Climate Change and Coffee Table Books

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What is the connection between climate change and coffee table books? They have been replaced by silver balls on a tray. So?

We don’t have the capacity to think for ourselves so, at some stage, decorators and other people who tell us what is in vogue for our homes, will get rid of these round objects by throwing them in the thrash can. How will garbage collectors burn them? We don’t care. It’s just garbage.

Actually, the climate change concern started before the silver balls landed on that tray on the coffee table. Factories manufactured them. Special machines were made to mould them before sending them to other machines to colour them.

Waste from these factories contributed to air pollution. That’s why we are wearing masks. The silver balls are not necessary at all. They add no value. They’re just a badge of wealth made possible by the ‘buy now pay later tool’: credit cards.

COFFEE TABLE BOOKS

The silver balls made books we used to put on coffee tables obsolete. They were predominantly photography and recipe books, but we learned something from them. The silver balls don’t have anything to stimulate us creatively and emotionally, but they’re trending.

You might argue that it’s no train smash because the whole book industry is on its last legs because we read digitally now. We do, and it’s proof of development. We stare at computers 24/7 reading books and looking at photographs. Who needs coffee table books?

I’m the first one to admit that coffee tables books are bourgeoisie. They are not found in four-roomed homes in South Africa, one bedroom apartments in Brooklyn New York, or two-bedroom council flats in London England, but they contain information, that can be used by someone who comes across them.

Coffee table books were an extension of a lifestyle found in magazines like the Architectural Digest and British Home and Garden. A poor girl like me came across such publications through ‘second hand smoke.’ They had been somewhere before they landed on my hands.

Class divisions or not, coffee table books had some value, some information, something that cannot be said for silver balls.

That is the climate change connection to coffee table books.

This is another ‘written podcast’ by Nonqaba waka Msimang.      

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