Emotional Objects
What makes an object emotional? I am not talking about objects where you have emotional attachment to, or which carry sentimental value, but rather because of their function or association. And I am not really talking about materials, because I know that often soft materials seem more emotional and harder materials more logical.
I want to examine the door as a basic example that popped into my head, that defies the examination of emotional objects by its material. It’s emotional because it invites you in and it has the ability to shut you out. Its duality is rooted in emotions of welcome, rejection, privacy, and secrets, with its locks and bolts, the inside and the outside, the private and the public. The literal act of opening up to someone or shutting others out. Of course, keys in association with the door also carry these emotions. of belonging but also isolation.
Guns are emotional. You act on emotions when using a gun. Although you might think in defense it is rooted in logic, it is still in emotions, violence, fear, and anger.
Receipts and their nostalgia when you look upon purchases that mark the passing of time. They are almost like witnesses to your life. But what is also extremely emotional about them is the fragility, with the fading lines and letters, tears that could erase. Receipts also hide secrets, and the thrills of throwing away the evidence. In a way, receipts are also absorbent. But instead of emotions, they are absorbent of facts, and that makes them rather emotional.
Surely, paper is emotional, because they are absorbent of thoughts, feelings, and expressions. Not only by handwritten letters, but I think even in printing there is emotion and intention in making something be permanently recorded and etched by ink onto a surface. And as I mentioned in my previous entry, paper remembers, every fold and crease is irreversible.
Candles. I think lamps and lights in an industrial sense are rather logical in their function. You need light to see, so when you enter a dark space, you turn on the light. There is no emotion in an on and off switch. But candles, on the other hand, represent a kind of liveliness and warmth, fused and lit by human connections. The act of lighting a candle, and its slow burning, is a dance of its own. When a house is lit by candles it becomes a home; when a parking garage is lit by lights, it is still a parking garage.
I think other obvious ones include beds and instruments, but I will be adding on to this as I observe more.