Hey!

After I posted this, I realized I have a new essay up at Herstry: Fully Grown. I wrote this for a memoir-writing class with the wonderful Martha Gies, and it’s about motherhood, dwarfism, and wrestling with my moral conscience. I hope you enjoy it!

AND NOW BACK TO MY REGULAR NOODLING…

My first record

I know the first record I ever bought was a 45–Joni Mitchell’s “You Turn Me On, I’m a Radio”–but my sense of myself as a person with musical tastes was inextricably tied up with the 33, the LP, or the album.

From a young age, I loved the actual physical object of an album. I would scrutinize the cover art and the artist photos, read the liner notes, memorize the lyrics. Everything was a clue. I wanted to understand the inspiration and the personality, to know as much as I could of the people behind the songs. The album cover itself was talismanic, a physical map to the music it held, worthy of intense study. But I didn’t own any until I was 13.

My first Album

For my 13th birthday, my parents gave me a choice. I could have a new record player, or I could accept my sister’s avocado green one with the cube-shaped speakers as a hand-me-down, and receive 25.00 to spend on albums. I went for the records. They drove me to Bozeman. As a college town, Bozeman had a great little store off Main where all the albums were 5.00. Imagine, five LPs, all of my own. I only remember two of them; “For the Roses,” by Joni Mitchell, and George Carlin’s “Class Clown.” They were both revelations in their way. 

When you opened up “For the Roses,” Joni stood naked on a rocky seashore. I was too young to understand the symbolism, how this was a visual representation of how confessional her music was becoming, the artist stripped bare. I did understand what self-possession it would have taken to pose nude, on purpose, of your own volition.  As the possessor of a female frame, I wanted to ward off the unwelcome attentions and expectations it carried. I hadn’t felt like that when puberty first hit in Arkansas, but in Montana it was different, and I layered up and hid away. And there she was, relaxed and proud of her nakedness. Joni would hide nothing from us.

“Class Clown” was a different animal entirely. My sister and I had memorized  Dad’s copy of “Live at the Roostertail,” and probably expected more of the same. Well, this was raunchy Carlin, unfettered Carlin. Gone was the 1962 haircut and the skinny tie, the skits and bits. Carlin was a rebel, given over to political and social analysis in the guise of humor. I learned the entire record by heart in order to shock my classmates with the Seven Words.

And then, tape. Yuck.

Times change, and so does media. But I held on. Albums gave way to 8tracks, which gave way to cassettes. The absolutely awful sound quality of tape didn’t work for me, but my van had a tape player, so tapes it was. I kept my three-foot row of albums around for decades. But then, society went through a time where it was nearly impossible to find new needles. And CDs were there, and they had wonderful sound quality. I began to buy those.

I kept the records long after I no longer had a turntable. And then one day, I asked my husband to take that row of records out of the bookshelf and set it on the coffee table. I told him I needed to go through it. I knew there were treasures in there, and I had to figure out what to save. How would I decide? By artistic merit, possible value, sentimental attachment? How do you rank twenty years worth of musical acquisition? I had no idea where to start. The stack of albums sat for a week. It sat for another week. I never touched it. Then I quietly asked him to take it to the Goodwill.

All of it, every last one. 

For months afterwards, when we visited our local Goodwill, I was tormented by the display of my old records. “Live at the Roostertail,” for which they wanted 5.99. Donna Summer’s “Bad Girls,” for which they wanted 9.99. What bugged me the most was seeing Donovan’s “Gift from a Flower to a Garden.” I knew that, despite the battered edges of the box, it was in wonderful shape. All those lyric sheets were intact. I didn’t even check the price on that one. 

As the months went on, I tried very hard to ignore the record section, but my old records haunted the edges of my vision. And then, they were gone. 

CDs do not hold the same object importance of albums. They are simply the music. I might look at the art for a minute, occasionally squint through a ridiculously small set of lyrics out of curiosity. Now, most people don’t even own CDs. I’m holding on to mine. I have no idea what I’ll do when our cars no longer have players, but I have a few players in the house, and I’m keeping them. For now.

Eventually, I suppose these CDs will all end up at the Goodwill. I don’t think I’ll be the one to take them there. I don’t want them haunting the edges of my vision when I stop in, demanding to know why I let them go.