Crate Digging

If there is one aspect of the information age which fascinates me more than anything it is the way we have come to store data. From our earliest days of school we are taught to memorize rules, formulas, models, traditions, names, dates, and numbers all without really ever synthesizing these bits and pieces into a coherent whole. We are expected to capture these fleeting moments of history without losing step with our present state of anxiety, otherwise we may run the risk of digging ourselves into one of the many categories of "Other" that the traditions have established for us. Yet the impossible aspect of time lay in it's indeterminacy. Much of the data that we have come to inherent has come from a source that no living, sentient being of our time has any real, tangible connection to, and because of this we continue to attempt to impose an identity onto the past. Unfortunately the identity we often propose is consciously out of touch with the way we currently live our lives. For example, older and younger generations alike always speak of the "golden age" or "the way it used to be," thus establishing the past as something "Other" to how we live now (You have to admit that our perception of the present is, in most cases, very pessimistic and apocalyptic). What this worldview does is take the responsibility of life away from us in this very moment; by living with a constant yearning for something better or more pure in some way, we assume that our existence is simply a precious gem that is gradually chipped away at until we die. In reality, nothing has ever really changed with the exception of our perception of the past. We have come to archive the history of humankind as some sort of exhibit at an archaeological museum, as we constantly glorify the "geniuses" of the past. I'm not gonna lie, I think Bach is the most wonderful composer ever to live, but it has nothing to do with the content (data) of his output. It is because he learned how to synthesize the past into a coherent, all-too-human music of his time.

Constantly attempting to emulate the geniuses of the past is good for the beginner's mind, as it reflects the way children come to learn much of their foundational knowledge. Fortunately, a majority of our lives is spent with the ability to critically reflect on that foundational knowledge; we should naturally (hopefully) strive in our post-childhood years to synthesize our environment-past, present, and future-into a coherent, meaningful existence. I'm not going to continue with that rant, rather I will now attempt to explain how collecting vinyl records has helped me get away from that one-dimensional view of history and data storage.

First and foremost the vinyl record is typically collected in a context akin to a musical graveyard, as past stars lives, careers, and passions are stacked away in dusty crates never really expecting to be revived, particularly not in a way that would gain them monetary reward. It is a physical product that the listener can feel, whether or not he or she had any connection at all with the artist. We can see the inconsistencies in the record; the textures of the orchestration become visible as fewer grooves allow us to locate more intimate areas of the music such as drum breaks or solo passages, wear from the previous owner's experience have shaped the wax in ways that have harmed or helped the music. It is a very raw experience to drop the needle on a record that may not have been listened to for decades. In any case, the physical presence of the record forces us to care for the object in a way which is very much lost in the digital environment, where bits and pieces of data may be lost among fields of virtual networks. One can lose their entirely library of digital music just because of a power outage.

The actual experience of digging for records has caused me to look much deeper into every aspect of music, whether musical, societal, or emotional. We can see who played on what records by looking into the jacket of a vinyl, who produced which artist, how individual styles change over the years and which musicians help in those transitions. The entire experience of our musical traditions are contained within the vinyl jacket before we even listen to the music. With the CD, we are often asked to purchase the music before we can read the little that the major labels care to write about the music, and with the digital download, we lose the holistic experience of music altogether and we are just left with the bits and pieces of digital data that we began with as a child who has yet to learn how to communicate effectively.

You can now see how I am beginning to relate this to my previous posts, as we began to see that music is much more than bits and pieces of information that we are supposed to memorize and "understand" apart from any sort of social, humanistic framework. The past does not simply exist for us to frame it and put it on our mantle for our friends to see at social gatherings, in the same way that classical music is not simply a field restricted to the class hierarchies of the concert hall. Music is music, and people are people and they have been that way since the beginning of time. I know that seems like a cliche thing to say, but it thoroughly sums up what I am trying to say, and if we really stop and think about it we may finally be able to appreciate it for what it is.

This post was initially supposed to be a simple plug for a recently opened Portsmouth record shop that Dennis told me about called "Odyssey and Oracle." I went there yesterday and I felt really good after leaving, especially after finding "Love to Love You Baby" by Donna Summer on 45. Sorry I got so sidetracked. CHECK IT OUT at 100 Albany Street.