Things We Lost in the Fire

also known as the day I learned how to add links in essays

I fear I’ll alienate people now that I’m 50 with my Andy Rooney-esque (strike 1) rants about how the world is. But I’ve held these feelings for quite some time now, years, decades, I’ve been old since I was 4 or 7, verging on old man shakes fist at sky opinions for decades. (Simpsons reference, strike 2).

The internet has robbed us of a lot while it’s upped our access to porn, personalized murder threats on social media, an unstable amount of information and current events arriving at warp speed and beloved animal videos that almost make up for all of it. We get things too easily.

So much of the world, of what mattered to so many of us, before the internet, was hard to find. You had to be there. (Strike 3 for the obviousness of this LCD Soundsystem reference) You had to go and find it. Mistakes were made along the way. Those mistakes make us too. Time was spent looking for things, the journey was also part of it. (Strike 4—I sound like a high school guidance counselor. There’s new rules in baseball so I’ve extended my strike count.)

The summer I was 13 was a seminal one, for music, friendships beyond family and school, a sense of my own interests, independence and what was to come. The same day I listened to Metal Church for the first time is the same day I listened to Lou Reed for the first time, hanging out in a Volkswagen bus in the parking lot of the Rusty Rudder in Dewey Beach. The first time I listened to Yellowman I was on acid at a party that ended with a bunch of us running from the cops. That summer was the one where everything came fast, listening to the Germs and Jesus & Mary Chain on tape cassette in a moldy basement room in a parking garage, seeing The Lost Boys in the movie theater with summer friends, punks, hippies and metalheads, groups that usually didn’t mix but when one is found in the land of beach culture, solidarity is essential.

We used to hear about albums, legendary albums that blew genres up and doors open and minds to the moon. If you were lucky someone might make you a tape, or you might end up in some weirdo’s house listening to a rare copy. Otherwise you wouldn’t hear it, just about it. All these moments, these discoveries, they also include the people and places, a soundtrack to a life.

The effort, that’s what makes us, not the consumption, that’s the easy part. Our epic consumption and the accompanying disregard for the value of the work to create it is just one aspect of how we’re cannibalizing ourselves with convenience. There’s never enough because we’re not satisfied. That’s the point. But there’s always something that can be next. Instead of next, what if it was enough?

Check out Bandcamp, it’s a website where bands sell their albums and merchandise. On the first Friday of every month, like this upcoming Friday October 6th, musicians receive 100% of the profits of their sales. This isn’t an ad or sponsored and I don’t know anyone who works there, I’m just trying to put something positive in here instead of bitching about our unsustainable society where people can never be paid enough for their work because we need so much stuff since we live in a spiritual capitalist wasteland where we’re purchasing ourselves into a burning planet with 1% overlords on the moon. Just trying to keep it light. I hate Spotify and think musicians should get paid. Go see live music, it’s satisfying! And remember, if you don’t pay for music online, especially for living artists, you’re helping us live in a world where musicians don’t need to make money because they are trust fund kids, a grim notion indeed for such an essential expression of humans.