I wanted to write about this event in a movie I had seen as a preliminary commentary about the essay to follow, but it has slipped my mind and I am chattering now on screen in the weak hope it may re-emerge. The felt-sense of this reminiscence I can feel right now but cannot access and put into words goes along this line: I am trying to recreate something from the past, something nostalgic — and what nostalgia means is much more complex than a dictionary meaning contains. Nostalgia, I suppose for me, is a returning to the scene of the “crime,” much as we know that some criminals have to return to the the place they commited their criminal acts. It is no longer a curiosity but a fact and part of being human, I guess, as returning to the old neighborhood or being at a high school reunion for a class decades past in one’s youth. I will continue buzzing along here as that ineffable metaphor I was going to use for your benefit eludes me; as soon as I get it, I will stop and insert it into this blog.
As one ages, as I grow old, the old truth holds true, that we come closer to our childhood as we come closer to our death. (In America we “pass,” for me I “die.”) Like Kane, there are several snowglobes in my memory banks, holographically fading in and out, mnemonic human plasma seeking shape, substance and form. I think there is a feeling of recapture and reclaiming in all this, for I would dearly love to possess the phonograph, made in Switzerland, I was gifted with as a child and played all kinds of records on it. It was a mechanical marvel, so well lathed, blue in color, and all parts trued and fit squeakingly well into a self contained case, for part of the joy was in removing the arm and the needle and returning all that once again after play was over. It was compact and well-machined, beautiful machinery, much as we look back at Smith Coronas, Olympias, and Hermes typewriters. In this culture we ride the wild mustang of change, and we are told this is in and new, this is out and passe and like lemmings we follow. I associate to the phonograph once again and I see it as a foreshadowing of what I did in my thirties, admire the stereo system more than play it.
I recall playing Al Jolson records on it, that gravelled voice, a cantor’s voice; Bozo the Clown and some 45s of classical music which I played over and over, some motifs, I imagine, sticking to my germ plasma as a child. It was a wind-up phonograph with a heavy metal device that held the needle, almost as thick as a tapered nail. It did its job well and everything else didn’t matter to my child’s mind. Cartridges and needles, anti-skating devices and all the rest of the gibberish would come later as I tried on some nether level to replay the childhood experience I had as a child before 1950. And now I am repeating all over again: I miss taking out a record from its sleeve, embracing its curved edges between both palms in order to read Side A and then flipping it to read Side B, a forgotten gesture as ancient as holding one’s hands up for mother to wind wool into hanks of wool or being told to get off a man’s fender or playing stoop ball with a Spaldeen.
Of late one snowglobe in mind has been the stereo sytem I had in the 70s. This, as I am reading, was the Golden Age of such sonic components. I remember, on my small budget, reading stereo magazines to create the possible audiophile dream of a system. Finally, I remember buying an AR (Acoustic Research) turntable which is now considered a classic; it was a manual, for I did not mind to get off my ass and change the record. And it was thought that automatic changers dropped records unnecessarily harshly onto the platter — what nonsense, I now think. In any case I paid about $78 for this masterful turntable. On EBay it goes for so much more as people are now returning to re-establish vintage systems. Additionally I read more and paid an exorbitant amount of money, for the 70s, for an Acoustic Research receiver which is now a rare classic. Evidently I had good taste, like keeping a ’65 Mustang in the garage for decades — which I did not do! So I was building my dream system; I always had shit speakers, for bucks were always an issue. Years later I remember discarding the AR only to see it in a stereo store in upstate New York — decades later –going for the same price I purchased it new. I had moved to CDs, like many of us, and that is regrettable. Like Odysseus tied to the mast, I heard the sirens of change..
I went on a lark, for a lark for any old man, which I am, is to reestablish something indefinable, a denial of death, perhaps. All the equipment I bought comes from the 70s and 80s when two channel stereo was at its peak. Going to EBay I purchased a Pioneer turntable for under $50 and an integrated Harman Kardon amplifer for about $65 and then bought a small collection of classical albums, near mint, as they say, for about $65 Ravel, Beethoven, Rimsky-Korsakov, etc. Scouring Craigslist and EBay, I am now seeking bookshelf speakers. All the old names are revisited — JBL, Bose, Kenwood, Acoustic Research, still around after allthese decades. I bought a wicker stand for the components and when all of them are at hand I will read the owner’s manuals and sort it all out; the perfectionism has abated and all I want to do Is play with records and hear some good music. Additionally I am moved to buy some of the dear albums I cherished in the late 60s and throughout the 70s — Revolver, Wildflowers, Mother Earth, Sgt.Pepper, Rubber Soul, Hair, Bridge Over Troubled Water, et al. Reminiscences of Richie Havens, Cream, Blood, Sweat and Tears, Three Dog Night waft through my brain. I gave all them away, you know, like train sets, baseball cards, the memorabilia of childhood. I missed the album cover drawings and the lyrics, in large print, inside. I missed my past, that which I can never regain but that which still abides and resides in me, for the past does not exist — the past is the present, ask Proust, ask Faulkner, ask a highly skilled shrink.
I self-observe myself returning to earlier times perhaps as an attempt to self-soothe who I am, for it is harmless, a hobby with ancient antecedents. I seek not to stave off the advance of change, for change is a consequence of human interactions without any coherent, overall design. Change is human woodpecking. I am into recovery, that recovery which makes one sensitive and overtly feeling and softened by memories which are often overpowering and dearly cherished as part of one’s esential exisential self. It is the essence that precedes existence. In this search for the recoverable past once more I attempt to define who I am.
Leave a Reply