29th
Intangibility and Ritual
So I’m watching Velvet Goldmine right now, it’s a solid film, but what struck me to ramble this evening was the records. You know, round black things that you used to have to actually own, and put on some sort of shelf.
Well, there’s a scene with Christian Bale, yeah, Dark Knight Christian Bale. Anyhow he’s taking great care getting a record home, in a brown paper bag, and there’s a bit of an unboxing thing that happens. He slowly opens the gate-fold, and slides out the record carefully. This is when they had actual lyrics on album gate-folds too.
Then the ritual happens. The record slides out of the cover; the center imprinting considered, then the record placed, again carefully, in the record player, the peg into the hole, the rotation started, the needle lifted, and lowered. The warm groove begins, until a short time later the record ends, and another ritual begins.
I have a few records; I wasn’t quite born into the record era, though, much more the tape and especially CD era. Thus my experience with music lacks the ritualistic element, beyond glancing at the liner notes.
What’s my point? Now that music has gone fully digital — almost completely actually — we have left ritual and warmth for convenience and commodity. It’s like hey, I can fit 30,000 songs now in far less shelf space. Now I’m all for having 30,000 songs. It’s resulted in I think people being exposed to more music overall. And that’s cool.
But sometimes I mourn for what we’ve lost for it. We’ve lost each album being a gift of sorts, to unbox, sit next to as it plays and daydream. Each album had real impact; and like my minuscule record collection, every one of them has a point to being there. Not just to fill kilobytes of data, and be able to say “I can play 32.5 days of songs without repeat.”
Music has become more of a commodity than an art form to many. We try to still celebrate the music, but it seems the latest Kelly Clarkson mp3 isn’t quite the same as Quadrophenia on vinyl, now is it?
