My CD collection is at the foot of my bed and I see it all the time, and when I really begin to look at it, I just see it as taking up space and not really doing much of anything. I go through these fits of getting rid of as many of my possessions as I possibly can. Usually it's clothes and knick knacks from impulsive Value Village purchases, but this time it was the CDs.
I haven't listened to any of those CDs that were sitting on my shelf for years. My CD player is hideous, but indicative of my past (in a really nice way, that is only nice to me because it is mine), decorated with like (lol) Moneen and Napolean Dynamite stickers (lol, which I was so proud of at the time because I got them from a free screening, which up until that point, I had never experienced one and was amazed that they existed and that I got to go to one...and to receive...merchandise!) And the CDs just weren't a way of showing how I valued things anymore. Not the way that they used to. CDs meant a lot to me during high school, it was (and I know this is so obvious), one of my strongest connections to music and really set the foundation for how I approached music as well. To be open to new things and to put a value on music. And I still do value music, very much so, but I don't need to buy and own CDs anymore to prove that to myself.
At first it was easy putting a lot of the CDs in the box, but then there were some that were admittedly really tough and I felt this sinking, dizzying feeling because I felt like I was somehow betraying my relationship to music, the artist, and my past self (who would have died at the thought of me giving up these CDs, it never really made sense to me when "adults" said they weren't into music anymore and I would kind of...scoff in disbelief). But my computer was being really retarded (I was transferring the music from the CDs onto my computer) and was getting me really annoyed and put me in a very "fuck it" attitude, and I put those more nostalgically important CDs in the box thoughtlessly out of wanting to get over my frustration. And looking back on it, I am fine, and I think I was just kind of sad about that somehow these songs, and all the values, feelings and memories that came with them would be gone the instant they were in the box and no longer in my possession. And you know, that's not true.
I gave them to a record store. And the guy who was looking at them made small talk and asked if I was giving up my collection, and I said yes, and he's like, are you putting them all on your computer? And I felt kind of awkward because it's a local music store, and I said yes...and went on to ask if it made him sad to see people giving up their CD collections. And he looked like he really didn't care and was like, no. They took most of it, but there were some albums that they didn't end up taking, and I have to say, I was kind of choked, because some of those albums meant so much to me at one point and had such nostalgic value and sentiment tied up in them and the place I ended up putting them (sigh), was the Salvation Army.
When I was cleaning up my CDs, this was what I found in one of those albums that was the most important to me:
This is the album it was in:
I'll tell you the significance of each thing.
I would say Rilo Kiley is the first band that made music truly fulfilling to me, that showed me that it could truly express what I was feeling and to also overwhelm and complete me at the same time. This album opened up wanting more from music and knowing that I could get it if I just looked hard enough and spent time with it. And with all this came this sort of independence, of coming of age, by making these decisions in taste and defining who you are through choosing what you loved and spent time with. There's just also a bunch of all that teenage stuff tied up in this album, unrequited love, being a typically angry teenager, it was my soundtrack.
The fortune cookie fortunes...if you know me, I put a lot of value into signs - (no one will believe this) - but less so now. I had gotten like insanely drunk at this party and tried to tell this guy who I had a crush on for ages that I did, and got rejected, and of course was insanely bummed out, like (oh god), crying on the lawn kind of thing (overly dramatic person), and my family and I went for Chinese the night after, and those were the fortunes I got. My family and I went to San Francisco the day after and I really didn't expect much from it because I was so consumed with my awful "love life", but it ended up being such a great trip (lol, saw Sonic Youth play and got hit on by A COLLEGE GUY, that was the height of my flattery, but even if that hadn't had happened, the trip would still have been good). That trip also made it clear to me that I wanted to pursue a career in art (lol), and go to art school (not as...lol). I felt like I was at the right place at the right time, and I kind of got over the things I was sad about before I left (lol, as a teenager should) and just felt, as cheesy as the word sounds, but it is true -healed. And I kept that fortune as a reminder that when things go shitty, things get better afterwards (and this of course, is a revelation as a teenager, you always felt like when things went wrong, that things were over, and in a way they are, but of course, something replaces it, you just don't realize it at the time). And I put it in the place that was most important to me to solidify that experience that was so new to me at the time, but is part of growing up.
And this is kind of part of it as well. A small part, and I just wanted to remember it and document it as well as I could.
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