Collection, Identity, and Ruined Shoes
The dresser has three drawers and lives in the family room of Lindsey Gerson’s cozy, one bedroom condo. If asked, or referenced in conversation, Gerson will, with gusto, whisk open the bottom drawer of this dresser and present her old pointe shoes. Each of them battered beyond repair – ripped, torn, worn, stained, water-damaged, flexible, full of holes, ineffective, unusable – leaves something to be explained to the untrained observer. To anyone other than Gerson, these shoes – carefully wrapped and tucked together to fit all fifty-five in a small drawer – only whisper the value she has assigned them, a whisper whose meaning is often lost on those that have not spent countless hours listening to her reverent stories of Mr. Duran, the stories of years spent training in his ballet school, the stories of working through injuries, of her proudest moments performing solos. To many this drawer may look like a carefully organized accumulation of smelly, ruined shoes, but to Gerson and to those who listen, they take on the stature of a collection. In this collection, Gerson has constructed an identity of self connected to the past in a manner congruent to the theories of collection posed by Susan Stewart, James Clifford, and Thatcher Freund.
Unlike many of the collectors in Freund’s Objects of Desire in which they enlisted the services of a connoisseur to guide them in their acquisitions, Lindsey Gerson was required by her Ballet master to continually acquire these shoes. They were a necessity to continue progressing in that dance form. In this way she would buy a pair and wear it until it was “dead” and then retire them. She would buy another pair, ruin it, retire it, and so on. This was the basis of her acquisition of ruined pointe shoes. In this manner the collection is not “tasteful” or aesthetically valuable, but like Fred Giampietro “placed beauty inside the chest”(Freund 1993, 284) which he would attempt to sell, Lindsey Gerson places beauty, knowledge, and achievement into these shoes which she intends to keep.
To Gerson these shoes encapsulate her years training with Mr. Duran in tangible evidence. “This is kind of a physical, visible way to know and see and remember what I did”(Gerson 2016). The collection of each individual pair has become a summary of the years of effort, pain, and investment – not only physically, but emotionally – that she dedicated to Ballet. “It tells me things about myself. It reminds me that I have an extreme amount of dedication and perseverance lodged in me and, cultivated in the right way, it can amount to something pretty fantastic.”(Gerson 2016). They prove not only to her but to the people she shows that she achieved a great deal during those years. She has one pair for every month and every performance she was on pointe. Each pair represents the hours and “bloody toes,” sweat, and tears that she gave to that month’s practice. “Some people throw them away…I actively one day made the decision not to get rid of any of them…They’re an acknowledgement of how much I danced and how hard I danced…and what I was trying to achieve” (Gerson 2016). Because of this conscious decision to keep them and because they are “inescapably tied to…recollection”(Clifford 1988, 216), this drawer of accumulated, useless, smelly shoes is elevated to a collection of meaningful memorabilia. “The value of what’s in the bottom drawer of my short, fat dresser is priceless to me”(Gerson 2016).
Ballet shoes are constructed with a toe box and a shank made of stiff cardboard in place of a sole to support the arch, both help the ballerina to safely stand on the tips of their toes. Each shoe is secured to the dancer by an elastic band and the iconic ribbons. Gerson places the shoes shank-to-shank with the toe boxes on the same side and wraps them together with the ribbons (which she so carefully hand-sewed to each shoe) so each pair (and each time segment) is individual from the rest. These pair bundles are then slipped into the drawer toe box to heel in order to maximize the space. There are two layers of two rows of these bundled, toe-to-heel shoes organized in a loosely chronological order with the original pair in the lower left-hand corner, and the newest, colored shoes (those from performances in which she performed solos) on top “because they have more significance”(Gerson 2016). This drawer of her “short, fat dresser” is “the confines of bourgeois domestic space” (Stewart 1984, 157) which provides the collection an “environment to be an extension of self”(Stewart 1984, 157). In this case, it is “a projection of self fashioning”(Stewart 1984, 157) displaying Gerson as she was “on the verge of being almost perfect”(Gerson 2016) within this organization system which portrays and reifies progress. These shoes have been given meaning and now organization, moving toward a concept of self as unique and fulfilled.
Much like Fred Giampietro’s blue blanket chest (discussed heavily in Freund’s Objects of Desire), the wear and tear is evidence of the origins of each pair. Clifford James states that in a collection, “Temporality is reified and salvaged as origin, beauty, and knowledge”(Clifford 1988, 222). Gerson certainly applies this to each pair in the drawer, excitedly providing the origin story for the novel pairs such as the first pointe shoes she ever wore, the colored performance shoes, and, with much disdain, the singular Demi Pointe pair. While she tells these origin stories, the others – made of standard “European pink” satin and of various brands – lose their individuality to the masses, blending together the stories of the years of practice. The value of each pair is determined by the temporal origin from which it was derived, providing a structure of organization and creating meaning. These pairs’ values are based on achievement; those representing milestones and performance markers are held above the mass as something she “earned the right to wear”(Gerson 2016), standing out as having a stronger, more detailed story. Now the shoes take on a classification system on top of the confined organization and assigned meaning, while also depicting progression and growth of self.
As Susan Stewart proposes “the marks of…labor come to be honorific”(Stewart 1984, 160), these shoes (however “alienated,” or removed they may be from their origins) have acquired meaning and value because of their connection to the labor and production. The origin which James discusses is, in this case, the labor of production which makes each item “a little more precious”(Gerson 2016). She has produced that which she collects, and the meaning (and motivation) behind the collection is directly linked to the items’ production. “It would be a disservice to all of the effort if I didn’t keep them”(Gerson 2016). This creates a stronger connection between the collection and its representation of self. The shoes not only have sentimental value, classification, and organization, they represent a temporal link to a personal history and construct a narrative self. “It tells me that I had somebody that was willing to invest in me, the will to go after something…When I look at [the collection] I see determination, dedication, will, striving”(Gerson 2016).
As one might pick up a shot glass from each of their vacation destinations, Gerson has collected a pair of shoes from each month of her several years in Mr. Duran’s Ballet school. Just as the shot glasses would tell a story about the collector’s travels, these shoes weave together a narrative identity of Gerson’s efforts and dedication, progress and achievement from that period in time. As Giampietro’s blue blanket chest holds its 200 year life span in its single, original coat of paint, these shoes each hold the history of Gerson’s place in the ballet school with their rips and tears. Her personal heritage is encased in this drawer which she opens with pride, an exhibit of her progress. Because of the value she has assigned the collection as a whole through their individual contributions, because of the story that it tells, and because of its careful organization and presentation, it is not simply an accumulation amassed over several years, it is a collection which contributes to her sense of self. This drawer of worn-out pointe shoes is a projection of self fashioning grounded in temporal significance and marked by honorific evidence of labor imbued with personal historical value, in short, a perfect exhibition of collection.
Works Cited
Clifford, James. 1988. “On Collecting Art and Culture.” The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Massachussetts: Harvard University Press. 215-252
Freund, Thatcher. 1993. Objects of Desire. New York: Penguin.
Gerson, Lindsey. Interviewed by Sarah Wingfield. Recorded Conversation. Austin, February 17, 2016.
Stewart, Susan. 1984. “The Collection: Paradise of Consumption.” On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir and the Collection. Durham: Duke University Press. 151-168
Sarah Wingfield 