Backstories

We abandon a planned “believable lies” story when our body refused to cooperate, then follow the real-life weirdness of objects that won’t stay simple. We trace how keys, boxes, marks, and junk drawers turn into evidence, memory, and obsession, especially while packing up a life and deciding what matters.
• moving stress and the surprising honesty of the body
• why “backstories” beat price tags for meaning
• mystery keys as instant narrative machines
• empty boxes as “ghost objects” defined by absence
• maker’s marks, hallmarks, initials, and the urge to complete patterns
• why we keep things, even minimalists
• family museums and oral labels that drift over time
• provenance as an object’s biography, clean or messy
• the emotional hazard of cleaning and sorting keep donate sell trash
• the phrase “I almost threw it away” as a gateway to treasure thinking
• misidentification and how belief changes how we treat an object
• staying curious without getting greedy, using “this might be”
• The Maltese Falcon and the Holy Grail as object-quest warnings
• the junk drawer as the most honest museum in the house

Open a drawer. Not the one you already understand. Open a weird drawer. Take out an object you can't immediately explain and hold it for a second. And just ask what it is. And why you kept it. And what future you was supposed to do with it. And you might not get an answer, but you might get a story.

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Transcript

Welcome And The Big Move

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Hello and welcome to the animal show with Michael over there. Hello.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

How's it going? What a busy week. It's really been a little bit uh a little bit crazy because I did mention a little while ago that uh I am moving with the NMV shows, packing up everything and moving to Los Angeles, California. Out to where the Silver Laker is hanging out most of the time. One of the reasons it's been so busy this week is that the Silver Laker himself is actually here. He and his partner and I are all trying to figure out all the stuff that we're taking to California. So uh if your next question was, hey Michael, do you have help? Yeah, I got lots and lots of help, and they're awesome. I just want you to know uh this little song in the background here. This song is about our little Yaya, and I uh I wrote the song for uh for an album from my grandson. I don't know if we ever played it on the show before.

When Your Body Rejects Fiction

SPEAKER_01 1:45

Anyway, let's talk about let's let's talk about what happened this week because it was really kind of weird. Um it uh it was an interesting thing because I had a show planned. I had a show written. I tried to record the show a number of times, and I found that I could not do it. I could never, for some reason, finish. I had a lot of problems with my voice, uh, you know, where I started coughing, or I there were lots of different problems, lots of different things that happened that came up that prevented me from getting to the end of this particular show. And I found it really interesting uh because the entire show was made up. It was all untrue. Now, uh everybody was being told that it was untrue. The idea is to tell stories that sound true and investigate really why it is that they sound true, even if they're completely made up. And I think I have been thinking about this because that is what I do. I think all the time. My little ADH brain, ADHD brain is going a million miles a second all the time working on stuff. Like, why is that happening? I sat and I thought and I wondered, why couldn't I? What was the problem? And the problem, I think, is the fact that my body refused to put out an episode that is all untrue. Even though I'm telling everybody that it's all untrue. Now that's that's my that's where I am with this. I think my body physically told me, no, we're not doing that. And I think that's fascinating. Because I can't really think of any other reason why I had so much trouble. I tried to record this show eight times. It's insane. And I just could never finish it. But uh, I will give you a little bit of an idea of you know what it was, what it was about. And uh, one of these days I may actually end up getting back to it if for some reason my body says I can do it. So um, in in the episode we did not play, and I am not playing today, a sheep became an official town resident with voting rights and uh complementary vaccine vaccinations. A town voted to not exist after they were told they didn't exist, and then the government changed their mind. An island declared war on Tuesday afternoons, and there was a museum out there collecting things that were found in co-pockets. Of course, none of it's true, but the stories are a lot of fun. Anyway, I warned everybody everything's good. Now, this week, this time, this show, it's gonna be the opposite of that. And I think, I think truly the world has a funny way of getting offended when you invent strange things. You know, the reality clears its throat and hands you its beer and says, Hey, I can be a lot weirder than that. So uh tonight I thought I would talk about things that refuse to be ordinary. And, you know, we talk about things a lot, but you know, things in drawers, things in junk shops, things that are inherited or mislabeled or half remembered or found in boxes after someone dies. I mean, a lot of this folks is you know, this is my real life. This is what's happening to me right now. These are the things that are happening, and these are the questions that I have, and these are the things that I'm finding out about me and about my wife, and about the things. It's fascinating to me. And then, of course, we have things that look like costume jewelry until they're not, and things that look valuable until they're just really sad. Things that look meaningless until somebody says, ooh, ooh, ooh, that belonged to so and so. And then some things that refuse to let go even though they are imaginary. There's a statue out there that everybody's willing to die for, or a cup that may or may not be holy, but it's definitely inconvenient. A bracelet, a brooch, a ring, a trinket, a box, a flag, a key, a watch. The thing you almost threw away? Yeah. This week, like most weeks, I'm coming to you from my usual slightly overstuffed headquarters here on Cape Cod, where every flat surface has become sort of a temporary museum, and every box contains at least one mystery. And every time I say I'll sort through this one drawer, five hours passes, and I haven't learned nothing except that I own three objects I can't identify and a receipt from a business that doesn't exist anymore.

Backstories Matter More Than Price

SPEAKER_01 7:54

I'm calling this uh show, this episode, Backstories, and that title covers a lot of territory. A thing, you know, a thing with a backstory isn't necessarily, it's not necessarily valuable. And that's important to remember. It can be valuable. It can be gold or silver or platinum or jade or ivory, porcelain, could be signed glass or a painting or first edition, an antique you found in the barn, and you immediately start breathing differently when you're around it. But value isn't the whole thing. And sometimes the backstory is sentimental, sometimes it's historical, sometimes it's ridiculous. And sometimes the backstory is simply I found this in a drawer, and I have no idea why someone would have kept it. And that, weirdly, is reason enough to keep it. I have been living here with a lot of stuff like that. Some of it beautiful and some of it strange, and some of it connected to people I love, some of it connected to places I only half understand. Some some of them got marks on them, but I can't read them. Some turn out to be a lot more interesting than they look. Some turn out to be less valuable than I hoped. But somehow more meaningful than I expected. And I keep thinking about how objects survive us. And that's that's not meant to be depressing, although, you know, give me time. It is true, though. We spend our lives carrying or buying, making, choosing, receiving, losing, storing things. And then later someone else opens the drawer, someone else picks up the bracelet or the box or the old photo or the mystery keys and says, What is this? And that question is the beginning of half of the stories in the world. What is this? Followed by whose was it? Why'd they keep it? Where'd it come from? Is it real? And here's my favorite one. Should I have been more careful with this? Because that's a powerful moment. That's the moment an object stops being stuff and becomes evidence. It becomes evidence of taste, or evidence of travel, or evidence of love, or grief, evidence of bad judgment, or even evidence of a Tuesday afternoon yard sale where somebody got really, really lucky. So this week I'm gonna look at real objects and the strange lives that they lead. And we're gonna start with some small little object stories, and then we'll talk about the way objects become personal archives, and we'll talk about things that have been misidentified. Mystery things, and that terrifying phrase, I almost threw it away. And then when we get to the end, we'll go to the movies because there are two great object quest movies I want to talk about. The Maltese Falcon and Monty Python and the Holy Grail. And one is about everyone destroying themselves over an allegedly priceless bird, and the other is about people destroying logic itself over an alleged religious symbol, a cup. It's cinema, right? That's what it is. Let's go. There is a there's a certain category of object that seems to kind of look back at you. I think you know what I mean. It's not haunted, like necessarily. I'm not saying haunted. I'm saying there's an attitude. There's a there's a ring at the bottom of the of a drawer or a painted box. Or that piece of jewelry with the mark you can't read. Or old cool key that no one knows a door it fits. Or a coin from a place you've never been. Or pictures of people no one can identify, all dressed like they knew something delicious about hats. These objects themselves, they don't explain themselves, no. They just sit there being quietly difficult. And the funny thing is, the minute you pay attention to them, that's when they start producing questions. That's how you know you found something interesting. It doesn't immediately, you know, you're not getting answers immediately, but it produces potentially better and certainly more questions.

Mystery Keys And Emotional Blackmail

SPEAKER_01 13:36

Let's let's start off with keys. Keys are some of the most dramatic ordinary objects that we own. And for real, keys are just a piece of metal until you don't know what it opens. And then it becomes literature. A mystery key is almost impossible to throw away. You can throw away a broken pen, right? You can uh dispose properly of a dead battery, you can throw away a charging cable for a phone you had during the Obama administration, but a mystery key, oh no, you can't do that because a mystery key or key itself implies a missing lock. And a missing lock implies a missing door or missing treasure chest. A missing treasure chest, of course, implies treasure. A missing door implies a room, a box, a cabinet, or a safe, or maybe a diary. A secret of some kind. I mean, at least at minimum, right? A shed. So we keep them. We keep the keys. We put them in junk drawers, we label them, you know, old key. Like that's gonna help. As if the key was waiting for us to sit there and acknowledge its age before telling us where it was supposed to work. I have a board when you go into our kitchen on the wall that's got a bunch of hooks on it, and it's all keys. And there's at least 70 keys on that thing that I have no idea what any of them are for. I think many of them are for cars that were probably sold 30 years ago. So uh they're no good here, but we keep them. I mean, I have tried a few times to go around with a handful of these keys and try to opening things. The problem is it's not you can't carry every key everywhere to test every lock. You know, so you grab some and then you you go around and you check all the locks, and it either opens or doesn't open something. And then the next time you go, you grab a different handful and try those, right? Until you can get all the way through them. Luckily, I did this, and I found a key to a garage door. Very, very exciting. And then I put the key back on the board without marking it, and I still don't know. Now I don't know which key it is again. I love the emotional blackmail of keys. They're they're tiny little metal threats. The key says somewhere something is closed, and you, my friend, may be responsible. Or if you don't find a lock for this key, your life is never gonna improve. We got keys, and then around here, especially now, we've got boxes.

Boxes And Marks That Tease

SPEAKER_01 17:10

And boxes are worse than keys. Because boxes don't even need contents to become interesting. An empty box can still be meaningful. I mean a jewelry box with no jewelry in it, or watch box with no watch, or a ring box that's just only got a little fluff of cotton in it. Uh or a velvet case shaped for something that's gone missing. These are they're ghost objects, they're not haunted by spirits, you know, but they're haunted by the absence of the thing that should be there. You open the box and you immediately understand some supposed to be here. Now the object is not the thing anymore. The object is the missing thing. I think this is why people keep boxes. Not just because they're useful, although we, you know, we all pretend that. We all say, oh, I might need this box. For what? No one really knows. But we keep them because they're promises, really. They say this box once held something worth protecting. And once a thing has held something worth protecting, it becomes harder to treat it like trash and just throw it away. We've got keys, boxes. Oh, now we come to marks. Yeah. A tiny little stamp, a maker's mark, a hallmarker, scratched initials, an engraved date. That signature you can almost read if you tilt it toward the light, and like if you make the face of a person trying to hear soup, that's what I look like when I'm trying to. Or you get a flashlight out and shine it at it from an angle or something. This is where objects become detective stories. Because a mark there means somebody wanted to be known, or someone was required to identify the material it was made of, or somebody owned it, or somebody gave it to somebody, or someone wanted to claim it forever, and like forever does all the time, forever lost track of the paperwork. A mark can be so aggravating. You think it says 925 or 14k or made in, you know, somewhere, or maybe it says Tiffany and Company, or there's a pair of initials or a symbol, or maybe it's upside down. Maybe it's not a mark at all. Maybe it's just a dent with confidence. The uh the human brain hates that, especially mine. We are our brain is built to complete patterns. So we stare at the mark and we start seeing things. Is that a lion? Or it could be a crown. Is it uh or a ship's wheel? Or is that a s a snake surrounding a letter? Uh those initials, is it a signature? That could be the entire difference between an interesting little object and please stop touching this until we know what it is. The strange thing, really, about objects is that they're really, really patient. I mean, they'll wait. They'll sit in a drawer for 40 years. They'll sit in a jewelry box or basement. Or maybe they'll sit in a framed shadow box. They'll sit in a yard sale under a handwritten sign that says old stuff. The objects don't care, they don't have anything else to do. A person's memory fades and families forget stories, paperwork disappears, people move, people die. People say, Oh, I'll label that later. Which may be one of the most dangerous sentences in human history. But the object remains, and it doesn't tell the story. It holds a place where the story should be. That's what really what we're talking about, the place where the story should be.

SPEAKER_04 22:05

You take drugs, Danny? Every day. Good. So what's the problem? I don't know.

Family Museums And Oral Labels

SPEAKER_01 22:10

I don't know. Let's talk about why we keep things. Because we all do it. Even people who claim they don't keep things keep things. I mean, they just keep fewer things and they act superior about it. But even the most minimal, minimalist has something. I mean, we keep objects for lots of reasons. We keep them because they're useful. Or they were expensive. Or they belong to someone, or because we might need it someday. Or we keep it sometimes because we don't know what it is. And we keep them because throwing them away feels like making a decision. And we already got enough of those. But, you know, the objects that interest me the most are the ones that become personal archives. Not like official archives, not temperature-controlled rooms with white gloves and you know, scholars named Trevor. No, the kind of archive that lives in a dresser drawer, like a jewelry box, or better yet, a a shoe box. Or even a folder. Or a kitchen drawer, even. A plastic bin with a lid that doesn't match, but it's you know the lid's held on with a big rubber band. These are the these are the places where real life stores the footnotes. Do you have a family museum? Well, yeah, you do. Everyone does. And it might not look like one, and it may be scattered across the house, but it's there. There's an old wedding ring or an old watch or medals from the war, a photograph, a postcard, uh a set of four aces, a little souvenir from a place no one remembers going, the dish that comes out for Christmas, the chipped cup that no one's allowed to throw away or do anything with because that was your grandmother's. And even though your grandmother hated that cup, but she just simply failed to break it. Family museums are interesting and strange because their labels are oral. It's not written down. I have a small museum of sorts in my living room. It's a blue and gold cabinet, and it's got curved glass on the doors and the sides. And it was Anne's when she lived in her apartment on West 11th in New York City. And it's full of little treasures from around the world. There's an empty pack of Israeli cigarettes called uh named Time. This pack of cigarettes was autographed by uh the the drag queen Divine. And Ann saw her in a in a bar and went up and got an autograph for her sister on this pack of smokes. And she was like, Are you kidding me? But signed it anyway, and then later in the day, um she actually sent Ann uh an 8x10 autographed to her room at the hotel. There's that. I've got a paper tiger, a real one. I've got some Japanese Pringles sent to us by Artemis Buffington. And I've got a hundred other amazing, surprising things. In a real museum, the label will say silver bracelet, circa 1890, make her unknown. In the family museum, it says, Oh, that was Aunt Ruth's. No, not that Aunt Ruth, the other one. The other Aunt Ruth, the one with the parrot. That's it. That's your description. That's what you get. And sometimes the label is wrong. Sometimes it's half right. Sometimes the most confident person in the family is really just the best liar. But even wrong labels matter because they show what people believed or what they wanted to believe. And that's part of an object's life, too. Objects change over time. A ring begins as an adornment. And then it becomes a gift. Then it becomes a marriage. Then it becomes an heirloom. Then it becomes an appraisal. And then it becomes a problem. Because now three people want it and nobody wants to say it out loud. A watch begins as a tool and then becomes a status object. Then it becomes a memory of the person who wore it. And then it becomes a little time machine that may not work, but somehow still tells time emotionally. A flag. Begins as a national symbol. Then it becomes a record of a moment. And maybe it's signed by people who were there. And then it becomes the thing that you fold very carefully because suddenly cloth isn't just cloth anymore. And that's what I mean when I say objects refuse to be ordinary. They gather layers, use or meaning, ownership. They take on damage and repair. They deal with misunderstanding and they and there's sometimes a lot of hope involved. And yeah, on occasion there's resale value. But resale value is only one object, one language that an object speaks. To me, it's not really the most interesting one. But you know, let's move on. There is a word though out there that collectors absolutely love. Provenance. And they want to know where'd this thing come from? Who owned it? Can you prove that? Provenance is the basically the biography of an object. And like most biographies, it can be clean, messy, incomplete, or even full of lies told by people who dressed really well. An ideal provenance is a straight line, right? It was made by this guy, sold to this person, gifted to this person, inherited by this person, you know, documented, signed, photographed, insured, exhibited, written about, blessed by three curators, you know, and a some guy in a bow tie. But most provenance isn't like that. Most provenance is I think this came from my aunt. It's really old. Or my wife had this before we met. She said it was Roman or something. Or your cousin says, uh, this was the in the drawer with the good stuff. Or my father said, never sell this. All of those things. But that kind of provenance doesn't always satisfy the market. But it can sure satisfy the heart. And sometimes the heart's really the only appraiser in the room that matters.

Provenance And The Perils Of Cleaning

SPEAKER_01 30:40

There's a particular danger in cleaning out a house or an apartment after life has changed. You find yourself making decisions at a speed that objects do not deserve. A loop I'm currently smacking the middle of is keep, donate, sell trash. Keep, donate, sell trash. And then every so often something stops you. Like a little box or a bracelet or a letter. Let me tell you about this. How about a little bag of potpourri? I found one in a drawer. They're in lots of drawers around this house. Something my wife went around and did. And one of the things that uh that I like to do when I run across these little bags of potpourries, I give them a squeeze. Because it makes all the smell come out brand new. And I love that. And I love these little things. So I found one in a drawer the other day, and I gave it a good squeeze. And I realized, wait a minute, there's something in this bag that isn't potpourri. It was a hard object inside this little potpourri bag. So I opened it up and I took it out. And I found a Greek designer 18 karat gold ring. I don't know why it was there. I don't know how it got put there. I don't know who put it there. I assume Anne did. But why? And why was it in a potpourri bag in a drawer? I don't know. I got no idea. It's so weird. It stuns me every day when I think about it. And then, of course, you run into something like that, and everything changes. You're not cleaning up anything anymore. You're not you've really started to listen. And that's uh one of the things I think we don't talk about enough. Objects ask for attention. Not all of them. I mean, you know, some objects are just expired coupons or dead pens or a leaf that got dragged in on someone's foot coming in the door. Let's not, you know, get mystical about a broken humidifier or something like that. But some objects ask for attention and they say, look again. And they say, Look, I meant something. They say, I survived long enough to be misunderstood by you. And they mean it. And of course, that's rude, but it is compelling. I I think objects know things. I think they know things in a different way than people know things. They they don't remember, but they bear. They bear scratches or fingerprints or repairs or inscriptions. They bear the light of the sun or being worn thin in one place, the pressure of your hand. They bear time without explaining it. And that's why I think an object can sometimes hit you harder than a story. Someone can tell you she wore this every day. And you understand that, you get that. But then you see it, and you see the worn clasp, and you see the little bent edge, or the place where the metal is softened from use. Or the sharp edges of the wood have been worn smooth from decades of people just touching it as they passed by. And now you know something different. The object has told you. They've testified. It's their personal archive. It's not the official story, but it's the touched story.

Intermission And A Quick Reset

SPEAKER_04 35:10

And now, before the next show starts, let's enjoy an intermission. You'll find our snack bar chopped full of good things to eat and drink. Tasty, tempting hot dogs, thirst-quenching soft drinks, fresh, crunchy popcorn, a complete assortment of delicious candy, and a full lot of cigarettes. You've plenty of time, so visit the snack bar now. A tasty treat will double your enjoyment of the show. For your convenience, we shall keep you informed of the remaining intermission time. Three minutes before the next show starts.

SPEAKER_01 35:46

Well, hey folks, you're listening to the Anne Levine Show with Michael over there. Hello. And this week's episode is backstories. That's what I'm calling it. And I was gonna do a story about believable lies. But I mentioned at the beginning I couldn't do it. So I've come back to the world of real things and real things that often feel fake, though, or mysterious, or just too loaded to casually place in a drawer. So far on the show, we've talked about mystery keys, empty boxes, makers marks, family museums, provenance, and you know, the emotional hazard of cleaning. Coming up, we're gonna talk about things people misidentify, or things that people almost threw away. And then we have an entertainment segment where I'm gonna talk about the Maltese Falcon and Monty Python and the Holy Grail, because they are stories about objects that turned people into lunatics. Which, of course, is you know the basic operating principles of eBay. So, you know, they're not as relevant as they used to be, maybe. So, you know, stick stick around, stay with me. Can we talk about uh one of the most dangerous phrases in the world?

I Almost Threw It Away

SPEAKER_01 37:23

At least in the object world. I almost threw it away. That phrase right there is the gateway drug. I'm serious. You hear it once, and suddenly every cardboard box in the basement becomes a potential lost treasure. I almost threw it away, I said. The painting in the attic, or the ring with the in the coffee can, or the potpourri bag, or the old comic book, or the watch in the sock drawer, or that ugly, ugly vase that turns out to be important. Or the weird brooch that turns out to be something by a fancy designer? A dusty flag or a signed thing, or or that thing wrapped in newspaper from 1949. Now, most things that people almost throw away, sadly, really, are probably things they sh could have thrown away. And that's really the hard truth. But every family has at least one object that's, you know, it it survives purely because no one wants to be the one to end the journey. Every once in a while, though, the objects fight back. You know, misidentification is fascinating because it gives an object multiple lives, the life people thought it had, and the life it actually had. I mean, a piece of costume jewelry turns out to be gold, or a piece of gold turns out to be costume. A souvenir turns out to be old, or an ancient artifact turns out to be from a museum gift shop in 1992. A painting you thought was worthless and silly turns out to be by someone really well known. Or a painting thought to be by someone turns out to be by someone's cousin with confidence. Now here's the thing both of these lives matter. Because the mistake in life affects how this object is treated. If someone thinks it's worthless, they're gonna put that thing in the junk drawer or let the kids play with it. They'll bend it around or wear it casually or throw it in a box with batteries and curtain hooks. If people think something is priceless, they might even hide it. Or ensure it and protect it and never really enjoy it. An object's identity changes how we treat it. And sometimes the object's treatment becomes part of the story. A diamond ring worn every day has one story. A diamond ring locked away for fifty years in the safe deposit box has another. The painting hung in the hallway has a story. But the painting hidden behind a furnace, that's got a different story. And a bracelet in the safe deposit box is not the same object, emotionally, as a bracelet worn out to dinner. I mean, there is a moment in all good object stories. Let's talk about this. A moment when someone realizes the thing is not what they thought. And that can happen in the jeweler's the jeweler's shop or a museum office or an auction house or antique store. Or be just under the a good light on the kitchen table. You know, someone turns the object over, they see the mark, say, oh, hold on. That's the phrase, right, by the way. Hold on. No two words have ever done more work in the history of mysterious stuff. Hold on means the entire world has to pause. Because the person who knows something has noticed something. Hold on means you've been keeping something in the wrong drawer. And I love that because it's such a really tiny form of revelation. There are no trumpets, no lightning, just someone squinting at the tiny un you know, the writing on the underside of a teacup, and changing the weather in the room. Of course, there is another version of the story. The object isn't what you hoped, and the mark is not the mark. Or the stone is not the stone. The signature is not the signature, the story's not quite right. That turner on the wall is not a turner. And this is disappointing, but it doesn't have to be a tragedy. Because an object can lose one kind of value and keep another. I mean, maybe the ring isn't worth all that much. But someone wore it. Or maybe that porcelain box isn't rare. But someone chose it. Or someone gave it. Or maybe that watch isn't Cartier. But someone saved the box. Or maybe your artifact isn't ancient Roman. But the fact that someone told you that it is is its own little comedy. Because sometimes the ancient artifact is indeed Roman. Objects accumulate not only facts, they accumulate beliefs. And the wrong belief can become part of an object's story, too. No. This is the brooch we thought was French. Or this is the bracelet everyone swore was platinum. This is the glass we were convinced was Scandinavian until the mark, it turned out the mark was upside down. There's humility in that, right? Objects remind us how badly we want to know something and how often we don't. Now, I will admit something to you. There is a feeling when you are researching an object, when you're checking marks and you're looking at photos and comparing images and looking at auction listings and museum examples, which are all things I do, by the way. But there is a time where you start wanting the object to be something. Not just, you know, not just anything, but something. You want that little mark, you want that little mark to resolve and you want the story to get bigger. You want that thing in your hand to connect to a place or to a maker or a date or something, a movement, a workshop, a forgotten technique. You want this thing to reward your attention. And that I get. That's understandable. And it can also be pretty dangerous because wanting a thing to be something can make you careless. It can make you see letters that aren't there. It can make you see a mark that really is just a dent with confidence. It can make you ignore the boring answer and make you choose the story over the evidence. What I was going to talk about last night or tonight was fun for fiction. You know? True th things that sound true that aren't. Less good for appraisal. So the trick is to stay curious. Without becoming greedy.

Stay Curious Without Getting Greedy

SPEAKER_01 46:30

And let the object be interesting. Before it's valuable. Ask the questions. Don't force the answers, though. I mean to say this might be instead of this must be. That little phrase, this might be.

SPEAKER_00 46:50

That's where the best object stories live. I said it before, and I'll say it again. Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while. You could miss it.

SPEAKER_01 47:03

What I love about objects is that they pull together detective work and emotion. I mean, you get to be practical and sentimental at the same time. You look at the clasp and the hinge or the material, you you look at how things have worn, you look at the mark, you look at the construction and the style. And then without warning, you're actually thinking about who owned it? And why did they where did they wear this? Who gave it to them? Did they know what it was? Did they care? Did they choose this thing because it was beautiful? Maybe they chose it because it was fashionable. Or maybe it was the best thing they could afford. Or because someone they love pressed it into their hand. The object becomes a little meeting place between evidence and imagination. And that's probably why I'm drawn to them. Because the world is full of things that aren't quite done telling us what they are. And my answer has always been I want the things that I love. And it doesn't matter if they're valuable. I want the things that have stories that speak to me, that I can look at, and I am immediately have stories in my mind. They tell me, they talk to me, I remember. Those are the things I'm taking with me. Some of them are valuable, but not all of them are. I've actually had a few discussions that I'll call discussions rather than arguments, because um where I want things to go. I want things to be there in my apartment. And the designer, the the interior designers who know what's going to happen there, they're like, ah, that's just it's not gonna be right. It's it's not gonna work. I'm like, I don't care. It's mine. I love it. It's my it's something that I want to live with. And so it's going. And it's a it's a it's a weird thing for some people to understand that it's not all about the monetary value of a thing. Sometimes it really is just the story. So let's talk about some stories.

Two Movie Quests For Objects

SPEAKER_01 50:15

Two of the great object quests in film ever. And it couldn't be any more different from each other. On one side, we have the Maltese Falcon, where everyone's chasing a mysterious black bird that might be priceless, it might be fake, and it definitely brings out the worst in everyone who gets anywhere near it. And on the other side, we have Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where King Arthur and his knights or cnigates are sent on a sacred quest for the Holy Grail, but the quest keeps collapsing into bureaucracy and violence, absurdity, class resentment, coconuts, and people shouting about African swallows. I love pairing these two things because they show two sides of the same idea. First, we have the object that everybody wants. That's the thing that gives the story its motion, right? And in film terms, um people often call this kind of object a MacGuffin. It's the thing that the characters chase through the movie, the thing that matters, because everyone in the movie agrees that it matters. But I think that definition is a little too neat for these two movies, really. Because in the Maltese Falcon, the bird is not just an object, it's a test. And in the Holy Grail, the grail isn't just an object, it's an excuse for the entire world to fall apart.

The Maltese Falcon And Obsession

SPEAKER_01 52:05

So let's take a look at the Maltese Falcon. The object itself is a statue. It's a black bird. It's heavy and mysterious, and it's supposedly valuable beyond imagining. The kind of thing that people described, you know, in hushed tones while also lying directly to your face. The genius of the Falcon is that it seems all by itself to carry history, wealth, danger, and desire all at once. Everybody wants it, but they don't all want it in the same way. Some want the money, some want power, some want uh vindication, and some want the thrill of finally having the thing they've built their whole life around, and that's where the falcon itself becomes poisonous. It's not valuable because it's beautiful. In fact, for most of the film, we're not we're not really, you know, invited to admire its aesthetics. It's valuable because everybody's agreed to go crazy over it. That happens sometimes with objects. A thing becomes a container for obsession, and it stops being metal or stone or paint or porcelain or whatever it is, it becomes the answer. The answer to poverty or the answer to humiliation or the answer to years wasted. Maybe it's the answer to I was right all along. And that may be the most dangerous value an object can have. Not money, but proof. The Falcon promises proof. It's proof that the chase mattered, and it's proof that the lies that were told were worth it. And it's proof that the people who wanted it weren't fools. And then, of course, that's the real great cruel joke of that whole story. The object might not be what they thought. And that's perfect. That's absolutely perfect. Because the entire emotional economy of that movie depends on belief. People kill for it, they betray for it, they perform for it, they invent versions of themselves around it. And then the object just sits there. Because that's what they do. They don't apologize for what people become around them. The ring doesn't apologize for the inheritance fight. The painting does not apologize for the forgery scandal. A statue does not apologize for the lies told in its name. The Falcon is almost innocent. Almost. But not quite. Because an object like that seems to invite projection, really. A black bird, a dark shape, a thing with a story attached. And once a story is attached, good luck getting it off. What makes a Maltese Falcon work so well is that Sam Spade is surrounded by people who are bewitched by stories. But he keeps trying to read behavior. And he's not immune to greed or vanity or curiosity. He knows people lie. He knows objects can be bait. That's a useful lesson for anyone really who gets interested in mysterious things. The story is exciting, but the evidence matters. Who says it's valuable? Who benefits if you believe that? Where's the documentation? What does the object itself show? What is the theater of it? What is the history and it? What is the salesmanship? The Falcon is the dream version of every object mystery. Ancient provenance, huge value, dangerous owners, and a dramatic reveal. Oh yeah. But it's also the nightmare version. Because the closer people get, the less human they become. That's one of the great warnings about the collectible culture. Love the thing. Study the thing. Care about the thing. But don't let the thing eat you. Because some objects are not treasure. Some are traps with excellent lighting.

Holy Grail Absurdity And Worthiness

SPEAKER_01 57:20

Now let's go from the shadows of film noir to coconuts. Lonnie Python and the Holy Grail is on the surface about King Arthur's quest for the Holy Grail. And the Grail is one of the most famous sacred objects in Western storytelling. It's the cup associated with Jesus with divine mystery and purity, worthiness, spiritual searching, impossible standards, all of that. But in the Python version, the sacred quest immediately becomes ridiculous because the world refuses to behave like a legend. Arthur wants myth. And the world gives him mud. Arthur wants noble recognition, and the peasants want to discuss systems of government. Arthur wants horses. And the budget for the film gave him coconuts. And that's why this movie is brilliant. Because sometimes the object everyone wants is less important than the nonsense surrounding the wanting. I mean, the grail barely needs to appear. The quest itself is enough. The idea of the grail creates movement, right? But the movement keeps being interrupted by reality or by really by absurdity wearing the clothes of reality. The knights get distracted. The rules become ridiculous. Authorities continually questioned. Danger arrives in the form of a rabbit. A bridge keeper named Tim turns inquiry into lethal trivia. There's French soldiers who refuse to participate in the expected drama, and they just insult everybody from above. And the sacred objects still out there somewhere, allegedly. But the world keeps saying, yeah, yeah, but first explain the coconut. What I love about the grail as an object is that it traditionally comes with a moral test, right? Not everyone gets the grail. You can't just want it. That's not it. You have to be worthy. And that is a very different kind of object story from the Maltese Falcon. The Falcon says, How much will you do to have me? And the grail says, Well, who do you have to become just to get next to me? That's a much more uncomfortable question. And most collectible objects do not ask that question. A bracelet doesn't care if you're noble. A porcelain box doesn't require spiritual purity. And a mid-century chair may require a certain amount of confidence and maybe a better living room, but not really worthiness in a sort of Arthurian sense. But the grail belongs to a category of object that judges the seeker. And relics do that. Sacred objects do that. Memorial objects do that. Even some family objects do that. You inherit something meaningful, and suddenly the question is not, what is this worth? Am I the right person to have this? And that can be really heavy. You could be in my situation. I am the last person in the Levine family. And it's all come down to me. And I am now in charge of the entire family history. It's all mine. All of the things, all of the stories. And that is a very, very heavy thing. Let's put these two things side by side. The Maltese Falcon, it's dark, worldly, material, corrupting. The Holy Grail is sacred, absurdly distant, spiritually loaded, and in the Python version, it's surrounded by absolute nonsense. The Falcon brings people down because they want it too much. The Grail makes people ridiculous because they aim themselves at something impossibly elevated, and then they trip over being human. The Falcon is about possession, and the grail is about quest. And the Falcon says, mine. The grail says, prove it. The Falcon gathers criminals, liars, obsessives. The grail gathers knights, peasants, monks, Frenchmen, rabbits. And one of the greatest uses of coconut-based sound design in the history of cinema. Both objects are in different ways unreachable. Even when the falcon is in someone's hands, it remains unreachable because its truth keeps slipping. Even when Arthur gets close to the grail, the story itself refuses to give him the clean mythic completion he wants to have. And that's very true to life. Objects often promise completion. Find the thing. Own the thing. Authenticate the thing. Restore the thing. Sell the thing. Keep the thing. Pass down the thing. Then you'll know. Then you'll be done. But you're almost never done. Because the object opens more doors than it closes. You identify the maker, and then you want the date. Or you find the date and then you want the owner. And you find the owner, you want the story. And you find the story, then you want to know what parts are true. And then before you know it, you're three hours deep into research on a brooch, a bird statue, or a medieval cup, and you've forgotten to eat lunch. That's, I don't know, that's scholarship, I guess. Or illness. Yeah, there's overlap there. I want to tell you why I included these two movies in this episode. And I and I watched them both again because to be able to clarify things for me, because I think they understand something important about objects. And objects are never just objects once people start wanting them. I mean, the Maltese Falcon is just a bird. And not even a super attractive one. But it's just a bird until people make it this altar to greed. And the Holy Grail is just a cup until people make it into this shape of divine approval. And then and the things in our own lives work the same way. The smaller. Ring's just a ring until it becomes a marriage, or watch is just a watch. Until it becomes your dad. A flag is just a cloth until it becomes a witness. A box is just a box till the thing inside it is gone. The key is just metal until no one knows what it opens. And that's the magic and that's the danger of objects. They absorb us, they hold what we pour into them. And then years later. Someone else picks them up and says, What is this? And that's the whole show, really. What is this? Alright. Now we're gonna take a look at our final thing of the show this week.

The Junk Drawer As Honest Museum

SPEAKER_01 1:06:19

Our object of the week. It's the humble junk drawer. Yeah, I know. It's uh it's not really a single object. It's the junk drawer. And and to tell you the truth, uh the the junk drawer is the most honest museum in your house. Nobody curates a junk drawer, not intentionally. I mean, a junk drawer happens when you know life exceeds your categories, right? I mean, it's got batteries, but there's never enough of the right kind. It's got pens, some work. Keys, yeah, none of them, you know what they go to. Some maybe some rubber bands, some of which still might stretch without, you know, falling apart from dry rot. It's a tape measure, I assume. A birthday candle with a three in shape, you know, shaped like a three. You haven't needed one of those in 40 years. Foreign coins. A screwdriver, but it's not the right kind because you need a flathead screwdriver, but it's a little tiny Phillips. There is a button from something that no one wears and has worn in 20 years. There's a takeout menu from a place that closed five years ago. A lonely furniture pad, and now you start wondering about what is out there, you know, sitting a little wonky because it doesn't have one. There's probably some soy sauce or hot sauce in there. Don't know what vintage. There's twist ties, obviously, saved with the confidence of a person preparing for siege conditions. The junk drawers where objects go where when we can't decide whether they're useful or sentimental or guilty. And I don't know, maybe that's why I love it. It's it's not really a failure of organization. It's a record, I'd say, of unresolved possibility. Everything in the drunk drawer says, not yet, right? I'm not useful yet, but I'm not trash yet. I'm not explained yet, but I'm not ready to leave. And you know what? That's the whole emotional structure of collecting if you think about it. Not yet. The bracelet? Not yet. The key? No, not yet. The photograph? Not yet. That box? Mmm, not yet. I mean the thing with the mark we can't read? Oh no, not yet. And sometimes not yet becomes the beginning of a story. So my recommendation to you this week is simple. Open a drawer. Not the one you already understand. Open a weird drawer. Open the one in the kitchen or in the dresser or the like the hallway table. Take out an object you can't immediately explain and hold it for a second. And just ask what it is. And why you kept it. And what future you was supposed to do with it. And you might not get an answer, but you might get a story. And around here, you know, the story's kind of the thing.

Look Again And Send Us Stories

SPEAKER_01 1:10:26

So that's our show for this week, folks. We started with the way objects became suspicious. Once you gave them your attention, which actually sounds like a physics problem. We talked about keys, boxes, marks, family museums, uh provenance, misidentification, and the uh and that dangerous phrase. I almost threw it away. We went to the movies with the Maltese Falcon and Monty Python and the Holy Grail to two films about objects everybody wants, but not always for the reasons that make anyone look good. The Falcon says that possession can corrupt you. And The Grail says that the quest can make you look ridiculous. The junk drawer says you still don't know where that key opens. And maybe that's the real lesson. Objects are patient. They wait for us to notice. They wait for us to get the story wrong. They wait for us to care enough to look again. So this week look again. Look at the thing in the drawer, or the thing in the box. The thing with the little scratched mark. The thing you meant to research. The thing you almost donated. The thing you care for no reason except some quiet part of you said, not yet. I'll tell you what. If anyone listening is wondering what the tiny mystery key in your junk drawer opens, it's probably the diary of a twelve-year-old girl. And likely hilarious. So if you find it, let us know what it says. And until then, put a light on.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:51

But somehow understand the waiting to every stranger passing by could be the one to take.