Still Spinning

“You sound like a broken record.”  It’s been awhile since that made any literal sense to me, but this morning, I heard Bob Dylan sing, “No direc-, no direc-, no direc-, no direc-.”  I’ve had my new turntable for a week and I can’t stop playing records.  Cleared a shelf for them.  Bought speaker wire.  It’s gotten serious.

I’ll say right away: I didn’t do it for the superior sound quality of vinyl.  Far from hi-fi, mine is just equipment that fits.  Someday, a sharper stylus, better boom, but for now, I simply want to play the records that I’ve been keeping for years in boxes that Hester keeps shredding. 

So a week ago on Record Store Day, I went to all three shops in my neighborhood and at the last one, found a cheap enough deck.  Walked it home, hooked it up and started sorting and spinning, getting reacquainted with my collection.  Outkast on vinyl?  Ice-cold! Kings of Leon, see-through 10”, beautiful.  “Sticky Fingers” –one of those albums you must play straight through.  It started to rain and the sound through the open window blended with the static of old jazz records, which sound the best so far, perhaps because they’ve always sounded that way.  I laid the needle down on Judy Garland’s “I Get the Blues When It Rains”.

Dragging a box of records around makes the impracticality of the media clear.  They’re heavy and they’re dirty.  I’d gotten the dust fits at the record stores and I found that most of my own discs needed cleaning.  Some are really too scratched to enjoy; every few seconds, and quickening with the needle’s trip, you hear a sound like electric Velcro.  I’m afraid that’s the case for Loretta Lynn’s “You Ain’t Woman Enough”, but I can’t throw it away, not when I look into those piercing blue eyes on the album cover (set off by her large, chestnut hair).  Plus, the colorful Decca label on the album itself screams craft project.

In the week since I’ve had the turntable, I’ve spent fewer of my free hours in front of a screen and more handling records.  Surely part of the format’s appeal is that all five senses are involved in the listening experience, starting with the tactile.  You can’t run your fingertip gently across the grooves of an mp3.  (Granted, you can hold a CD, but I just rip mine to the hard drive, then wait for a minor scratch to render them unplayable.  Rumor has it that major labels may soon abandon the format altogether.)  What does a cassette tape smell like?  Records smell like cardboard and must, sometimes smoke, sometimes truly wax.  Taste, well that’s a stretch, but when you sit and listen to records as an activity, you get a hankerin’ for a cold one.  All these classic rock albums have put me in the mood for some of that old-fashioned swill – maybe a High Life. [1]

This heady blend of aesthetic appeal and nostalgia has now-apparent economic implications.  While CD sales have tanked, vinyl sales continue to rise annually; according to the BBC, they’re at a six-year high.  Yet, I can’t transfer my habits as a digital consumer to the record store.  I have around 11,000 songs in my digital collection, and I’m listening for more every day.  How much would those weigh in vinyl?  How much would it cost to duplicate the digital collection, considering I get most digital albums at a fraction of the cost I used to pay for a bullshit CD.  John Cheese, in a column on Cracked.com, claims that “creating the idea that entertainment has no monetary value” is one of “5 Ways We Ruined the Occupy Wall Street Generation”.  He argues that piracy in the digital age, even as backlash against big-label greed, ultimately devalued music and other arts/entertainment, making it harder for the little guy to make any money.  Clearly, new technology economically devalued the industry’s dominant format.  But Cheese (think that’s his real name?) ignores the fact that the same technology enabled world-wide access to artists and their works, and that translates into economic value, too.  Profit is simply distributed beyond corporate confines and into local markets.  It’s narrow to discuss music in solely economic terms; still, it seems like the social values held dear by those who kept their local record stores open through 30 (40?) years of new-tech are being (re)commodified.  Billboard calls this year’s Record Store Day sales “explosive”.

I’ve been playing records all week and I’m running out.  I’ve been back to Joe’s with a wishlist, looking for albums that I can’t find because they’re too rare by now, or they were never put on wax, or I can get it digitally for so much less (so I already have it).  I’d love to have all the White Stripes’ albums brand new on vinyl, but I’m not some kind of millionaire.  The big grab is on again, and that’s okay, but when new albums cost $30, the full aesthetic experience that keeps us listening to records becomes exclusive.  I don’t want to pay a dear $30 for a record; to me, other values are compromised by that transaction. 

Luckily, there’s no end to the backlog of supply.  Record stores are back in business.  There’s the stash in your parents’ basement.  You’re in the corner of an antique shop flipping through a stack, looking for nothing in particular and suddenly – Neil Diamond.  His shirt is open; his earnest gaze pleads, “Play Me”.  You laugh out loud, thinking, “Someone bought this once and enjoyed it,” and that snicker alone is worth 50 cents, you suppose; now that person is you.  What a small step it is from irony to sentimentalism, sucker!

But you’ll remember the how and the when.  Where were you when you bought your last 5,000 mp3s?

I was once in Quebec City in early June when the days were long and the sunset, rosy gold.  Loose on chambourcin, I picked up a couple of records someone had thrown out with the trash, and I stuffed them into the trunk of my car.  One of them was the Judy Garland album I played last week when it rained.

My nephew gave me The Black Keys “Attack and Release” for Christmas in Boston, and we spent the holiday listening to his albums on a portable record player from the 50s, the kind you might have found in a public school’s AV closet.

I was really of the cassette-tape generation, but we always had a turntable in the house, so naturally a few of my parents’ and siblings’ albums made their way into my collection.  When my grandparents died and my uncle Paul came to live with us, his extensive collection came too.  You may be thinking, “Mary, are you saying you stole from a disabled man?”  Listen, Uncle Paul and I are tight.  He’d understand that if anyone should have Bonnie Tyler’s “Faster than the Speed of Night” on vinyl, it should be someone who can appreciate the Wagnerian excesses of a Jim Steinman song,  someone such as myself, his beloved niece. 

My first favorite song was Wild Cherry’s “Play That Funky Music” which my sister and brother had on 45, orange label.  I was a toddler and I marveled at the idea that someone might actually play funky music until they died.  Luckily, the song ends well with the protagonist “funking out in every way.” 

Then, when I was 7, I went insane for “Stray Cat Strut”.  My sister was in high school and by that time, I knew she’d be leaving home soon.  Her friend came by to pick her up and that friend gave me the Stray Cats’ “Built for Speed”.  It was my first, very-own album.  It’s got some crackle and warp these days, but I think it still cooks.

Records will never match the ease and diversity of my digital collection; nor will that ever be the point of collecting them, listening to them, Side A and Side B.   Records become memories.  They’re imprints of time, place and identity.  Last week, I bought a cheap turntable in Silver Spring, MD.  I brought it home and out came so much great music that I hadn’t heard in years, if ever before.  But I was also thinking about work, and I was reading about Paris, and I was wondering whether I should fix a drink.  It started to rain.  We’d been needing the rain.  I put on that Judy Garland song, and it was perfect.

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[1] Vertical Integration Idea for Dogfish Head Brewing Company:  Buy the rights to Miles Davis and Robert Johnson albums; re-release them on vinyl as a “Dogfish Head Presents” series to be sold with (or separately from) Bitches Brew and Hellhound on My Ale.  Imagine the cover art.  And the t-shirt sales!

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree!

Twelfth night is here, the traditional close to the Christmas season, and an appropriate time to reflect on the holidays. Most people probably got that done sometime around New Year’s, but I was tired and rather hungover and pretty focused on football that whole week, so I’m just now getting around to it. For the first time in my adult life, I didn’t travel; Laura’s family came to Silver Spring to attend her commencement and stayed on through Christmas morning. It was a big change for everyone, and as hostesses, Laura and I were feeling quite grown-up, if anxious. The occasion seemed to call for another first: our first Christmas tree.

It may seem like the whole world falls into a sentimental swoon the minute trussed-up pines appear in church lots, or are assembled in the back aisles of Target. Strap one to the mini-van, pull the color-coded branches from the box! But for some people, the tree as symbol is fraught with mixed emotions. It’s always so much more than a tree – it’s the past, hung from limbs, item by item: the painted plaster star from kindergarten, the Nutcracker commemorating the grammar-school play, the souvenir from your first trip to the city you’re now living in, the angel from the year you needed prayers, and a friend, and she sent you both. Not all memories are sugar plums. Say you grew up non-Christian and the young evangelicals with whom you spent your schooldays told you constantly that you were a super kid, but most certainly hellbound, their self-righteousness reaching fever-pitch around the holidays. Maybe picking a tree was not a magical day with dad and a saw in a snowy forest, but a drunken, violent fiasco, the crooked fir a perfect emblem of bitter resignation. (In defense of my family and Laura’s, I want to clarify that everything above is entirely hypothetical and not a reference to our own upbringings.) I’m just saying, there are reasons the rare American may not feel compelled to install a Christmas tree in his or her home, and Laura has had a few of her own over the years. Me, I just decorate the houseplants.

And why get a tree if you’re not going to be around to tend and enjoy it? The past two years, I’ve been in Boston, and either Michigan or Minnesota before that. A dry pine in an empty apartment? Downright dangerous. But this year, company was coming. We had to think of others and their expectations, as called for not just by the season but by hostessing decorum. Why, it seemed like it would be rude not to have a tree. What are we, heathens? (And were heathens not the original tree-keepers, anyway?) It’s just what’s done. You go into someone’s home in December, you compliment them on their tree. “It’s a beautiful tree,” you say, and then add a detail, like “So full!” or “Great color scheme!” or “It looks so real!” or “Disco-tree, huh? That’s different!”

So one Saturday morning, we exiled the houseplants to the bedroom to clear a space, and we put on our hats and gloves and set out on our great expedition to – to the farmer’s market, about a block away. We didn’t want one of Whole Foods’ uniform, bourgeois trees, and there’s a Boy Scouts lot, but I don’t want to give money to anyone who discriminates against gay kids. Laura didn’t take seriously my plan to drive to a State Forest, cut down what looked good and stash it under a tarp in the trunk. (Anchor vs. sails.) So we did the practical thing and went with some farmers from Pennsylvania who’d been driving down for the market since Thanksgiving. (Didn’t ask them about their politics.) We walked over thinking we’d get a small tree for our small living room, maybe 3’ tall. Then again, there was vertical space to spare, so maybe 5’ tall, I proposed, measuring myself against a demo. Nothing that size had yet been unloaded, so the farmer went deeper into the truck bed and pulled out a fine smallish spruce, just a touch over 6’ tall. Laura paid the $40 – I insisted that she pay so that it would never somehow become my “goddamned tree” – and we walked it home on our shoulders, stepping on our long shadows.

It fit perfectly in front of our window. Fixed in the stand, it began to open up. It had a wild look, untrimmed, not wholly symmetrical but balanced anyway. We figured out how many strands of lights we’d need and strung them around it, then got out the ornaments. I have a box of ornaments collected from childhood, but Laura doesn’t, so I gave her a few I’d bought in advance of this big day – some Stars of David, Maryland Terps balls and a shiny mug of beer. I hung the Michigan 1998 Rose Bowl ball prominently, the Maid o’ Milkin’, and one or two that I’d made with my mom when I was a kid. It wasn’t bad for first timers. No, it was lovely, quite natural looking, not too gaudy, just right. I thought, “You could pick that tree out of a lineup as our own.”

But my favorite thing about the tree was how clearly Hester admired it. She loves a project, so she supervised its set-up and then promptly settled beneath it, a contented loaf. Most people say cats are hell on trees, but she didn’t mess with it, just took up residence under its boughs where she’d gaze up at the lights with that Zen-like expression cats usually only get after a good meal. Day or night, we could find her under her tree. I liked getting up in the dark of morning, plugging in the lights, and sitting with my coffee just looking at the tree and at Hester looking at the tree, imagining she was tuned in to some ancient instinct and felt protected in its umbrage.

Yet, as Christmas grew nearer, the tree changed little by little, and I’d grown so acquainted with it that I could perceive its slight droop. More needles peppered the carpet. In its first days, it had drunk a quart daily; now it wasn’t taking up any water. I got depressed when I looked at it then, this beautiful being that had lived in the ground and the sun, dying right in front of me. Dying for my amusement, for the sake of tradition. (Don’t get me wrong – I love tradition, but not typically more than I love trees.) I felt guilty in the way you feel guilty when you’re conversing with cows and you remember your last hamburger. But the hamburger was already dead when you ordered it, as the tree was already cut.

Just before Laura’s family arrived, we arranged our gifts for them under the tree, shiny paper reflecting colored lights. They added to pile when they came over, and they said it was a very nice tree. “Thanks for getting the tree,” her dad said. Then we took her parents to Annapolis where we finally found the perfect tree topper, a Maryland Blue Crab in a tangle of Christmas lights. Across the room, we lit the menorah for Hannukah, too. And on Christmas morning, Laura and I donned Santa hats, reached under the boughs and handed gifts around the room.

I look around the same room now, symbols, symbols everywhere –what’s a photograph worth? Why do I keep a small jar of shells from a beach on Platte Lake twenty years ago? What’s the value of a teacup, a thumb-worn book? We come into adulthood with our values externally imposed; we are made of our experiences and coerced by our society. But the older I get, the more I feel liberated by the responsibility of making my own meaning out of the mix, choosing what to keep, discard and create. A Christmas tree is Pagan, Christian, European, American; it’s the past; it comes too early; it’s commodity; it’s the beautiful human need to see life in the dead of winter; it’s ironically killed to serve that need; it smells good and makes the cat happy. I’m an adult now – hell, I’ve hosted Christmas – I get to decide what my Christmas tree means among all possible and fixed meanings.

A winter weekend with my love. A farmer’s care, but not too much of it. Light when light is sparse. Thinking of someone else for a change. Family—the one you were born with and the one you’ve put together. When I look back on 2011, as every year, the times that matter most are those I spent with family, including that wider family comprised of good friends. I’m not saying that the Christmas tree is the perfect pathetic fallacy for all that love spread over all that land – just that I choose to see it as another reminder that we all live and we all die, as another opportunity to think about what we do, why we do it, and who we do it for.

I couldn’t bear to just throw it on the curb. I wanted to take it to a State Forest or something, and light it ablaze with great ceremony. Laura felt this was impractical, if not illegal. I say that if you can’t burn your own Christmas tree, then freedom is nothing but a gas station somewhere in the upper Midwest. So we compromised and drove it to Rock Creek Park around sunset, cut it up and stuffed in in one of their stone fireplaces. We lit its boughs, fanned the orange flames until its thick smoke slowed evening traffic, and raised a couple of mugs of Mad Fox Festivus beer to what a good tree it had been.

So let the drummers drum, then. Let the new year begin to unfurl. It’s still winter, but never for long. Time to work so that I can play; time to miss the ones I love who are far away so that I can anticipate the sweetness of reunion; time to remember the ones who have gone, and to go on living in my turn, with them a part of me. (Made my grandpa’s gingerbread on Christmas morning. My mom, on the phone, said, “Thank you for eating my dad’s bread!”) We might get a tree next year, and we might not. But we’ve got all these ornaments now. I’m thinking a potted tree, one to last through spring so we can plant it later, maybe in some State Forest, a fair deal bought from earnest farmers with good politics… Laura says we’ll just have to wait and see.