My Place of Refuge
I still spend quite a few hours during the week in a record store listening to the old man there tell me his stories. Like the time he met Springsteen or how his shop was once filled with customers. Sometimes I walk in and he says “I got something for ya” and I just sit back and listen to whatever he feels like spinning.
When I was a kid there was nothing I looked forward to more than going out and getting a new record and to this day I can still feel that same rush when I find what I’m looking for. I’d buy the record when it came out so there was an anticipation of not knowing what it was going to be like (unlike nowadays when you can stream it or download it months before it’s even released). There was also a code of conduct you had with vinyl’s: if you treated them with respect you would get the same in return. You had to clean them just right, you had to know how to drop the needle down in just the right place, you had to put them back in their sleeves, etc… You had large album artwork to stare at (so you could read the license plate number on the car on the back of the Abbey Road cover [LMW 28IF]), the lyric sheets were like a book and I read every word to every song as it played, never skipping ahead.
Now everyone should have a place of refuge, somewhere where it was just them and God. Mine was the living room, my record player was the alter, the music was the sermon and I would worship it there for hours upon hours. There was a long time in my life when it got away from me, I switched to CD’s so I could listen to them in my car, my record player wound up in the garbage and like everyone else I moved along without stopping to think about it. I’ve since learned a valuable lesson and that was to be aware of the rituals that make me happy and to not fix what’s not broken.
So these days I’m one of the few stragglers in the store, rummaging through stacks of records waiting for that one cover to jump out and grab me. Every so often an older lady will come in and say “Do you have the new Celine Dion tape?” (they mean CD and the owner never corrects them… he gave up). Hopefully you’re like me and you still share that passion for having a relationship with your music.
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