My Life in Recordings

 

What to do when you come to the end of your list, there is nothing on the day’s calendar and it’s raining outside? Why, organize your 1500 CD’s, of course! At least, that’s the choice I made, as I continue to buy CD’s without space to shelve them. So I combined two projects— finding a place for my VHS tapes that I can no longer play (took them to the Jewish Home for the Aged where I hope some residents are enjoying old I Love Lucy shows!) and thus, freeing up shelf space for the overflowing CD’s I had stacked around the room. Some three hours later, all was in order and wasn’t that a fine feeling?

 

And going through my collection again was a trip back through my musical development and interest (also waiting for me in the 1,000 plus LP’s I have in the basement) and a reminder about the sheer volume of music that awakened—and much of it continuing to awaken— the thousand plus selves living in any human heart/body/mind. And when you consider that the music that was captured on discs of some sort is probably just .001 % of the music made each day and in days past, it’s a staggering affirmation of the human capacity to organize sound and the human need to hear it and sing it and play it and dance to it. 

 

And though some artists on the 2500 plus recording collection I’ve amassed are people whose names I didn’t recognize or don’t remember (particularly the world music part of the collection), the vast majority of them are people whose names and styles and sounds I recognize. Out of curiosity, I counted the leaders of the jazz CD’s and came up with 206 (out of some 850 jazz CD’s) people who live with me in my home and bring me so much happiness. And that’s not counting the side musicians (mostly bass players and drummers). 

 

To get to their level of musicianship and be able to record as they did, there’s one things I’m sure of— they didn’t spend hours each day organizing the things in their house! So even though I will never be in their company on people’s CD shelves, it’s back to the piano I go!