So, yeah, things have been absolutely batshit at the day gig. But anyway, here’s the last Creative Loafing column. The new one will be up on Thursday.
It’s weird and wonderful how some articles of clothing come to mean so much to us. Not because of what they are, but because of what they represent – because of who gave them to us, because of what happened while we were wearing them, because of the emotions and memories that color them so much more meaningfully and permanently than any stain.
I’ll never be mistaken for someone with anything approaching a passion for fashion. I do like certain things for the way they look, or make me look – mostly jackets and footwear – but beyond comfort and a vague and contradictory set of notions that serves as an underdeveloped sense of “taste,” I don’t think a whole hell of a lot about what I wear. I’m not a guy with style.
I am, however, a human being, and I think everybody out there owns certain clothes or accessories that they love far more than mere comfort or cut can account for. It’s a very human thing to love something more for what it means than for what it is. It goes beyond sentimentality; it’s an association so powerful and personal that it’s woven into our own sets of reality. It’s part – a very big part – of what makes each of us, each of us.
And sometimes we lose them.
Here are five of the items that, when they disappeared from my life, seemed to take a piece of me with them.