Lost Art

I’ve been doing some spring cleaning, doing the annual cull of worn-out sweaters, unused trinkets, and crafts that will never be completed to relieve the burden on my all-too-small storage space. I came across a box of old electronics — power sources for obsolete devices, computer speakers the size of bricks . . . and a whole bunch of CDs that I haven’t listened to in a long time. I had the moment of fond nostalgia for the time when sweeping displays of vinyl, then cassettes, then CDs were a status symbol. The time when a weighty CaseLogic in the back seat of your car offered your passengers the chance to be their own jukebox and get a glimpse into your soul. Ah, the bygone age. With the rise of MP3s, physical media have lost a lot of their value and importance. Where CDs used to proudly sit on display in impressive tower racks, they now collect dust in closets.

Ah, well. Out with the old, in with the new. I won’t completely dump my physical collection of CDs until I get a car stereo that can plug into my MP3 player. But in the meantime, I can rip the CDs in the massive bible of Alternative Rock I unearthed and relive the glory days. It was fun lifting out my lovingly cared-for copy of Ten by Pearl Jam and recalling all that it meant as my first CD ever. (After all, it was bought back when you could scratch a CD just by looking at it funny!) Especially pleasant was the memory of making mixed tapes for friends, and remembering exactly which songs held which significance. I tried to explain this to a pre-teen human I know, and just got a strange stare.

Damn kids. They don’t appreciate anything anymore.

The art of creating a mix tape of songs is forever lost. That makes me a little sad; it was such a short-lived, yet skillful craft that allowed you to convey a brilliant range of emotion. There were tight constraints on the form; thirty minutes to a side (if you were very lucky), which meant you had to carefully calculate as you held down “play” and “record” at the same time. I recall timing blank space between songs down to the millisecond to be sure that I’d be able to fit as much music as possible on that gold-labeled Memorex. After all, few things were more annoying than having to fast forward through blank tape before it flipped over.

But it wasn’t just maximizing play time that mattered. Choosing just the right songs was really what it came down to. No matter what the message you were trying to convey — cheer up, I like you like you, I miss you, take me back — it was a handcrafted valentine that took time and effort. Now there’s software that does all the work, and 700 megabytes is an awful lot of breathing room, especially if you burn MP3s. The compilation CD conveys none of the loving, handmade feel of the lowly blank cassette tape, vulnerable to erasure and impossible to copy without diminishing quality.

The art of it was that you had to be choosy. It’s not like nowadays where you can download anything in three seconds, legally or illegaly. You had to own the music you arranged in a mosaic of poetry and performance. Nick Hornby said it best: “A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do.”

It’s sad, really. Just the same, I’m still not going to stop using iTunes any time soon . . .