Reasons to be cheerful

[cosmolinguist]

A couple of things happened today that cheered me up.

I got my bank statement, and have slightly more money than I feared. Not being able to easily check the status of my account means my financial management basically consists of using my debit card until it doesn't work any more. So it was a rather pleasant surprise.

Not that I have anything to do with the money. Today my dad said, "I'm going to Albert Lea to pick up our tax returns, do you want to come?" And I did, if only because I heard my mom and dad talking about this in my half-awake state (such conversation tends to happen in the bathroom, the vortex of activity in the mornings, and the bathroom shares a wall with my bedroom) before Mom left for work this morning. Dad mentioned his plans for the day and Mom asked if I wanted to go along. I heard him look in my room and he said "I don't know; I think she's sleeping." Then Mom said something like "She needs to get out of the house." As if it's my fault that I don't these days..

Oh, anyway, the other thing that cheered me up is that a search for a CD containing a song I wanted to hear because it was stuck in my head resulted in me getting so frustrated with the disorganized state of my CD collection that I decided to sort through them and try to bring some sort of order where before had been only chaos, trying to cull the obvious baddies and make some sense of the rest.

One of the things I like about CDs that I miss in subsequent music-storage media is that they're tangible. You can touch them, make stacks of them, look at the artwork, see your friends' handwriting on the mix CDs they made you. I did all those things today.

My compact discs also make quite the time capsule, or old photo album. The time when I was buying them was a time when music was very important to me, which is why there are so many of them, and it was a time when my tastes in music were different—still somewhat recognizable, but definitely different—than they are today. I look at my old CDs, which are now not just chunks of shiny plastic to me but vehicles for memories. They conjure up who I was and what I did when they were new, exciting CDs. I remember liking them very much—perhaps even more than I like anything these days, if only because my passions were more single-minded, more whole-hearted, then—and wonder what I would think of them now. I know they're still good; I remember why I liked them and I still like them. But I haven't listened to them in a whlie, and I don't miss them. Not until I see them again, anyway.

The advantage of CDs over old photos is that I can put the CDs in the stereo and listen to them now. The music on them is the same, even if I am not.

Comments

[kennedybak.livejournal.com]

This is why I refuse to get one of those mp3 player things - surely the whole point of liking music is so that people with trendy haircuts can come round your house, scan your CD rack and go, "ooh! I see you have all 28 Fall albums!" or whatever. Not quite the same as pressing a button on your ipod to reveal the same thing.

[cosmolinguist]

That is, as far as I can tell, the whole point of liking music, yes.

I find the convenience and storage space of the iPod alluring, but no matter how much I may sometimes like them I still live without one because I have no money, and that means I will live without one for a long time.

And I'm often glad of this, because I like music being a physical thing. I can spend a long time in a record shop without even dreaming of necessarily purchasing anything. I spent a lot of time last summer happily going through Andrew's record collection (part of it, anyway) and it was a lot more fun than just staring at an LCD would've been. My earlier musing on cassettes and such reveals the same philosophy, I think.

[kennedybak.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I like spending time in record shops without buying stuff. Particularly musty old ones in obscure parts of town which no-one really goes to and which must have some difficulty turning a profit. You can get all the information on the internet that you could get in a record shop (and more), but it just isn't the same.

[cosmolinguist]

Though sometimes it's annoying, there are other times that I love the way Andrew's knowledge of Manchester consists entirely of knowing where all the record shops are. He just doesn't see anything else; he had no idea where to buy things I wanted, like a jacket or cooking utensils. So I've spent a little time in some cool record shops there, and they make me happy.

[kennedybak.livejournal.com]

My earlier musing on cassettes and such reveals the same philosophy, I think.

On this: there was a funny time in the UK between about 1994-96 where you could get a huge discount if you bought a new album in cassette, rather than CD form. The tape would be about £3.99 IIRC compared to at least a tenner for the CD. So I have quite a few cassette albums from this era. It was just before absolutely everyone had a CD player and the prices started to come down (or rather, stagnate).

[cosmolinguist]

My family didn't have a CD player until they were a standard feature in new cars. My parents finally bought us one for Christmas one year, probably '97 or '98. So until then all I had was tapes, and even afterwards I realized that tapes were cheaper (though not, I think, as drastic as the difference you mention here) and continued buying both for a while.

Few of my cassettes seem to have survived, but I think that's all right; they're mostly music I listened to long enough ago that I'd rather forget about them. Yet just thinking of them brings about that time-capsule feeling even better than the CDs do, precisely because they're old enough to be very different from most things I'd listen to now. I bought an Oasis tape! And Green Day, and all sorts of things I now think are rubbish.