an abundance of photographic memories to hold onto.
How much are these boxes worth? What are any of our physical memories worth? When space is a premium, and the realm of the online world holds more and more of our collections; our movie rentals, our books, our voice notes and texts, what physical value do the things we’ve gathered and accrued over the months and years hold?
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve thought about this a lot as I’ve tried to figure out how best to send for the boxes. It’s time. I want to be able to show my daughter the things of my life, an extension of hers. It’s like that credit card advert goes. I don’t have to have a library’s worth of keepsakes, but I can have a few boxes. To me, they are priceless.
Thank you for reading. Here are some digital snaps from The Book of HOV.
Stay well,
Nadia
I too have had to whittle down to just a few boxes. I too stored boxes at a friend's when we moved abroad a few years ago. I suspect I have letters from you too. If nor, photos of them as one way of condensing years of stuff was to take photos of letters from my childhood. I could never part with my childhood journals. Even when some of them are filled with pages that say 'Dear Diary, nothing much happened today '. These things are for my girls. Even if I am not ready for them to read some of my journals yet. X
Me too xx