Moving Our Music

Aside from working on the Ash Grove archive, the Rethink Autism website, records by Florent Ghys and JAS, and a compilation of 1970s Nigerian disco funk, my entire summer has been subsumed by moving.  Cardboard boxes, bubble wrap, butcher paper, packing tape. Apartment hunting, lease signing, check writing, packing, moving, unpacking.  Three months later, I'm sitting in bed staring out my window at evergreen trees.  Evergreen trees!  In my Brooklyn backyard.  I awoke to church bells this morning and knew without opening my eyes that it was nine o'clock.  It's lovely.  The records have been now unpacked and re-alphabetized.  But the turntable is still encased in bubble wrap in its box.  The CDs purchased in the past few months are shoved haphazardly in a shelf.  The older CDs are still in bins.  Bins, I might add, that we never unpacked last time we moved.  In October 2007.  The iPod hasn't been updated since June, and even though I raved last month about rediscovering some of my iPod favorites, this month I'm tired of them and have stopped commuting with the iPod.  I'm reading a novel.  Jane Austen, in fact. Yesterday, our beautiful, rich, massive, vintage Yamaha receiver blew a transistor.  It died.  We already had it repaired once.  This time it might be dead for good. The hulking Vandersteen speakers on either side of it might as well be marble statues.

And so, the rest of our summer will be silent, until we fix the old receiver or buy a new one. Or until we plug in one of our collection of vintage AM radios. Or until we pull out our guitars and revive the family band.

Heck, our home will never be silent.