A search for an obscure CD turns into a reflection on memory, permanence, and why the tangible still matters.
My finger traced the stacks of CDs at a thrift shop a couple of weekends ago. I’m looking for an obscure CD that’s not in print anymore and can’t be found on any streaming services. The chances of finding it aren’t high, but the thrill of the hunt spurs me on.
In the second stack, my hand froze when I saw Zwarte’s greatest hits album – a Midwest rock band once dubbed the Grateful Dead of the Midwest. I pulled up Spotify to check whether it was still there, and to my surprise, it was. I bought the $1.98 CD anyway.
In the 1980s and early ‘90s, I went to see the band play often. A couple of friends, John and Shawn, usually went with me. All three of us could sing nearly every line of every song from their first album. Stumbling across the CD brought back such great memories and confirmed something I already knew.
The tangible still matters.
I say that as a digital guy. I’m all in on streaming. But I’ve also purchased the rights to listen to albums that way (especially through iTunes back in the day) and they’ve since disappeared from the platform for various reasons. The same goes for paying subscriptions for streaming movies or TV shows only to have my favorites disappear.
That’s why I’m coming back around to the idea of physical media, at least in part. I don’t want to store it because I don’t have room for it, so I’ll be very selective. But in some cases, especially when the band or movie or television show wasn’t widely known or received, I want the copy I can hold in my hands – just in case.
Books feel different to me. I rarely reread them the way I replay albums, so I’ll stick with e-books. But music lives with me differently. Albums mark seasons, friendships, long drives, versions of myself that no longer exist except through memory.
And sometimes, memory needs help.
I think about finding my dad’s old letters and the feeling that runs through me when I read them. It’s like hearing from him all over again. The emails we exchanged are gone now, buried somewhere behind lost accounts. But the paper remains.
Maybe that’s why the hunt for CDs matters as much as the music itself. Not because a CD sounds better, or because owning something physical is authentic or trendy, but because tangible things have a way of waiting for us. They linger long enough to surprise us when we least expect it, pulling a memory back into the present, reminding us who we were, and sometimes, who we still are.
