“A library is not a luxury, but one of the necessities of life.”
-Henry Ward Beecher

I.

I used to work at a Borders book store. A few years ago, amidst the boom in E-Reader sales that would heavily contribute to the company’s eventual downfall, a few of us underpaid but loyal booksellers were debating why PDF files could never, ever replace reading an old fashioned, paper and glue book.

“You just can’t replicate the feel of holding it in your hands,” we said, “The touch of the paper in between your fingers. The sometimes religious act of choosing a bookmark. The smell of aged paper… there’s nothing like it.”

I told my co-workers that I would never want to give up my personal library—stacks and stacks, row upon row of coffee table hardcovers, mass market paperbacks, QPs, picture books, graphic novels, and all the other junk that takes up most of the physical space in my small but expertly occupied little corner of this world.

What would I put on my shelves if I didn’t have any books?

The analogy is helpful when trying to explain to people why I hate buying music off iTunes, why I insist upon assigning each album on my iPod (a.k.a. the white necessary evil box) with the proper album artwork, and, most of all, why I will never, ever replace my CDs.

II.

Like most 25-year-olds I know, I’ve had to box up and move the entirety of my worldly possessions several times— nine times, to be exact. Moving to college, coming home for the summer, moving back to college, moving into an apartment, running out of money and moving back home, etc. The most effective, simplest way to find out what you truly, deeply value as a human being is to move somewhere. If you’re like me, you’ve probably noticed that a good 90% of your cardboard boxes say “Books”, “DVDs”, or “CDs” on them.

Uproot yourself enough times, and you’ll recognize there’s a ritualistic art behind throwing your crap onto a shelf. I’ve organized my music in strict, traditional alphabetic order (Don’t listen to iTunes, David Bowie goes under “B”), in order according to genre with sub-section alphabetization, according to mood and style, according to release date, and, most haphazardly, in free-association, stream of conscious random order.

Not once, though, have I ever just wished that it would all just co-exist in some digital cloud where everything is automatically ordered, labeled, and separated with no room or patience for improvisation, creative-thinking, or a little controlled chaos. What if I want to put Your Arsenal before Viva Hate? What if I’d rather order my Beatles records chronologically? The Internet and its unlimited access to music everywhere has offered us more albums and songs than we could ever possibly want… and infinitely fewer ways to experience them.

III.

You won’t ever see it on air, but each year, there’s a Grammy Award for Best Recording Package. It’s meant to honor the hard-working men and women who’ve devoted their entire careers, in many cases, to designing those little booklets you toss out right before sticking a CD in your giant black wallet. Ideally, they’re the ones responsible for coming up with a visual accessory for what you’ve stuck in your car stereo or dragged over onto your mp3 player. What do you first think of when I mention Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band? Bet you $10 it’s the album cover. I imagine it must be unfathomably insulting and/or depressing to see your entire craft denigrated into the copying and pasting of a 200x200 Google image search result. What a strange feeling it must be to know with certainty that no one on planet earth will be doing your job in 50 years. That would freak me out, I think.

IV.

I’ll never forget the day my external hard drive died. Just like a loved one that goes quietly in the night, it just simply ceased to be one evening. No warning signs, no heads up. Just poof, gone in an instant. At the time, I was certain that the illegal downloading gods were punishing me for all my reckless torrenting and blatant disregard for copyright laws and time-honored capitalist traditions of paying for something I didn’t own. Let's be clear, I did not own a significant percentage of that music... not strictly because I hadn't paid for it, but because it just simply didn't belong to me in any traditional sense. Somebody else bought that CD in a store, took it home, imported it onto their computer. They were the ones who decided whether it should be a 320kb mp3 or a loss-less WAV file, whether they’d bother assigning proper Artist and Album information. They made the choice to put those files online for the rest of the world to share. Millions of people, all listening to the same rip of Blur’s Greatest Hits. After a while, it starts to feel like we’re all eating with the same fork.

V.

I don’t want to replace my CDs because I like having them. I like the space they take up, the time it takes me to go through them to find the songs I want to hear right now. I like the time that went into them, the sensation of flipping through a lyrics booklet, reading the liner notes. I like asking girls I like to write something underneath the black plastic jewel tray, only to rediscover their messages years later and instantly remember what it felt like to be attracted to that one particular person. I like that they get all scratched up, how they warp and bend in direct sunlight. I like knowing that, over time, they’ll degrade and fall apart. I like knowing that the soundtrack to my life will grow old and die just like I will. I like coming into a person’s house and looking through their CDs. I like buying them used online for pennies plus shipping and handling. I like shopping at record stores and calling it quits when I can’t carry any more of them. I like those fifteen seconds it takes me to open a jewel case, pull out a compact disc, set it inside the 5-disc changer, and push play— it makes me feel like some kind of alchemist. I like accidentally stepping on them. I like brushing the dust off a forgotten favorite. I like boasting to people younger than me that when I was a kid, I rode my bike for half an hour just to spend my week’s allowance on a new CD. I like listening to The Cure’s Disintegration the way I would have had I been there right when it came out. I like tearing the plastic off a new one. I like the badge of courage that comes with wearing out an old copy of something you love and having to go get another one. I like that my music library doesn’t exist inside the same onscreen, light gray frame that everyone else’s does. I like that my music library lives, eats, and sleeps in the same room that I do. I like that it remembers every time that I’ve cried myself to sleep or made out with somebody cute or studied overnight for an exam. I like my CDs because they’ve stuck with me when others haven’t. I like leaving them facedown when I can’t find the corresponding jewel case. I like that they’re the bratty, less-experienced younger siblings of vinyl records. But most of all, I like my CDs because they give me something to put in those cardboard boxes—all my dreams, my fears, my memories, my hopes, and my sneaking suspicions about my own life.

VI.

Are you a proud owner of hundreds of compact discs? Do you refuse to sell your soul to the digital devil? Hit up our comments section below, tell us why you’ll always prefer owning and listening to music on CD.

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Brett Warner

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