I began my downsizing yesterday by unloading some vinyl to my friend, the guitarist Andy Wiersma, at Harold Moore's. Among the records was Elliott Carter's Sonata for Flute, Oboe, Cello and
Harpsichord with the intellectual Nonesuch cover. I used to go to sleep
listening to it in college, and sometimes stare at the artwork while under the influence.There were the early 70s ECM records which played on the turntable which sat on the amp which sat on one speaker on the floor of the closet, as I wrote my McGill masters thesis in the tiny flat on Avenue Lorne I shared with Theresa.
I wrote poems based on the tunes I was hearing: one of the joys of my later life was meeting Eberhard Weber and Jan Garbarek, and sharing some of those poems with them.These were records I'd brought with me, from Montreal back to Connecticut, and then to Britain when I moved to London in 1977. There was also some Ives, from the same time, and some lovely Savoy jazz collections I'd picked up early in my stay in this country. It's a cliche to call it the background music of a life; it was part of the foreground of my life, a palpable part of it.
I wasn't a fanatic, nor an anorak. Oddly, I learned this week that one of my teammates on the freshman
football team at Wesleyan, Skip Wood, had passed away. I still have the
first Earth Opera album which I bought from Skip, who had the biggest
record collection I'd ever seen, probably in 1969. I know this because
the sleeve boasts the words 'Skip Wood Record' and a control number, written in large
letters with a magic marker. It saddens me to think that record too will be sold off soon; my only link to Skip will be gone.
I felt a great sense of loss, of time that will never
be recovered, and the pressures of change brought on by circumstance,
not time. Even
though I don't have a turntable, and haven't listened to the vinyl in
years, when I sorted through them, taking them from the wine carton in
the attic, holding them and reading the liner notes, I felt a warmth
emanating from them. I could hear and see the passage of more than four
decades of time. And while I still listen to the same music on CD, I
don't feel that warmth. I don't hold the cases and feel as if they're
alive the way record albums were. Listening to a CD is more like a
business transaction than a communing ritual. The feel and look and
sound of those records was the first thing I thought of
when I woke this morning. I felt a great sense of loss. Goodbye old
friends.
