VINYL RECKONING
And oh, speaking of plastic: records.
At the absolute height of my collectional zeal, bloated by too many years on the promo-album dole, my LP stash numbered in the THOUSANDS. Three? Four? Five? I now own, well, hundreds–many, most, almost all of which I never play, probably will never play. True–many or most are scratched or warped, caked with beer, wine, and fingerprints. But even among those eminently playable, there isn’t that much turntable action. (I also have, oh, at least a thousand CDs–so what’s new? My acquisitiveness appears undiminished.)
I didn’t fare much better with my fellow philo students. In the waning weeks before my expulsion became final–already on probation, I could smell it coming–I’d invite these dullards up to my room, offer them pot (they’d decline), and put on some sides. Though I had everything by the Beatles, the Stones, Dylan, the Byrds, Love, most of the Kinks, the first Doors–it was the spring, by now, before the SUMMER OF LOVE–all they would sit for was “I Feel Like Homemade Shit,” on The Fugs First Album (ESP 1018). Those who had heard it before would tell newcomers, “Listen–here!–he’s saying ‘shit’!!” (underneath all the mock country harmonies and copious yodeling). Then the newies would grill me: “Is this illegal? Could we all go to jail for this?” What a pack of cheesepuffs!–these jackjills who today teach our kids, or yours (I don’t own, excuse me, have any).
SOUNDLESS MERE MATTER.
If that seems a longgg time–like excessive deadtime–I’ve got albums that haven’t kissed stylus SINCE BEFORE KENNEDY, the first one, got shot. Played or perennially un-, when something lingers that long, just eyeballing the damn thing oughta be good (if it’s good f’r anything) f’r triggering the occasional ancient memory. Because music has been so central to my, um, being, my records are the only heap o’ stuff I’ve maintained continuous hands-on control of, and since played and un- are stacked together–what would be the point of not?–a goodly percentage of even the uns have been, and remain, the material and efficient cause of towering mountains, avalanches, gravel pits of recollective blah blah blooey.
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Everything was fallin’ apart, fallin’ apart…dwinking, dwinking: dwunk!…biggest lush I’d ever known and/or loved. She wrecked my car and was bit by bit wrecking my life, yet I woulda done ‘most anything to keep her around. Including give up my own drinking (“set an example”) or have a baby with her (a prospect she often raved about)–two things that ran violently against my grain, ‘specially babying. When she got pregnant (drunk, she could never get her cycle right), a golden opp presented itself, but her choice was to terminate. Femmes fatales are nothing if not capricious.
