Stacked
Originally uploaded by lazy butterfly
There was a time when I had a plastic CD tower that held 209 CDs, so I owned exactly 209 CDs. I figured that would be enough. If I wanted a new CD, that meant I had to get rid of an old one. I functioned under this system for years, but decided sometime in the early 90s that it was, as you would guess, nonsense. That's when I started to really accumulate CDs.
After a variety of failing CD storage ideas and systems, when we moved in Washington, we bought some seriously industrial strength CD cabinets. They were even rated for use in earthquake areas. Two of these units held about 2500 CDs--and a few years ago we actually managed to fill them. I was doing everything I could to save space--replacing CD boxes with sleeves, thinning out a handful of CDs here and there.
A few weeks ago I stood in our garage and looked at the two monster CD cabinets.
"Why do I keep all of these?" I asked myself.
I listen to hours of music a day--but to be honest, I cannot name the last time I picked up a physical CD and put it in a player to listen to it. Since I started listening mostly to electronic files eight years ago, the only time I handle a CD is to burn the songs on to my computer the day I purchase it, then immediately the disc goes to the storage cabinet never to see the light of day again.
So I started looking through. And I started to pull out CDs. A lot of CDs.
Over the past few years, my wife and I have been having a lot of discussions about "stuff": things we keep and why. After watching my grandparents struggle to let go of their home, filled with such "stuff" (most of which they didn't know or forgot that they had) we started asking ourselves about why we accumulate things. We've come to the conclusion that probably 85% of the "stuff" we have is just that--"stuff." We have no emotional connection to it, we just keep it because we think we should or might need it...someday. We've been doing a lot of purging trying to live a better, simpler life--and it works.
But music has always been hard.
When I was a teen and in my 20s, I treated my album bin and cassette case as if they were bricks of gold. At the time, I surrounded myself with trappings I considered absolutely essential to the life I led: books, magazines, tapes, albums, clothes, etc… They defined me. The funny thing is that I'm not sure I could put my hands on any given possession I owned twenty-five years ago. That is completely weird to me. I probably couldn't fill a shoe box with the things that have stayed in my life since then. Tapes and albums were replaced by CDs, which, in turn, were replaced with binary computer files. Clothes were worn out or became dated. Books were loaned, stolen, lost, forgotten, or sold for rent money. I guess they were, in hindsight, the most meaningless parts of me.
Another example of this is when we bought our house. I have always been a huge Charles Bukowski fan and have bought, read, and kept all of his several dozen non-poetry books. Well, when we moved, the box of Bukowski books must have been put in the wrong pile and disappeared--off to the garbage or Goodwill. I have never replaced any of them.
Do I still love Bukowski? Sure. Will I ever read any of them again? Maybe, but probably not. So, while I'm sad that it didn't happen on my terms--I'm not all that upset about it anymore.
I don't want to think of all the times I've put all these CDs in cardboard boxes and moved them around from place to place, or worse, paid someone else to move them from place to place. I did this all those times because I always felt tethered to them.
Knowing that I can (and do) keep digital copies of everything on hard drives, I decided it was time to let them go. Standing in the garage looking at them, I asked myself, "If this place burned down today, would I ever buy this again?"
If the answer was "no," I pulled it.
Even though I love the music they contain, it was surprising how few CDs that I have a true emotional connection to their physical form.
Katherine saw me doing this and recently has been going through the CDs as well, doing the same thing.
We're listing them on Amazon to sell used (though burning another back-up copy before they head out the door, just in case). Our original goal was to cut the collection down by a third. As we are working, I'm thinking it is going to be more than three-quarters. We'll only have a few hundred left--but will have an authentic reason to keep those that are left. Some were gifts, some were exceptionally hard to find, some were witness to important moments in our lives. But each will have a purpose.
We'll take all the money we get from selling these (it won't be that much money--if you are still thinking that the music industry isn't in complete free fall, try selling a used CD) and hopefully put it to better use.
Hopefully we won't spend it on something we won't remember having, or won't want, in a few years.
