What We Keep

I used to have collections.

Years ago, I was deep in the world of second-hand record shops, trailing my fingers across shelves stacked with dusty vinyl and history. My treasure hunt had a clear target: old comedy albums. There was something about them—tiny theatrical worlds trapped in grooves. I found Bob Newhart, Shelley Berman, George Carlin, Bill Cosby, Not the Nine O’Clock News, Victor Borge. They weren’t just records; they were echoes of a time, fragments of laughter that spanned decades. But Monty Python always eluded me. Maybe everyone else was hanging on to those the way I was hanging on to mine.

For a time, I grew out of them—or thought I had. Life shifted, space became precious, and records felt like relics of a bulkier past. So, I boxed them up and took them to the op shop. Vinyl, I thought, had had its day. Everyone had CDs. Sleek. Portable. Modern.

Didn’t I get that wrong.

Vinyl made a triumphant return, and now CDs are gathering dust in their own turn as streaming takes over. I don’t even own a physical music player anymore. Everything I listen to floats in the cloud, summoned with a tap or a voice command. Somewhere in the ether are all those comedy routines I once scoured Sydney to find.

It’s funny, how the things we once held tightly become, over time, the things we let go of. Or perhaps they let go of us.

I also enjoyed collecting books. Fiction, non-fiction, theology, history, cultural studies—you name it. My grandmother once visited and stood, wide-eyed, in my study. “I’ve never seen so many books in one place,” she said, half-impressed, half-alarmed. I even built a modular bookshelf system that stacked neatly, optimised for the inevitable student-house moves. They were companions, those books. Teachers. Wanderings on paper.

Then, fifteen years ago, ebooks arrived.

I was instantly converted. My entire library, suddenly weightless. I could read on the train, on a plane, in bed, in the queue at Medicare. I could carry whole histories and galaxies in my pocket, and add to them in seconds. Some friends still insist on the smell of pages, the feel of a spine. I understand that. But for me, the freedom of access outweighed the romance of the physical.

And now, with downsizing on the horizon—can we really fit four bedrooms into two?—I’m glad for that shift. So much of what once cluttered our lives has become digital, ephemeral, floating. Even as we plan what to let go of, I realise how much I’ve already released.

But the impulse hasn’t gone. We still collect. We’ve just changed formats. What used to be vinyl, then books, then CDs, has become something else entirely. Now we collect subscriptions. Music, movies, news, journals, apps, recipe databases. The digital shelves stretch endlessly, unseen but ever-present.

I suppose every age has its objects of desire, its rituals of gathering. But more than the items themselves, what we’re really collecting is meaning—laughter, wisdom, comfort, curiosity. Those things haven’t changed. They just come wrapped in different packaging now.

What do we keep? What do we let go of? Perhaps the better question is: what keeps us?