I have learned a lot of things about life and myself from stubbornly owning an always expanding physical music collection in a disposable forgettable streaming world. Hundreds of records, tapes and CDs inhabit our home. Alongside them lives an abundance of audio equipment. I never played sports, or went to bars and clubs, or overly fretted my appearance or what I drove. I was not ‘outdoors-y’: no hunting or fishing, no boats, ATVs or snowmobiles. I have never been concerned with owning fad gadgets or flashy watches and jewellry. Aside from a love of getting high I bought music and wanted a nice stereo. Chain stores when they existed, dusty musty second-hand shops, online auctions, thrift stores; all held possible the chance to obtain another coveted release or piece of equipment. Owning physical music is like owning interactive art. Growing up on the concept of buying and collecting physical music has taught me not to see such things as disposable and fleeting.

How many grade nine kids in 1994 would have been trying to convince their parents to let them buy a new turntable? I developed a huge love of underground metal and punk thanks to college radio shows, and most of this music existed on vinyl only. Vinyl was also a half to a third of the price of a CD at the time as well. It was a no-brainer to me but they resisted. I travelled downtown to a now long-defunct record store and purchased my first vinyl LP to prove the format was alive and well outside of the mall. ‘Content with Dying’ by Chokehold. Proof. Denied. I crudely repaired an old turntable with a homemade headshell. It had belonged to my stepmother years before, and that was my adolescent record player. My parents finally relented and bought me a turntable as a high school graduation present.

I can sit and listen to music the same way one would sit and watch TV. I have found patience. Presence. Spirituality. Catharsis. The ability to balance desire against appreciation. Years ago I spent hours archiving vinyl to CDs to have those albums available in the car. That binder of CDs got me through residential treatment. They took phones away but I could have a CD player.

My OT session was difficult today. It involved hanging out with an ambulance, and as one mental thing often leads to another before long I’m fighting the tears and losing. The scream of a mother losing a son to a sudden traumatic death will not be forgotten. As I smoke a joint and ponder how sometimes I just want to scream a scream straight from the depths of hell and destroy everything wrong with life in a fit of righteous indignation I’m left with the answer I have always had for my negativity and frustration: music. By no means am I discounting my wife and family; I would not trade either for all the riches of this stupid world. It’s just that music is a huge part of what helps me work through the oppositions to presenting a better version of me to those I care for.

My record collection represents and documents a lifetime of experiences that I hold dear. Even residential treatment. Some music can come across as negative but spiritually it represents the hope that that negative can be processed and worked through. The soundtrack to true hopelessness is not musical, it’s silence. It harbours no inspiration to do or create.

To some my labour of love may seem a dated relic of consumerism but to me it is more. I will always prefer seeing the painting over a picture on a screen, and I will always prefer my records, tapes and CDs over using a bluetooth speaker to stream someone else’s files off of a server.