Hi, I’m Jonathan Tromsness and I’m an elementary music teacher in Kelowna, B.C. I work, live, and play on the unceded territory of the Okanagan Syilx people, and I’m very grateful for all that this land has to offer! In addition to being a teacher, I’m also a husband to an amazing wife, who I truly consider to be my best friend, and a father to two amazing boys (3.5 and 2 yo). We are currently in the “wildly busy” stage of life. Outside of work and family, I’m a passionate performer on bass and drums and also really enjoy woodworking and doing renovation projects around our house. I used to work in the renovation property maintenance industry and all those skills have sure come in handy around the home.
For this assignment, I chose the bag that my school gave to us staff about a year ago. Much like my colossal water bottle, it’s one of those items I never thought I would use until I tried it once. Now it goes with me to work and back every day. Inside you’ll always find my water bottle, keys to the school (on a stylish lanyard of course), headphones, throat lozenges, Vicks Early Defence nasal spray, and sunglasses. Often there will be an apple with a small container of peanut butter as well as some kind of Tupperware with leftovers.
- My water bottle comes with me everywhere I go. This water bottle reminds me of my first or second year in university where a friend of mine and I petitioned the school to put a water fountain on the ground floor of the building. It was a performance building where there were hundreds of musicians practicing hours a day and the only water fountain was on the second floor by the vending machine. Their solution was to connect a spout to the water line in the bathroom sinks. So you got bathroom smells when filling your water bottle… better than nothing I suppose.
- The keys-on-lanyard are a staple of any teaching profession. I use mine quite a bit on weekends because I keep my drum kit at school and will go in after hours to practice.
- My headphones come with me everywhere but I honestly don’t use them all that much. I have about four pairs of these scattered around my house and classroom and they come in handy when I’m practicing along to a song or want to listen to a podcast in the car. My radio broke about a year and a half ago and I’m afraid of the cost to fix it. So I go old school and listen to my phone in the cupholder. As a professional musician, I don’t listen to music that much. I enjoy creating, performing, and listening in that order. In my 20’s I listened to a lot of music and I still feel I’m digesting that season.
- The throat lozenges are a new addition to my bag. I have used 3 in the last six months or so. I think I forgot them in there. However, they are very handy when your job is to talk loudly all day.
- The Vicks Early Defence nasal spray has been a staple for about 2 years. My mother-in-law initially bought it for me when we had our second son. There was a season of life, not that long ago, where both my children were terrible at sleeping. One or the other was up multiple times a night for about a year and a half. It was awful. This was also during the COVID measures, so there was a good season where I felt sick all the time. I would shoot this stuff up my nose and drink a whole bunch of echinacea almost daily. I’m happy to say that my kids are good at sleeping… as well as kids do anyway!
- Last, my Ray Ban Wayfarers. Other than the bag itself, this is the only thing in my bag that has some kind of fashion aesthetic attached to it. I bought them shortly after my wife and I got married, just over 10 years ago. I bought them with a Bay gift card we got for our wedding. Probably one of the most expensive personal items I’d purchased for myself at the time. Growing up, I was an avid thrifter and penny-pincher and could never “bring myself” to purchase items that were expensive simply because they had a name stamped on them. That was then. I’m now happy to say I own lots of clothing items with different names and symbols stamped on them ;).
In regard to text technologies, one of the first thoughts that came to mind was the technology of coding. Everything in my bag was produced in a factory that likely uses some kind of digital or mechanical tool that is operated by a computer and the computer/software code. It’s hard to imagine anything on a production line without a literal text technology providing the boundaries for it’s creation. Historically, as text was synonymous to create, I think it’s almost full circle that the word “text”, in a coding sense, is to create. It’s very difficult to create anything these days without the text of code.
The one prompt for this assignment that I’d like to explore further is the narrative of the bag contents vs. the image of myself. I have always thought about how I looked. Even looking like I didn’t care about how I looked was a conscious choice. Being in the performance world for so long, what you choose to wear or not to wear says a lot about your musicianship. Unironically wearing socks, sandals, and a baggy outdated button up shirt was not doing you any favours, regardless as to your virtuosity. I think why I like this bag, and probably why lots of people like their bags, is that I don’t have to think about what’s in it. I can just throw things in it, even if they don’t “line up with my aesthetic”. No one will see it. Now I’m not wanting to come across as some kind of fashion snob. I’m definitely not. In the last few years I have mellowed out, but I was/am a hyper-conscientious person who is constantly at war in my mind trying to navigate the “correct path” between personal aesthetic, cost, time, care, others’ opinions, and my own opinion. My bag allows me to “sneak” things around without worrying what others’ will think. Extra large McDonals for lunch? Just put it in the bag. Cookies for breakfast? Put it in the bag. Eight pack of the cheapest beer? Put it in the bag (not for consumption at work… though I’ve thought about it more than once).
This bag has helped me realize that if text is creation, the ultimate creation is of ourselves and the various versions of it. We have all crafted (written, coded, experienced, played with) different iterations of our ourselves for various situations. Some of these personas are intentional and some are not. I often think about the human condition and our ability to write and rewrite our own narratives. Both collectively, personally, and neurally. As I mention in the next post, I was raised in a very fundamental Christian household and I would not enjoy talking to myself from 10-15 years ago – not to say that religious people can’t be wonderful. I still hold dear some of the practices I was raised with but I’ve re-written the narrative, with a lot of help. I look at what I have written and re-written about myself and often wonder what the next chapter will be. In closing if an archeologist found my bag they would definitely know I was a teacher. Who would carry such a bag? Acronym on the side, pithy quotes on the lanyard. And of course, throat and nasal medication. I think the teenage version of myself, the thrifting penny-pincher, would be very proud of this “timeless” curation of objects. Not much of the contents of the bag have changed from 10-15 years ago (as I carry my wallet and phone in my pant pockets… an affordance of that aesthetic choice). The water bottle would probably be smaller, and the headphones would have an 1/8″ jack instead of a Lightning connector – remember, the first iPod is about 20 years old, so there likely would have been some kind of Apple product in the bag. What I think is interesting is that none of these items, other than the sunglasses are very personal. If I was in a burning building and only had time to grab one item, I would grab my sunglasses.
