Always Too Much Stuff

So, I'm piling through a stack of records - my crack - and I had this flash of a thought. It was a voice in my mind, one I clearly do not listen to enough, saying to me something plain, simple, and honest. It said to me, as me, "I don't need that." It was while looking at a very nice copy of Frank Sinatra's Where Are You? lp. I have had it for several years. Now, at this stage of my life several years could be between 5 and 20 years ago. I know I have had this one fewer than 10 years. But several of my Frank lps have the small, vintage, gummed, return address labels of the previous owner, those of a young woman who lived at one point in Washington DC. I like to think she was young. Back when this lp came out, young women still did listen to this kind of stuff. So I imagine her as thus, although she could have been middle aged. I imagine she could have even, since it was DC, been a young black woman with sophisticated tastes and aspirations that reflected away from the nearby segregated south, so she listened to Frank. But I do think she is now dead. I bought this stash of Frank lps at a thrift shop in Boston several years back, and normally I would, and typically do, leave them. I know I have owned this title before, many years ago (definitely more than 20) when I was younger and would wash dishes to Frank lps on the Zenith hipster hifi console that I had waaay back, and got rid of not too long ago. I had the inner wisdom chime through on that one too, and it was time. However, lets get back to this Frank lp stash. I found them in a Goodwill - all with the same address label - which is a dang good sign that the owner went tits up. Or to a nursing home or assisted living dump, where the will to live has a stunning half life. That is how it goes. As it happens in these cases, the surviving family or, sadly, some social workers, throw the lps in a box and haul them away to the thrift shop. The reasons, places, and everything involved with our former owner buying this lp is lost. I have her name. And somehow, I do know she got from DC to Boston and brought her lps along. Her lps ended up on the floor of a Goodwill, in wonderful shape, when I found them. They couldn't have been there more than a day, as vinyl in thrifts, even back however long ago it was, get trashed pronto. I'm sure this was about 6 years ago. I was looking for a distraction. But back to that fucking voice. I really need to listen to what it tells me. It is right. I don't need this lp. I haven't listened to it more than a couple of times since I got it - this second copy. I did listen to it - my first copy - for a good run when my wife and I lived in a little rented house, that was very cozy, and horrendously cold in the winter, and had a small fireplace that you really couldn't burn anything in lest you asphyxiate, and where I watched a woman sit in her car and inject heroin from the front porch. I really liked it there. It was a nice place and time, and it seemed like every day had some opportunity hanging outside for both of us to run into. And I would stack Frank lps when I got home from work and do the dishes and clean up and get ready to go out that night and do something. That is why I bought these Frank lps again, and have kept them in my now much-larger collection of records. If I heard them I could close my eyes and be right back there. The voice is the prick that tells me I don't need to have the lp to do that. Any of them. I have been selling them off of late, to used shops and people, and giving away a few. And, yes, getting a few. I always will, I think, but they are really losing their appeal, and hold on me. That voice is right. The lp in the pile I went through, right after Frank, was a Herbie Hancock Blue Note comp, and I don't really want that either. If I were honest with myself and the voice, and even whoever is reading this, I don't need any of them. It isn't a digital vs analog thing. I am - we all are - going to end up like the dear young lady from DC. All of this shit we have will go somewhere. We don't take anything with us, and I am now understanding that we don't even get to take anything with us before we actually leave. They don't let you bring stuff like that into the hospital. You can't fit that in a retirement condo. You do not even want to. People who try, or insist they will, are nuts. I may be, or have been nuts myself. But I am now not a nut job, and that voice that speaks to me of the reality that clashes with my tomorrow-never-comes pile of vinyl. A nut's voice says to buy several copies of the same lps and keep them all. Forever. No, I and my brutal voice aren't nuts. I know it's right, and I think I am going to say goodbye to the Frank lp. And a few others. Truth is I shouldn't leave that job to someone else. But saying goodbye to a clean Frank lp somehow got hard for a while. It still is, so I am setting it as a goal for this summer. It will take a while to let go of this hobby-turned-unwanted-behavior, and it will give me something to write about. So, ultimately, our DC lady's lps will end up in a store or thrift in Minnesota somewhere this year. What a globe trotter this one has turned out to be! Maybe the new owner will be in town burying a family member like I did, and take it home on a plane to someplace he or she has gone off to. It's occurred to me that there could've been some other middle man. Maybe some college kid picked it up in DC, moved to Boston, and when leaving their sky-high priced apartment after graduating, and moving on to their new life, donated it. It's funny to imagine. There are a million stories in the naked city, but I still think my DC gal is dead. I'm pretty sure of that. And if she's trying to keep track of how she had an impact on the world in small positive or negative ways, or both, then here's to you, darlin'! Her name was Susan M from Washington 16, DC.