Yesterday morning: arrived at the gym, found the in-house stereo blasting big-hair music. From the '70's, from the '90's, and especially from the '80's. Power chords, overwrought high-voiced male singers. Not generally what I'm looking for first thing in the morning, not the kind of stuff I tend to play at home or tune in while driving. I surprised myself by reacting with a sleepy, smiling, shoulder-shrugging acceptance. For 90 minutes, I figured, I can deal.
This morning, 4 a.m. -- woke up with a particular big-hair anthem going through my head on a repeating loop. (One of the tunes heard yesterday morning, I suspect.) Dragged myself out from under the covers, made the short hike to the loo, dumped the ballast, my inner jukebox cranking out that same number as a wee hour soundtrack. Returned to bed, turned on the light, read for a bit. Somewhere in there, my head quieted down. I killed the light, drifted back off to sleep. Can't remember the tune now, and that's okay by me.
I continue with the slow process of going through things in the house. Yesterday I began digging into something I been avoiding all these weeks.
Somewhere around the age of four, I became seriously focused on music. Seriously, maybe obsessively. Listened all the time, played some instruments, began accumulating recordings. The tally: far, far too many CD's, not quite as many (but still an excessive number of) cassette tapes, and shelves of vinyl. Shelves and shelves. A bigass pile of vinyl, stuff from all over the musical map, some of it classic, hard to find.
Here's an aspect of my life in Madrid that I've come to love: I keep a pretty Spartan living space. Meaning not much STUFF. As opposed to here, where I've had plenty of STUFF.* Enough that the trained-in comfort of having bunches of useful things gradually changed to an increasingly oppressive sense of the weight of all that STUFF, the sheer, space-filling mass of it all. Going through it bit by bit has been... real interesting. Not as in the interesting-times old Chinese curse way. Genuinely interesting, if not always a laff riot.
So. Have brought a bunch of STUFF to Salvation Army a couple of times in the last 2-3 weeks. Both times, a different group of helper-type people waited at the unloading area behind the store. First, a bunch of 20-somethings, all with a similar look -- skinny, not exactly friendly, partyers maybe, with some real interesting ideas of what partying means. I transferred items from the back of my car into their arms, they carried everything to a table near a dumpster. The staging area. One took from me a small gilt clock I'd once been giving for Christmas (a Seth Thomas battery-driven timepiece trying to fit the look of a certain kind of wealthy home, a formal look, not something I would have in my living space, given to me by a well-intentioned someone who had no idea what my living space looked like). He seemed taken by it, fascinated even -- walking with slow steps, holding the object at face level, eyes fixed on it. I got back in my car, as I pulled away I saw him nearing the table, still completely focused on the clock, mouth slightly open. And then they were out of view.
*Me being the product of two depression-era kids, one of them -- She Who Accumulated Great Honking Pooploads of Stuff -- a professional packrat. Not that she lived like a cat lady with rubbish scattered all over the place. Everything had its place, was squirreled away in closets and the garage and the basement, in shelves and cabinets, in boxes and bags and crates. Done craftily enough that any visitor would believe they were in the home of a normal human being.
[continued in next entry]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A final installment of the 'Star Wars quotes' quiz.
Brief, once again. Multiple choice, fill in the blank. As follows:
"You underestimate the power of ___________." -- Darth Vader
a) the dark side
b) vegemite
c) clean living
d) crotchless underwear
e) badgers in heat
"The emperor is not as __________ as I am." -- Darth Vader
a) forgiving
b) buff
c) wasted
d) fashion conscious
e) huggable
España, te echo de menos
rws 7:55 PM [+]
Comments:
You probably already know this, but that vinyl is worth BIG bucks these days. Not like 8-track. Heh.
if i had unlimited time, i think i could make a fair-sized pile of $$$ from all that vinyl. i don't though (and am giving bunchs of lp's and cd's to the local college radio station, WGDR-FM) so will settle for much more modest gain.
(8-track. heh. i was real young then and 8-track didn't even register on what passes for my radar. had my hands full with vinyl and casettes -- trying something else might have made my head explode.)
Post a Comment
(8-track. heh. i was real young then and 8-track didn't even register on what passes for my radar. had my hands full with vinyl and casettes -- trying something else might have made my head explode.)