Song of the Sea

Song of the Sea is as close to Miyazaki as an Irish film can get.

The overall plot is that a boy's younger sister is a selkie, who can turn into a seal, and she needs to get back to her coat. It's a story of an antagonistic relationship turning into a loving one across the magical backdrop of Irish tales.

My offspring asked for this film for Christmas, so we got it in an watched it. Not only did we watch it, but my offspring never touched their phone, with this being their third viewing. That's a mighty note right there.

The soundtrack was wonderful an nuanced, full and rich, yet sometimes bare and yearning. Four and a half stars. Nothing earwormed me, which would have gotten them the last half star.

The visual style was quite stylized, computer animated, but feeling far more 2D than 3D. No attempt was made at realism, which is why it looked so beautiful.

When I referred to Miyazaki, I meant it. We certainly noted visual quotes from a few of his works, and the overall story seems influenced by this as well. These folks looked at Miyazaki's work and learned all the right lessons to make a heartfelt, endearing, and intelligent film that respects everyone along the way.

Collecting and Inhereting

Nicole Rudolph did a nice video on stuff, and how its often worthless and handed down.

The Millenial Inheritance Is Just Emotional Baggage

I've slowly become aware of this phenomena through Reddit. The modern form of it took place over my lifetime, so I saw it grow and develop, yet I hadn't noticed this change at all. Most of modern collecting culture happened away from me, so I had no real relationship to it. My family weren't collectors.

I recall watching Antiques Roadshow, and people finding out that their things were valuable. I was amused by that as nothing that I owned was valuable, nor would I inherit such a thing. My sole inheritance, to this point, after six decades, was my grandfather's pocket watch. It's a conversation piece at best.

My wife, however, received some furniture from a great aunt, which she lived with when I first met her. We didn't have room for it when we merged households, so she sold it at auction where it sold on the lower end of a reasonable price.

As a collector, I'm more of an accumulator. I've built collections of the years, but I eventually get bored of them and get rid of them. The hunt is always more fun than the having. I've also been interested in acquiring more collections over the years, but I only have so much space, and the collections are only of interest to myself. I may have a few valuable things, but they aren't that valuable as things go.

A while ago, I thought about doing auctions, and I saw the collections that they sold off, and I felt sorry for most of those people. Men collected in such a narrow, boring range, and the collections never sold for much.

Collecting as a profession is a skill, one that takes quite a bit of specialty self-education. That's an entirely different beast, but they count in the public idea of what a collection is. The amateur thinks that their collection can rival a pro, but they don't realize that their knowledge gap is so significantly huge. When I sold off my comics, collected in my 20's and sold in my 30's, I lost money. I enjoyed building the collection, but selling is its own complicated challenge. That's what makes a pro.

That brings us to today, and today's collecting culture that lives in its own collecting bubble. That idea that collecting leads to money is gone, as so many collections are timely, and the trends fade.

Collecting comes from the thrill of finding and locating. That's its core. We love the hunt and we love the success. Most collections are relatively cheap to acquire, common enough to find, yet uncommon enough that they require some effort. I think that most people still collect this way. We know that our collections are worth nothing, and I think that collecting is best this way.

It's no wonder then that so many people think that what they have automatically flows into what is valuable. They've seen that on TV for the last 30-40 years. It seems that collecting and antiquing was a trend, and now it's not trending, or better said, expressing itself in new ways and new areas. Yes, things may be valuable, but relatively speaking, they're not that valuable. Unless it's going for $100k, it's not going to be life changing money.