See You on the Flipside
“It’s not hoarding if all your shit is awesome.”
– Judd Apatow
Last time we got into the thrill of purposeful collecting, right? The curated bits of ourselves we can’t resist tracking down, the way a moth’s gotta dive into a porch light. But let’s get real. There’s also a whole other category of stuff — stuff we all collect without even noticing it. Orbiting around us like cosmic trash, tagging along for the ride. Take a look around. Wherever you are, chances are you could reach out and grab something from your very own personal dust cloud of “essential” but forgotten crap.
This isn’t your trophy collection or that shelf of figurines you finally, finally convinced yourself to stop adding to. Nope. We’re talking about that half-written novel hibernating in the bottom of a desk drawer, the song fragment haunting your phone’s voice memos, the painting you started three years ago but just never got back to. All of it stashed away, calling out from the deep: Helloooo! Can you please remember me?
Which brings us to the doc Flipside. Have you seen this thing?
The film charts one man’s struggle to close the circle with all of his aborted video projects, cast against the backdrop of a New Jersey record store. Award-winning TV-spot director and occasional documentarian Chris Wilcha piles up hard drives full of unedited footage and roots through closets packed with teenage junk to show that sometimes it’s not the items we collect we’re slaves to, but the memories (and regrets) those items bring. And the temple of this very phenomenon is the namesake Flip-Side Records & Tapes, ostensibly a retail store but more of a, uhh, museum for one man’s vinyl collecting mania.
The film cycles between hilarious, self-aware, frustrating and sad with sprinkles of bittersweet nostalgia, much like life itself.
So, what does it mean to live surrounded by all this unresolved stuff? A midlife crisis waiting to happen? The psychic weight of unfinished business? Or maybe just a classic case of rewinding to find a way forward?
For us, this podcast is a great outlet, a way to share the work we’re doing with listeners like you. We’re emptying the liquor boxes living in our heads and feeding the contents, we suppose, into yours.
Maybe as creators we love the idea of pop culture so much because, as makers, we all help shape it with our videos, zines, podcasts or whatever. And we’re all standing on the shoulders of giants when we make stuff that will be, if all goes according to plan, fondly dug out of someone’s closet in thirty years. That inspires us.
So whatever labor of love you’ve been, well, laboring on, get it over the damn finish line. Make a plan. Find the time. Get the first draft done. Share it and get some feedback.
Let’s bake that cake. There’s hungry people out there.