Wonderful post on collecting.
👍 Philosophical, informative, and entertaining, too; so I must relish it morsel by morsel:
Thanks photonrider. I actually want to organise some day the CD's better way than they are right now on that pictured shelf (and couple other places) and put those that are on stacks horizontally somewhere.
I've heard that storing them horizontally may warp them due to constant gravitional pull - but do investigate that phenomenon for yourself and find out what best suits your need.
Jazz, Classical, Blues and Finnish music are in somewhat good order within their genres but everything else isn't. Of course I try to keep the records together so, that for example everything for same bands/artists catalogue can be found on same place - but even that is sometimes quite complicated. At the moment I don't know for example where is one of my Caravan album and I've searched like maniac Steven Wilson's last year marvellous prog album The Raven That Refused To Sing...without any luck so far.
This is one of the areas that computer-cataloged music wins out. Scroll, point, click, the music's playing. Sometimes just tap, tap, tap, and there's sound in one's ears.
But this takes away the ritual that goes with sampling music for one's ears and mind, and not just as ambient noise to drown out one's thoughts.
To take an Album out and slip the disc, or for that matter, the platter, into the player and then to sit back and immerse oneself totally into the music is another feast of the senses altogether.
A smoker's analogy would be the difference between smoking a cigarette and enjoying a boleful of Cavendish.
Organising the hardware is a different kettle of fish.
Albums and jewel cases take up space, and can also be inadvertently misplaced, and there are times I have gone through the same process as you, hunting for a track and not altogether sure what album it is in, or unable to find the disc without having to physically eyeball every piece.
This happens mainly when I want to play a particular track for a guest.
One relative of mine said once to me that my music collection is total and absolute madness and waste of money (CD is dying format, you dont' have enough time to listen them all..bla..bla..bla), but music is so important part of my life that I ignored that comment.
Your relative should understand that by the same logic whatever format
they are into is
also a dying format.
It is our luck that we live in the kind of age where we can reach through the decades and use
whatever format we wish - whatever is convenient or provides the kind of satisfaction we are looking for.
Sound - in our heads - is an important part of our everyday function. We talk to ourselves all day, rehearse speeches, replay conversations, review what we heard.
When we transpose that existential sound into music it transforms our 'thinking' (at least for that moment
) and transports us to a different place in our minds - and thereby to a self that is only the existence of the music itself, and whatever that music represents; beauty, strength, longing, joy, triumph . . ..
It is interesting by the way, that I also have some kind of book collection, and over the years surprisingly many guests have been asking me the same question over and over: "Have you read all these books?" I usually reply trying to hide the tiredeness from my voice that, yes, most of them, but then I think that who would be stupid enough to read books like 20-part encyclopedia, some dictionaries, old school books, Penguin music catalogues and books like that from cover to cover?
Brilliant synopsis of a misguided perception of book-collecting.
I mentioned my book collecting on page #3 - a couple of pics there, too, - but as I said there, the tip of an iceberg.
Right now the flow is starting to sink me.
I dream of an area at least 50' X 20' and well shelved. I could easily stock it. Room for a sofa to curl upon would be ideal, too, with a fireplace, while being optional, most welcome.
To have the sudden thought to read a
particular book, hold it in one's hands, and have flaming photons bounce off the page and into one's eyes as one was hypnotised by the type, line by line . . . in a word . . . entrancing.
It is the experience of both the book as a vehicle of escape and as an object of life to be savoured itself.
Finding an album of weird music collecting dust (when a did I buy this?) or some old, forgotten book from your collection can sometimes feel like finding a long lost friend. And quite often they can lead you to new discoveries...
I guess that is what I meant. In other words.
.
