FIXATIONS : The Winner of His Disc Content : A voracious collector finds gathering records and guitars--and other stuff--to be a most rewarding endeavor.

This being the day for resolutions, I’d like to suggest a couple: If you don’t have a fixation, go get one. If you do have a fixation, perhaps get rid of it.

To have a passion that goes above and beyond--be it saving the whales, dancing on traffic dividers or collecting Popsicle sticks--can help one be more immersed in life. Which, as long as we have to go through the bother of being alive, is not a bad idea.

But having a fixated purpose can also lead to one becoming stiff and inflexible, like Mussolini, for example.

Personally, I can see fixations being both a gift and a burden in my life. My chief obsessions are guitars and records: I’ve got more than 100 of the former and some 15,000 or so of the latter--though when it comes down to it, I’ll buy nearly anything if it’s cheap enough. As a result, I’ve probably got more cool stuff in my garage than there is in the fragmented remains of the Soviet Union.

That makes me feel a little guilty.

God knows, they must need a dozen broken wah-wah pedals over there right about now, and St. Petersburg might be in just the mood for the wall-sized Barry Goldwater poster I last saw buried in a slab of old film and Fillmore posters I’ve got. Those, I think, are somewhere under a heap composed of Pakistani bagpipes, moldy Beatles wigs, ‘60s toy spaceman boots (two pairs) and a set of golf clubs for which I would need to have six vertebrae removed to even be nearly the right height to use. They were a great buy, though.

There are also lava lamps; a James Bond attache case; hundreds of ‘60s Marvel comics, ‘40s Arizona Highways and ‘50s nudie mags, and the gutted cabinets of two ‘30s radios. Dan Blocker could be out there somewhere, for all I know.

I did own a human skeleton for a few years, a nice medical-school one in a deluxe wooden box. It smelled like powdered teeth from a dentist’s drill, and after touching it you felt like washing your hands with steel wool. And those were only two of its uses.

I was running a record store at the time I bought the skeleton--purchased only because it was so damn cheap. Elvis Presley had recently died, and all these decanters, deluxe box sets and other morbid speculator trinkets were coming on the market. So we put a label reading “Elvis Presley” on the bones’ nicely varnished box. When fans asked about it, we’d say, “Oh, that’s the complete Elvis,” and then wonder why we didn’t get much return business when they ran from the store gagging after opening the lid. Heavy-metal kids sure wanted to buy it, though.

The moral here is to consider where you might wind up before leaving your body to science.

Another moral I’ve gleaned over the years is that all this amassed junk isn’t a substitute for living, though it can help provide some direction in life. The phonograph records, of course, share the soul, emotion and invention of our fellow man, and that can’t be a bad thing, unless we’re talking about Michael Bolton.

Even unplayed, the guitars too can give insight into the inventive spirit and craftsmanship that once were synonymous with America. From the late Orange County genius Leo Fender’s timeless creations to department store guitars made of wood pulp and lipstick tubes, there are great lessons in individualism encapsulated in these things.

The other good thing about having a collecting fixation is the path taken to the junk. I’ve met some of my best friends and had some of my best experiences through guitar collecting, which makes actually finding the stuff fairly immaterial.

It is this lighthearted philosophy I carry with me as I collect--you bet. When I see a guy walking out of a swap meet carrying a ‘50s Fender he got for $15, I think, “Ah, hurrah for you, my good fellow. I salute our kindred interest, which clearly has blinded you to the fact that all guitars are mine by birthright! “

It’s when such ungentle thoughts intrude that your fixation becomes about as interesting as collecting money. As one of Fixations’ subjects sagely stated recently: “It’s just stuff , and that ain’t what life’s about today.”

How true.

Collecting cars or guitars or vintage toothbrushes isn’t going to make this frazzled world a place we can pass on to our children without pangs of guilt and powerlessness. Having mono, stereo and DJ promo copies of Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs’ second album, I’ve found, doesn’t get me into anyone’s heart. And it’s those things that are what life’s about today.