Where Do I Get My Inspiration From?

Where do I get my inspiration?  I get it from the mall.  No, really.  Let me clarify:  not the mall with the Forever 21, J. Crew and Mrs. Field’s Cookie.  The antique mall.

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I have always tried to live near one.

In the Midwest, where I taught Creative Writing, they abounded.  In Seattle, where I spent a few years, I sought them out.  Currently, I live in a small old-timey part of Southern California that has one of those old downtowns, anchored by a university with neoclassical architecture that tourists love to photograph.  There’s even a soda fountain that has been a million movies and a little plaza with a fountain.  In this old-timey downtown there are acres and acres of antique malls.

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Antique malls are my personal museum but better; I can touch and coddle, rummage and reminisce.  Every little booth is rented out to a different vendor—clearly someone who straddles the line between hoarder and artiste.  When I walk into each one, it is like an installation at the Whitney Biennial.  I feel as if I have entered a turbulent mind on the edge of lunacy—as cracked as old studio pottery and fine bone china.

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My wife hates antique malls.  She comes from Korea, where everything is thrown out immediately if it is old or damaged or used.  My parents despise these places.  When I was a college student—that’s when I caught the thrift shopping bug– my parents would tell me that I was buying ghosts.  “Bad luck.  You die.”  My mom was dead set against my sartorial stylings.  Garments would mysteriously disappear from my bedroom.  “Ghost take.  Disappear.”  And so would go another pair of jodhpurs or gaiters or brogues.

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It is exactly the freaky quality of these antique malls that makes me love them.  There are stories in those objects—stories of first love, of disuse; later of nostalgia, of reencounter:  the story cycle of any object in a consumer culture.  There is something morbid to my fascination and, it’s true what my mom says; for, undoubtedly, the original owners of those pretty gingham gloves have long ago died.  Yet I often wonder why my wife refuses to wear them.  After all, they were a gift.

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I love playing the detective, too—why did that Coca Cola tray get a dent on it?  who would have thrown away those kewpie dolls?  how did all those pennants end up in this shop in mint condition?

 

coca_cola_trayBut mostly, I’m there because of the extreme empathy I have with the people who rent these booths—the purveyors of this ephemera.  I wonder if they make money.  Most assuredly, some of them do.  But more likely, they are collectors—passionate, enthusiastic—and they are sharing their riches.  Each booth, I know, represents a packed garage filled with newspapers packed to the rafters and an army of cats.  Each booth signals the presence of a Storage Unit filled with mint condition baby doll heads.  I must confess:  I find this sad and creepy.  I see myself in these collectors.  This is how I feel about my own writing:  haunted by a compulsion that causes euphoria and despair.

 

 

4 thoughts on “Where Do I Get My Inspiration From?

  1. Khanh – I know exactly what you mean by the inspiration you can get from antique malls and thrift stores. Yes, the things one buys there are infused with the history of the people who have owned them. But that’s part of what makes them so interesting. And sometimes vintage can bring on nostalgia (or its opposte if they remind one of a difficult time in one’s life). And no matter where you find inspiration, if you’re a writer, it’s worth following up on it.

    • Margot, that was so elegantly put. You made me think of garage sales, which I love…mainly because it makes me puzzle out the histories of the object, too. I’m almost like an anthropologist, seeing connections between a bunch of stuff that might indicate a lost world, life style, consuming passion. I guess to be a writer you have to be curious, almost nosey. It’s a great brain exercise to go through old junk…and every once in a while you come across a great find. I once bought a first edition Robert Frost for a dollar!

      • Oh, you are lucky, Khanh! You’re right too that even if you don’t come across a ‘find,’ you can still get inspiration from what you find at those places. I find yard sales, estate sales and block sales interesting in that way too. Oh, and pawn shops.

        • I think that we are peas in a pod. I love going to those very same things. Do you know who loved pawn shops? Henry James–yes, the master himself. He loved that kind of stuff!

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