You can’t be against forever/ let’s not and say we did
I was talking to someone yesterday who was consolidating her record collection, had purchased an iPod with the maximum storage capacity and was selling everything. It’s kind of a difficult argument to come out against, in terms of reducing clutter and maximizing space. But this particular person was nearly intrepid. “It’s kind of a scary prospect,” she said, “but it’s something I’m going ahead with anyway.” It’s still sort of a weird thing to do, though, attached as we are to our things.

A few months ago, I was in a used record store in Albany, and I noticed there was what appeared to be a pretty cohesive collection of records that just had to be a part of some person’s collection. There were CDs in there, not promotional discs, that were just too finely preened, and too representative of a niche interest. At the time, this notion filled me with horror. This person had died, I had imagined, and I was looking over his stuff. His mom, maybe, went into his apartment, and had to dig through the collected detritus, and now there it was, all of that intertwined sentimentality, for me to blithely dig through and purchase secondhand. But why had that notion filled me with such horror? I don’t feign any real attachment with any particular consumer items outside of the food I eat everyday, but here I was having an anxiety attack in the record store.

I attach sentimentality to sounds recorded on tape. Somehow, I can remember where and when I purchased certain albums, and if they’re particularly good, it will come to represent an entire timeframe for me. Listening to a mixed tape is like experiencing the fast paced montage of a not-so-short-term history for me. Two bars will transport me to 1996, and I’ll be thinking about something I may not have otherwise remembered. Sometimes it just makes me sad. But mostly, it’s alright—the ability to transport.

This particular moment’s record is lightweight countrified-rock. It’s a quality album, and in ten years I might remember the moment: the telephone conversation I just had, the way the sky looked, and how the keyboard felt beneath my fingers lithely moving over them. Because it is that good.

We tend to chide ourselves here in the post-everything landscape we inhabit. Whatever interest niche you happen to be into, there seems to be something to purchase based on that. And music is just one subset of that ideology. It becomes debased as a part of the consumer process, but it’s so much more than that, too. Looking at that person’s CDs that day weirded me out, because there I was, digging through all of that discarded sentiment. And the prospect of that happening to me was really overwhelming right then. Giving up all of those albums is the equivalent to me of giving up all of the aforementioned sentiment. And I rather like the clutter, the towering avalanche of what those things provide for me. Thinking about that kid got me really down for about ten minutes, but then I realized: he probably just bought an iPod.