well, i'm bad at routines
No, I'm not bad at routines, I'm actually really good at routines. I make coffee each morning, have a certain routine to wind down each night, and even have favorite ways to spend Sundays. So why can't I keep a blogging routine? I missed another day. Its alright though, I'm writing now.
I have an old Dr. John tape playing, one that I haven't heard since I was kid. I remember my dad used to have it on CD and cassette. When I hear it, somehow I'm thrust into a portal stretching back to that bright living room in the yellow house, sometime in the 90s, hearing the opening chorus of the first song, which at that age sounded eerie to me, followed by the familiar piano lines my dad could play himself. That place seems so distant, yet at the same time I can remember the room, the couch we had, the white modular looking shelves, an old beat up baby grand piano in the corner.
I'm glad I was raised with music, and at that before the internet brought us streaming. Having a physical relationship with the music I've spent a lifetime listening to has saved my life multiple times. It has shaped me into the person I am today.
I suppose that is the one routine that has lasted my whole life, and has been completely effortless. Sitting on the floor in front of the stereo as a kid, listening to things my parents played. Forming my own collection of tapes when I was a little older, and carrying them to the car with me before every outing. The thrill of getting my first small CD binder, and the greater thrill of upgrading it to a bigger one.
Before I started drinking coffee, before I started smoking and before I quit smoking, it was always music. I had albums I'd put into my portable CD player for the walk across town after school (queue Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation), and albums I'd put on to wind down at night (Miles Davis' Kind of Blue).
I discovered music by frequenting the record shops in my town, digging through the used CD sections on Wednesday's after school, in the 30 minutes before my guitar lessons. I would do the same at the library, taking them home and making copies of the ones I enjoyed so I could keep them. I preferred using Soulseek to download music, as it was easier to find reliably secure, full album folders of whatever I couldn't find in stores, mostly live show bootlegs.
I guess I'm thinking about all of this, and writing about it because I've been seeing so many people on the internet sharing how they're coming back to physical media, or even discovering it for the first time. It gives me a glimmer of hope that, in this time of streaming all arrays of content, people are waking up to the reality that when you give up physical media, you give up your ability to choose what media you invite into your life (I'm actively avoiding the word consume, because I don't like thinking about consuming music).