#400: The Blog
The end of an era — goodbye from Object
There is an inescapable irony that our blog about objects is itself a virtual object, almost as intangible as the associations we have written about for the past six years. Yet it also seems rather appropriate, as the subtitle of Object is this definition:
noun: a visible and intangible entity
Our objects are tangible and intangible, a favoured word on this blog for capturing the duality of physical things and their less physical attributes. This blog has truly met the mission we set out with: to chronicle the stories of objects, from the mundane to the obscure, one written post at a time. Maybe we have, sometimes, stretched our definition of an object — Katie wrote about breath, while Eleanor wrote about ice on a window — but with 400 objects under our belts, it’s only fair that we allowed our minds to wander.
What have we learnt about objects? That, even though we said we wanted to write about the “mundane”, there are actually countless objects in our lives that we never once considered writing about. The cables connecting the DVD player to the TV. The toothpaste tube. The curry-stained spatula. All the things that we use almost daily, and yet have zero emotional attachment to.
The objects in this blog, instead, even when small and everyday, are the ones we might reach for to save in a fire, the ones we find our eyes returning to as we move around our homes. Or they are objects we have spotted out and about in the world, the ones that prompted us to stop and take out our phones to photograph. We ignore telegraph poles and bus stops, but stop to observe the twisted vines along a tree, a horizon-occupying statue, or a mysterious bouquet of flowers. Even after 400 objects, it is hard to expand your focus and truly look at the dull and functional objects in your life.
When we first started Object, we framed it as “an adventure into the world of objects”. We were “curious English students”, mid-way through our undergraduate degrees in literature, and recently influenced by the new (to us) discoveries of literary theory. Re-reading our earlier blog posts, we can identify those influences: Shklovsky’s ‘defamiliarisation’ technique appears in object #3, The Outdoor Seat, while many posts feature a quotation from literature, including Dickens and Dahl. There are also numerous posts about writing, whether that be in diaries or letters or planners or poetry notebooks. We began as aspiring writers; we end as more experienced writers, with hopes for embarking on new creative ventures.
Really, what this blog documents is our changing circumstances, and how it has altered our perspective even as it has also provided us with new experiences. Object documents our growth during a significant, quickly changing period of our lives: during the past six years, we each finished those first literature degrees, and moved out of student houses. Eleanor has had multiple jobs, in different cities, while Katie has also moved cities, (nearly) completed two more degrees, and changed to a married name. Friends and relationships have changed; Brexit happened; Trump happened; Covid-19 happened. When we started this blog we were at the very end of our teen years — now, we are mid-20s, and facing a new period of our lives: the 26-and-over category, which lacks discounts and makes us question what we want to do with our lives.
But as we face these new challenges, certain favoured objects of ours remain. Katie still owns her favourite mug, and a few new ones, too, which she can reach for when in need of a bit of comfort (Eleanor, however, has found a new mug to replace her previous favourite, broken in an unfortunate accident). Somewhere in America, the red leather chair sits, waiting for a space in a future Harling home — one of few objects remaining from the house that first sparked the idea of this blog, a house packed full of objects. Eleanor’s typewriter has since been used to make a zine, which has been photocopied and sold at her first poetry open mic night. The typewriter sits tucked under a coffee table, waiting for her next bout of creativity.
Out of the 400 objects we have written about, for this final post we challenged ourselves to think of two posts which stood out to each of us: one of our own, and one by the other. For Katie, a post of Eleanor’s which has always stuck in her head is the object of Dylan Thomas’s Underwear, for its mixture of comedy and seriousness; poetic expression blended with the reality of lives lived. A post of her own that she often thinks fondly of is a poem about A Tree Viewed Upside Down — a moment of calm captured in a poem; a moment turned into an object. For Eleanor, it was Katie’s post about her childhood bedroom that has stayed with her, a perfect preservation of the past, accompanied by a nostalgic 360 degree view of the room. From her own posts, Eleanor will always remember The Disembodied Ponytail and the uncanny feeling of seeing her own hair cut off and tucked inside an envelope.
Just as we had many reasons to start Object in 2016, so too do we have a number of reasons for finishing now. One of them is that it simply feels like the right time. We’ve reached a satisfying round number, and we have written about a lot of objects. Today also marks six years to the date that we published our first Object post, #0: The Blog. We have come full circle, to #400: The Blog, 400 posts later, about so many different types of objects.
This blog has served us to the full. Object has been a correspondence between friends; a creative outlet; a routine; a documentation of our lives; a place to experiment and learn; and now it is something to fondly put aside. It is time, now, to finish Object, at least in this form as we know it.
Maybe, one day, we’ll return to some of our Object posts, and take them further — but, for now, this is our last Object post. Thank you for joining us on our object-filled adventure. We are full of everything this object journey has given us and we are also ready to let it sit, like a dusty library, in our corner of the internet for ourselves and for others to discover and browse. A time capsule, if you will.
Farewell.
This post was written jointly by Eleanor Scorah and Katie Harling-Lee (née Harling-Challis), the co-creators and writers of Object.
