One Turntable and No Microphone
One Turntable and No Microphone
A Journey Toward Mindful Living
I bought a turntable.
And I started purchasing my favorite music of all time on vinyl.
But maybe we should start here.
I love music. I have always loved music. From my parent’s 8-tracks to 33s and 45s to cassette tapes to CDs to Napster to Spotify. I have always been an early adopter of musical formats. I listen to so much music annually that I am in the top 1% of Spotify listeners. In fact, they have reached out to me a couple of times to get my opinion on what they are doing. Even as I sit here writing, I am listening to a playlist of artists I have never heard before. I am a musical adventurer. Maybe a musical connoisseur. And I appreciate the breadth and depth digital music has given me in discovering musicians I would have never heard otherwise.
But.
I noticed something disturbing about my listening habits, indicative of something happening more broadly in our culture. I was adding songs to playlists without knowing the artist, the song's title, or any other song from the album. Some of you know what I am saying. Like me, you remember when listening to music was an experience and an investment rather than something peripheral and inconsequential.
I don’t want to go all I-used-to-walk-six-miles-in-the-snow on you (I never did), but there used to be an investment, some sweat equity in music. I mowed grass every week for $8. It took two weeks of summer mowing for a cassette tape. I had to ride my bicycle to the tape store, buy it, and pedal home. I had to work like crazy to rip off the cellophane. And then, I put the cassette in and read the lyrics from the insert. That was the only cassette I would probably buy that month. If I was lucky, I might be able to buy another.
This isn’t about being a crotchety, almost old man. It is about our cheapening of things. It is about becoming an infinitely disposable society. It is about how we so easily discard sacred, beautiful moments and things for expediency and consumption. It is about consuming and consuming, discarding and discarding, while sacrificing profound opportunities to savor.
That’s why I decided to buy a turntable and my all-time favorite records. Because I want it to be an investment. Not a financial investment but an investment of presence. I want there to be some sweat equity in this endeavor. I want to engage with something physical. I want to place the needle at the beginning of the record and listen to every song. I want to get up and flip the record over and start the process over again. I want to slow down, take it in, and savor what is good rather than mindlessly, soullessly consuming and discarding.
Question
How can I reintroduce more intention, depth, and mindfulness into my own experiences and consumption, not just in music but in other aspects of life as well?
Peace,
Brandon
So then even in our modern digital world there is equity. I had to learn to navigate. Reading your PDF before it was nice and tidy in book form this was an accomplishment. I read digitally because it makes sense to me. No matter how many words the book has it weighs the same in digital form. But I had to learn to operate the reader. Customize it for me. I do things certain ways to maximize the return. I park far away from my destination for the exercise it provides. There are still so many new ways to do old things. I listen to old music digitally and through apps because it makes sense to me. The Library the big one has archived very old recordings. I listen to them to get a feel for the era. None of these things would be possible for a small town girl in Arkansas without the equity people expended creating new ways to do old things.
"I want to slow down, take it in, and savor what is good rather than mindlessly, soullessly consume and discard." That line right there is true about so many areas.