Gone But Not Forgotten

Sold my entire CD collection to a rank stranger from Craig's List for less than a buck a CD today. If you have told me a few years ago that was going to happen, I would have laughed in your face. "Ha!", I would have said.

But things have changed. I've taken a (quite possibly permanent) shine to condo living, and massive CD collections take up more space than you might think. And my iPod, which fits in my pocket, can hold every last song that I chose to retain from said collection. Sure, the sounds a little bit worse on the iPod, but I'm no audiophile (as opposed to Evan Fraser, who is, in fact, a Celtophile, but that's a different story). I don't mind the iPod sound at all. And sure, it's fun to look at CD covers and read through booklets. Hell, I used to pore over those booklets with a fine tooth comb (it's a metaphor). But fact is, they've all been sitting in storage for a few years now.

I want to get rid of my storage space, and in general I just want to have less things to keep track of, so I sold 'em. Besides, the value of CD's gets less and less every year, I was probably lucky to get the price I did. Guy owns a used CD store in Maple Ridge, so my discs will get scared all over the Ridge/Meadows area.

I'm definitely a little sad about it. CD's used to be my main currency. One of the most terrible days of my life came years ago when Cameron Thomson and I were roommates in New Westminster, and our place got broken into, and all my CD"s were stolen. I had a big collection then, but my current collection eventually came to dwarf the original. I used to go into CD stores and if I had a vague sense something was supposed to be good, I just bought it. Found a lot of my favorite music through random purchases, and also ended up owning CD's that I never ever listened to.

It hasn't been an obsession in quite some time, and ultimately the passion was for music, not for shiny discs, and I still have the music. Plus, it was such a monumental task to organize the CD's, make sure discs and cases and booklets matched, and load anything into the computer that I wanted and wasn't already there, that I was almost relieved to see 'em go. Still feel obligated to be at least vaguely wistful and reflective for a day or two. Maybe I'll walk down to the seawall tomorrow and stare out at the ocean with the hint of a tear in my eye. After Subway, of course.