By Rachel Sauer
Two of my favorite things – nostalgia and online uproar – aligned this week when a Gen Z “Jeopardy!” contestant claimed to be “kind of an old soul” due to her hobby of collecting things that are “kind of obsolete now.”
She was referring not to Betamax tapes or atlatls, but to CDs and DVDs. Quoth Twitter: “feeling my bones turn to dust.”
Now, her statement could have had several motivations:
- To win the game that has been played since multicellular organisms wandered out of the primordial ooze, and that is Say Stuff to Make the Previous Generation Feel Old and Out of Touch, Because It’s Amusing.
- To plant her quirk flag in the shifting sands of culture and cool.
- To get through the post-first-commercial-break round of chit-chat that is never anything but excruciating – for viewers and, I imagine, for “Jeopardy!” contestants, if we’re judging by the amount of awkward nodding, forced laughs and smiles that border on rictus.
- To express fondness for something she genuinely enjoys.
I hope it’s No. 4, because it is, in fact, fun to collect CDs, and I should know. After I heard her statement, I shuffled down to the basement to brood over the multiple huge binders of CDs that I don’t even have the capacity to play anymore.
The words of noted Japanese bummer Haruki Murakami came to mind: “No matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion.”
Preach, Mr. Murakami. I don’t have a CD player anymore, and haven’t had one for many years, but I would sooner drop dead than get rid of those binders.
Some relics of the past, I find, are less relics than touchstones. Sure, I know who I am without them, but they are a tangible connection through time to the me then who contributed to the me now. Plus, I spent a lot of money on those CDs.
Some stuff, despite what ascetic philosophers and Marie Kondo would have me believe, is not just stuff, and I want to keep it.
I think many of us not of a “collecting ‘obsolete’ things that are still available for purchase at stores, come on” age can remember picking at the gift-folded cellophane end of a new CD until it finally peeled away, and remember the sound and feeling of that balled-up cellophane in our hands as we opened the initially stiff jewel case.
Then, remember the feeling of poking down on the teeth of that black plastic spindle and the gentle pop at the CD came loose? The feeling of poking an index finger through the plastic center hole of the CD and securing it in the tray? Pushing that bad boy in and hitting play?
That ritual preceded many of my most memorable moments, though often beginning at the poke-on-teeth-finger-through-CD step (broke reporters don’t buy a lot of CDs).
For example, after my first day of work at The Southwest Times-Record in Fort Smith, Arkansas – three weeks post-college graduation and as dopey and clueless as a turtle ambling onto a highway – I came home, popped Isaac Hayes’ “Hot Buttered Soul” from the case, hit play, and lay on the living room carpet, staring unseeingly up at the cottage cheese ceiling, for like an hour. I still remember getting up to hit repeat on “Walk on By” three times, because my stereo was cheap and didn’t have a remote.
Supine on carpet, staring at ceiling, music playing was my default position in the year that followed, and all the ones since.
So sure, I haven’t played the actual CD of “Hot Buttered Soul” for probably 15 years, but I can’t consider it some relic – not when it connects me so strongly to who I used to be.
But I also don’t want to be so glued to the past that I think everything was better then. I’m able to have tens of thousands of songs on a phone that fits in my pocket and that’s nothing short of a technological miracle. I don’t have the words to express how much I love it.
I just sometimes miss the tactile satisfaction of the poke-push-play ritual, is all, and the holding-my-breath anticipation as I peel cellophane, still ignorant of the sonic joys that await.
The feeling usually passes, though, when I lie on the floor and ask Siri to play “Hot Buttered Soul,” and she obliges with that first snare drum crack that’s as familiar as my own heartbeat.
It’s soothing until I remember I also don’t have a DVD player anymore.