This CD, as I begin to write these words today, is exactly 20 years old.
It’s never been played. It’s a virgin.
What happened?
I found the CD during a recent archaeological dig in the basement. It wanted to be found because, just a few days prior, a colleague had given a presentation about techno music, complete with a live demo of his mixing skills. While none of the gear and tools he showcased were entirely unfamiliar to me, it did get me to wax nostalgic about the crudeness of the tools and methods we used to create our own series of mixing projects back in the day – and we didn’t use turntables or CDJs either. We relied on audio files while my colleague mixed tracks live via his Spotify account. He publishes his mixes on YouTube, we distributed ours via CD-R. Does anyone even use those things anymore?
I’m starting to feel old. Things have changed.
This particular CD was the runt of the litter. It’s that extra disc (four, actually) with the cracked case that never found a customer. It’s that disc I wanted to gift to someone or slip in somewhere when I got rid of a larger batch. I remember the project as clearly as if it was just 20 days ago. How could the last two decades have flown by so quickly? I shudder to realise that in another 20 years’ time I’ll be as old as my father when he died.
And so the CD continues to hang around. Contrary to expectations it still plays.
There are many others like it in the basement: CDs that have never been listened to by me (or anyone else), DVDs of movies I have yet to watch (or see again), and documents to be scanned. There’s material for art ideas that have yet to be realised and tech that’s getting more vintage with each passing year it waits to be rediscovered.
The issue with dated media and technical matter became more palpable when I realised that yet another birthday was looming. Every year is getting shorter, I never seem to find the time (and all those other Floydianisms permeated by the clichéd stench of a mid-life crisis). Why am I even bothering with this stuff? Wake me up when September ends!
I needed to jettison ballast.
There be many monsters hiding in the dungeon.
