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There’s a (possibly apocryphal) anecdote about Gandhi insisted on meeting representatives of the Crown at the top of a mountain with no road, so they spent an hour climbing. Exhausted, they asked, ‘Why couldn’t we meet at the foot of the mountain?’
Gandhi: ‘I wanted to be sure you really wanted to talk.’
True or not, I was reminded of that story when a saw a poster for a new/ posthumous album from Leonard Cohen, whom I adore. My first thought was, ‘Oh I must buy that when it comes out.’ Then I realised I wasn’t quite sure how you do that these days.
I use a subscription streaming service (Spotify), so I imagine it’ll be there at some point. Maybe it is already. But that is nothing like owning the artefact. It’s such a disposable and transient relationship with the work. The ceremony of finding the thing, selecting it....
Removing it from a sleeve or a case, setting it up, and surrendering to the event, often completely from start to finish, has vanished for me. The ritual has evaporated. I am aware I am 25 years too late to this conversation, but I need a run-up.
Like many, I fell on sites like Napster and YouTube when they emerged. Do you remember how content access exploded back then? Suddenly, everything was available. Any song you could think of, was there. The only limit was your imagination.
And the trade off for this wonderful convenience has been the loss of inconvenience. And I feel like something else was lost in that.
Tune in next week when I’ll be mourning the death of 8-tracks.
