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Vinyl Categorization as Mental Therapy<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Along with my first Covid infection (I know, late to the party) I suffered a few weeks of extreme mental fog. I couldn\u2019t think straight but I could <\/em>enter my record collection into Discogs<\/a>. My collection of LPs had been albatrossing me for decades. It consisted of cheap LPs I bought as a teen in the 80s, a crate or so from an Iowa garage sale in the 90s, and what remained of my parents\u2019, brother\u2019s, and sister\u2019s collections. In other words, the collection was Not Me \u2013 it was Old Me who listened to Cat Stevens, my brother who listened to Foghat, my sister who worked out to Jane Fonda, my parents who knew Jesus Christ was a Superstar, and some family from Iowa who was into polka. I cataloged each record, about 450 or so, down to the pressing. Then I got rid of 250.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In fact, I sold back the albums I bought for .99 cents in 1984 to the same record store<\/a> in 2024 for $1.25 (store credit, naturally).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Others I gave away at Halloween to children who did not know what LPs were but who sensed, somehow, that their grandma or gandpa might appreciate one. (Plus, a neighbor who was excited to do the Jane Fonda Workout. One never knows, do one?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Other LPs went to a farm upstate. Maybe Woodstock (IL). They are happy there, I\u2019m sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I could not speak words good with the Covid brain, but my vinyl was housed in a pristine database.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Vinyl as Anti-Enshittification<\/a> Hobby<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Pre-me-getting-Covid, Kyle Chayka wrote about quitting Spotify in the New Yorker<\/a>. Of the metastasizing black mass of A.I and algorithm on Spotify he said: \u201cListeners become alienated from their own tastes; when you never encounter things you\u00a0don\u2019t<\/em>\u00a0like, it\u2019s harder to know what you really\u00a0do<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I did not quit Spotify. I thought, then, that I could still search out what I wanted on Spotify. It was just that they had made it less easy to do so and much easier to let the AI \u201cDJ\u201d take over. I thought I could, in other words, make Spotify do what I wanted it to do. For example, play a Stevie Wonder album. Let\u2019s say Fulfillingness\u2019 First Finale<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Philosopher Michel De Certeau<\/a> wrote about what he called \u201cpoeisis\u201d (because there always must be an obscure Greek term). Poeisis is a kind \u201chidden production\u201d that manipulates the consumer, leaving them no \u201cplace in which they can indicate what they make<\/em> or do<\/em> with products of this system.\u201d Production begets another kind of production which is consumption<\/em> \u2013 \u201ca way of using products imposed by the dominant economic order.\u201d De Certeau is hopeful. He argues that humans manipulate products to their will and bend them to purposes not intended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But it may be that human pathways cannot be trod in digitally enshittified meadows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shedding the constricting skin of my old vinyl, I re-created myself with new vinyl. I started with Stevie Wonder. Spurred on by the podcast The Wonder of Stevie<\/a>, I bought the five early 70s albums considered his Classic Period<\/a>. (Also: Syreeta<\/a>.) I found the place in my heart where Fullfillgness\u2019 First Finale<\/em> seemed to have always dwelled. I found it by holding the album, placing it on the platter, playing each side, listening to it. I only state the obvious here because it felt like the path I was making away from Spotify and back to myself. Those very quotidian actions: holding, placing, playing,<\/em> and listening<\/em> are actions I had not been doing with Spotify. Listening to Stevie felt like returning home; no longer alienated from my own tastes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Or, in the more technical terms of De Certeau, I \u201cre-appropriated the product-system\u201d with the goal of \u201ctherapeutics for a deteriorating social system\u201d. (That is, I made myself feel more human by taking control of the products of an inhuman system.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Vinyl Personhood<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I am a vinyl person now. (Reader: insert clever callback to Descartes\u2019 glass person here.) For those interested, my skeleton is Audio-Technica AT-LP 120X, Sony STR-DH190, and Triangle BRO3 passive speakers. My flesh is made of 70% Blues, remaining parts soul, funk, bluegrass, country, and The Cure. When I spin a record, the analog signal gets a boost from the amp and travels over copper wire to the speakers. Nowhere is this logged in any corporate cloud. Nothing suggests further listening of similar things. There is one receiver: me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/jgourlay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Mom-and-Dad-Halloween-1024x782.jpeg\")
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