On Browsing by Jason Guriel

Author:Jason Guriel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Biblioasis
Published: 2022-09-11T00:00:00+00:00

Second Spin

A few years ago, the 1980s band Felt began reissuing its early, out-of-print albums. Each one comes in a box with a remastered CD and a seven-inch vinyl single. Each dangles assorted lures like buttons and a poster. They’re not cheap; at $50 a pop, these reissues are basically bait for nostalgic grownups with an income.

But when I went on Amazon to source a cheaper version of the band’s first two albums—a twofer CD I’d owned and sold in grad school—I discovered the disc was going for more than $1,200. I refreshed the browser. Twelve hundred dollars.

Many things once thought worthless—vinyl records, Brutalism—have grown in value. The internet, which leaves no take unturned, has been predicting a compact disc comeback for years. After seeing what my lost Felt CD was now selling for, I began checking the prices of the CDs I’d held onto. A solo album by Kevin Rowland, of Dexys Midnight Runners, turns out to be worth $100 to $200 on Amazon. A couple Alex Chilton discs fall within the same price range. I was pleased but scandalized too; I’d been so negligent with this treasure.

My CD collection had fallen into disrepair. I’d never completely kicked the habit of buying compact discs. They’re cheap, after all, and still accepted into iTunes. (I haven’t updated our MacBook with whatever came after.) But from time to time, as a cash-strapped PhD candidate, I had to carve out and liquidate parcels of my collection. The survivors followed me through several moves and acquired scratches. Cracks inched across their jewel cases. (A beloved box of Oasis singles, which quoted Benson & Hedges packaging, fell, and shattered at the hinge.) My CDs lost their dedicated housing—those bygone towers with the horizontal slots—and wound up on shelving, bunkered in my basement. They were no longer even alphabetized.

In David Cronenberg’s film Videodrome, a media scholar named Professor Brian O’Blivion, modeled after Marshall McLuhan, has created an archive of videocassettes. There seems to be a cassette for every occasion; each contains a recording of O’Blivion holding forth. The collection, in other words, is his cloud. He has backed up his soul.

Reflecting on the ruins of my own maimed, semi-dispersed, and not entirely worthless collection of physical media, I realized that some small part of myself that I’d externalized—which I’d made material—had been abandoned. Betrayed.

***

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.