I hate you Regina Spector (not really).

Community Events

Home

A while back I went into JB HiFi in Geelong, in the hopes of finding a particular song to play at my Grandma’s 80^thbirthday party. After a quick and unsuccessful search through the shelves and computer-system for Glenn Miller’s ‘I Dream of Genie with the Light Brown Hair’, the kind store-person directed me to the Geelong Regional Library.

I liked that very much.

It reminded me of a scene I saw in TV show, where one of the characters joked that technology was cyclical. And perhaps it’s true. And maybe the way we access music, like climate change, is cyclical (KIDDING). Maybe after iCloud comes (L)iBrary.

I love CDs. This fact, combined with an unfortunate lack of knowledge regarding ‘downloading’ and ‘streaming’, means that I have a modest but satisfying CD collection. I keep them in my lounge-room in a CD rack, which I found (after much searching through furniture/CD/music shops) at Ikea. Ikea is apparently the only modern establishment that still sells CD racks. Maybe I need to move to Sweden – I think we’d get along.

Just like my Grandma, I am slightly wary of computers. Now that I have this very small computer due to leaving my larger one on the roof of my car (see a previous blog-post for details) I am even more wary of storing precious things like music onto it.

But mainly I just don’t like the idea of ‘downloading’ or ‘streaming’ music. I don’t want to ‘stream’ music. I want to listen to it (yes, you may be picking up on my aforementioned lack of understanding about the whole ‘streaming’ thing). But still, I just want to listen, and hate the person who wrote those amazing songs for the simple fact that I didn’t write them. I hate you Regina Spector (not really).

I know it sounds like I am trying to demonstrate that I am ‘above’ downloading. It sounds like I am taking the musical higher ground. (Actually, it probably just sound like I hate lovely songwriters for no good reason). But that’s not what it is (the no-good-reason-hating part is true…). I am pretty what it is, is actually a deep-seeded selfishness that presents itself in the form of not wanting to share music.

And by ‘share music’, I mean share my music. I am quite happy to share yours.

As I have articulated and inferred to in many previous bloggy posts - I am an unacceptably and outrageously sentimental loser. Nobody is as sentimental as me. I can form the same degree of attachment to my grandma’s old necklace as to the egg-cup I bought at the op-shop yesterday.

And I mean this in a good way Grandma (who am I kidding my Grandma does not read my blog).

Basically, I don’t even want you to borrow my CDs because you might try and burn them. Again, not because of copyright stuff. Copyright Shmopyright.

Basically… I don’t think you deserve it.

I just don’t think that you have the right kinds of happy-feelings when you hear those songs. I don’t think should get to ‘own’ it without also getting the cracked CD case that is cracked because you left it on the roof of my car outside JB HiFi. I don’t think you have the right kind of story to ensure that you love the CD like it your own puppy/baby/Macbook Air.

Yes, I know. It’s good to share music. Michael Franti is right – everyone deserves it. But still I can’t shake this selfish feeling.

I could console myself in knowing that if you take my music, then I become part of the story of ‘you and the music’. I.e. ‘That time Kathryn lent me this amazing CD and it changed my life and I am now a better and more sentimental loser because of it all”.

But I don’t. Sorry.