Letting Go...

Last year, I and my significant other moved from PA to FL with our cat.  It was a huge move and we only had a short time to pack up our belongings.  There was barely any time to through all our possessions, so instead of paring down our collections, we threw it all in a box and brought them here with us.  I never realized the amount of stuff we owned until it was all boxed up and basically took up an entire room.  As I look at the boxes piled against the wall, I wonder why we needed all this stuff in the first place.  It's baggage that I've carried with me from place to place over the years, yet I never thought to get rid of it.  Normally before a move, you purge a large portion of your belongings, so that it makes for an easier move, but when you only have a limited amount of time, it gets hard to make quick decisions about items that you have cherished over the years which is why I ended up just bringing it all with me.  

After we completed the move, we assessed the one room that was totally filled with boxes which contained items considered non-essentials and we came to the realization that we brought too much stuff with us.  There was an entire room, solely dedicated to unpacked boxes.  After spending several hours just opening boxes and pulling out items that we wanted to keep, we realized that there was a lot that we were able to part with.  We made a pile for the local Salvation Army, another for stuff to sell on eBay and the last one was the keep pile.  In the past year, I've sold items on eBay and Etsy such as my partners' bobblehead collection as well as some clothing and a bunch of books I was willing to part with, including my collection of vintage cooking pamphlets.  

For some reason, I'm having a really hard time letting go of my vinyl collection.  I've owned many of these albums since I was a kid and its the one collection that I cannot seem to part with.  Many of the albums were gifted to me, others were found in the bargain bin at the local record store and some were purchased at super cool hip record stores at college towns.  My partner insists that he can get me everything that I want digitally, and I'm sure he could, but I know deep down that I would miss these albums.  I would miss looking at the album covers and reading the liner notes.  

Album art is something that the next generation won't even have a clue about or even understand why it is so important. They were an integral part of music buying.  I can recall spending time thumbing through the record racks, looking for eye-catching album covers that would sometimes play a deciding factor on whether or not I would purchase it.  The art was usually very creative and super cool to look at.  Many album covers have become classics and you cannot think of the music without imagining the album cover in your head.  In the digital age, people hunt for music on computer screens, and album art is often reduced to a thumbnail image, that is if it even accompanies the music.  It's kind of sad that album art is something of a dying art form now.  

One of the very first albums I ever purchased was The Doors, I must have been around 12 when I got that album.  I had always liked their music and was excited to listen to it on my little record player in my bedroom while I danced around like a lunatic.  This purchase began my love of music.  Well, it's not like I didn't love music already, but it was the first time that I actually spent money to get music that I wanted to listen to.   

I remember listening to Breakfast in America by Supertramp when I was around 14.  It was such a great album and reminded me of my freshman year in high school and the people I knew and hung out with.  Nick Lowe's Labour of Lust album is another great album, plus Nick was super cute!  Listening to it reminds me of my friend Diane and I hanging out at the local bowling alley.  She had belonged to a bowling league and I used to just go and hang out with her on Sunday nights.  I would wear my high school jacket and probably wore too much blue eye shadow trying to look older, plus it was the only time I ever tried smoking, thankfully I never really developed the habit.  We would hang out in the lobby and try to flirt with all the boys there while smoking and trying to appear older than we were.  One time we were talking to a couple of guys who were a few years older than us.  We were goofing around and laughing and having a great time until some girl, who knew the guys, came by and gave us a dirty look and asked the guys quite loudly, why they were hanging out with "freshmen".  She said it with so much disdain that it made me laugh out loud. 

 Listening to music from that period brings back all those feelings and memories of people I knew at the time, like that guy in my Science class that I had a huge crush on.  He wasn't the most handsome guy in the class, but he made me laugh quite a bit, and I loved him for that.   On Labor Day my sister and I played ELO's song Mr. Sunshine from our Out of the Blue album, on the last day of summer one year, because we thought it was the perfect song to end a perfect summer.  We must have played it over a dozen times that night, driving my mom crazy in the process.

In the 90s, my boyfriend at the time had bought me an LP of Freddie and Dreamers, because we had seen them on an old tv show from the 60s called Hullabaloo, where they performed.  They did this crazy dance the entire performance (google it, you'll see what I mean) and we used to imitate that dance in our apartment all the time for laughs.  On the album cover, Freddie is captured doing his signature dance. I will never get rid of that record for that reason. 

I also have a collection of Tom Jones records that I just adore.  I was lucky enough to see him perform in the 90s.  It was a fantastic show, and they even had people off-stage throwing underwear at him!  It was hilarious and fun!  Another favorite of mine is the soundtrack from the film A Man and a Woman.  It is such a wonderful soundtrack to a wonderful film, I even had a friend record a CD of the LP for me too, so I could listen to it in my car.  I have adored French music for many years and I was thrilled to find that LP in a thrift store. I could go on and on with the albums and the memories, but I think you get the gist of what I'm saying.  

So far I've sold a few albums, mostly ones that I don't listen to or care about much.  It's easier for me to let go of books than it is my record collection because there are many memories attached to them.  These LPs are as dear to me as much as the memories are.  They are the soundtrack of my life.