Selected (Probably Ambient) Works

Tomorrow I promise we’re getting to Invisible Cities but after yesterday’s post I camped out with Aphex Twin sets on Youtube to celebrate my new copy of Selected Ambient Works 85-92 arriving and I want to mention something there before moving on. I started my record collection over from scratch recently which has been incredibly freeing, as strange as that might be to say. At face value the point of collecting anything is to catalog your own evolution alongside the cartographical exploration of any given medium’s vast continent, so starting over can feel like slicing out cross-sections of your own portrait. And with records specifically, your collection can quickly become a cousin of family photo albums in the sense that flipping through them can conjure enough stories to fill a memoir, and because they almost-necessarily contain an incredible number of moments when your musical taste still had braces and thought Scott Stapp was a rock god.

For quick context, my collection was sitting at around 1,000 records (which isn’t huge by any means) when I got divorced back in 2017 and as part of the settlement we were supposed to split it up 50/50. For years after, though, I didn’t have enough space in my various apartments or the money to move 500ish records from Denver to LA, and the futility started to feel symbolic. The past just didn’t fit in my present in the specific way I wanted it to and that wasn’t going to change. One funny thing about learning self-advocacy from particularly dark shit is that the first few years afterwards can sometimes fill with revenge fantasy daydreams where you appear like the Count of Monte Cristo (rich as hell for no discernible reason etc) with a self-constructed Rube Goldberg machine meant to disassemble everyone who hurt you while the camera never looks away. But the truth usually ends up being something much simpler: you learn (often painfully) that your only mission in life is to love everyone and tell the truth, starting with yourself, and figuring out how to do that is a sloppy affair that at times exists outside the realm of conventional therapeutic wisdom. You just kinda have to get out there and get your jersey dirty trying to be better at showing up, and in this case that meant letting myself do what I actually wanted to do, which was move on.

It probably would have taken me even longer to get there if one of my best friends Tim didn’t tell me last year that it was OK for me to just leave it be and start over, so this is partially just a big shout out to him. But since I decided to do that I’ve been loving collecting records again for the first time in 5 or 6 years, and I even started a new Discogs account so I can catalog in historical peace. The first wishlist exercise I’ve given myself is to gather as many Aphex Twin records into my musical granary as I can, and the arrival I mentioned at the beginning is the first of many over the next few months. We’ll talk about him at some point down the line, but for now here’s a link to my page and if you’re into Discogs too please link up with me so we can talk shop.