I've been yacking away on this blog for a while now, so I thought that I'd let you in on how I put these tiny essays together. It's not as simple as pulling it out of my ass; I do research, try to get my facts straight before sending it out. I'm not a historian or an archivists. There are no footnotes or bibliography, although I do site anything that was formative or I borrowed from. Essentially, the opinions are mine, although I have worked to develop them.
Frankly, my methods are old school. Over Thanksgiving, my daughter revved up the Roku, sending me into Netflix land. It was fun; we watched not only the rescued Orson Welles film, 'The Other Side of the Wind', but also the excellent and informative documentary about it. maybe I'll get serious about using it one of these days.
Truth is, I like physical media; it feeds the hoarder living inside me. Nothing nicer than a huge library covering walls, immaculately organized. Having been there to some degree, there are serious problems and drawbacks not easily detected from a distance. Volume needs space, a big collection needs not only shelving but containers, data basing, archiving. Things spiral quickly.
That said, if I write about something, chances are that I own it. For instance, in the eight part series that I did on rock music soundtracks, I owned ninety percent of the movies and the soundtracks discussed and saw the rest unless specified. Same with the series on samurai films. If I like something or someone, the tendency is to collect everything until money runs out or the quality lessens.
The one thing learned in art school has stayed with me to this day; you are entitled to your opinion, but be prepared to defend it. It can't just be what you like or hate. There should be reasoning, maybe a theory, context, connections to other similar works. At least that is what I try to do in this blog. there are a lot of ideas floating around in my brain, but if I can't articulate them coherently, what good are they?
Like everybody, I have my tastes, the things that I'm drawn to, the things I avoid. It drives my wife crazy that, during the boring pauses in a football game, I'll switch over to the Hallmark channel to watch one of their soppy movies. She can't understand that I don't actually like the programming; I'm fascinated at how close they stay to the script, right down to the music cues, yet manage to find micro-variations on the same theme. And it's very successful, too; other channels are copying them.
Despite what I've written here, I'm not a hoarder. In fact, I would argue that my closets and shelves are immaculately ordered in a logical way, enabling me to find anything with a simple cross check to a data base. It comes natural,; I was even the head library much of my senior year in high school due to someone becoming ill and a budget shortage. Jest because I'm a big guy doesn't mean that I don't love learning and knowledge, culture and art.
Storage became enough of a problem that around five years ago I started an aggressive downsizing project. I already used a double case system for all DVDs, CDs and Blu Rays, cutting my shelf footprint by half. Literally every digital media has at least two discs; the trick is to find a way to put together similar titles. Music is easy, usually the same artist. Movies can be tricky once you get past series like James Bond. I try to group by genre; two samurai flick, two giallo flicks. It gets esoteric, always some oddballs and strays, but clustering them together on shelves helps.
Shelving is another issue; after a while, every wall can seem covered. I had eight custom made cabinets created years ago, when we first moved into our current house. The first six helped cover a long windowless wall on either side of a fireplace. Room for books and pictures on top, space for DVDs on bottom. Later, when our daughter moved out, two shorter ones were added to the bonus room when I claimed her bedroom as the Man Cave. Mostly Blu Rays reside there.
CDs are smaller but have a tendency to proliferate like rabbits. Before you know it, millions seem to be teeming everywhere. The double case system works, but you still need to put them somewhere. Decades ago I bought a slightly flimsy plywood shelving system. This summer, having to take it apart to paint the room, I spent hours reconstructing it. Not sure it could be replaced now that physical media is supposed to be dead.
All this dead physical had a purpose in my life; for the first time in human history, you could own archival quality copies of various art forms that had a life span longer than your own. I don't expect to pass these down to the next generation; my daughter's tastes are her own, closer in movies, farther away in music. But at the time it seemed vital to be able to have ownership; what it was that I was owning, perhaps less important. In retrospect maybe it was a huge marketing ploy.
A digital dinosaur, I don't trust streaming media, the very definition of 'here today, gone tomorrow.' It requires a trust in the corporate state to still honor contracts, to be ethical, to have taste, to be fair: in short, for the media conglomerates to behave opposite to the way they have historically. One day, the internet will be like water or electricity, charged by volume. Streaming will have us by the short and curlies then.
A curmudgeon, I know, but a valid point. If the political state ever joins with the entertainment industry - it already has, in case you haven't noticed - censorship will be effortless. Simply remove all streams that are contrary to the party line. Imagine a 'Fahrenheit 451' future, with rebels not only clutching books, memorizing the texts like Homer, but also DVDs and Blu Rays, CDs and LPs, even VHS and Betamax. Absurd but possible, the way things have been heading lately.
The digital world has added to the woes of physical media grumps like myself. For instant, back in the day, I owned thousands of LPs. Frankly, I was glad to get rid of them. While beautiful to look at and great for rolling joints, they also scratched easily, were bulky and heavy, a real bitch to move. Over time, I either abandoned them or replaced gleefully with CDs. Sure, first generation compact discs often sounded bad, mastered for records instead of digital, but it took real effort to damage them. They had a significantly longer running time, too.
The invention of music compression was typically both a blessing and a curse. Sound quality suffered, especially in the early days, when file size was an issue, necessitation extreme compression ratios, flattening the sound. Add a pair of ear buds and you have the perfect recipe for horrible audio quality. Yet it has become the dominant music format, convenience over quality.
Not to completely put down the lowly mp3; I've certainly listened to my fair share, not only backing up my entire collection (a daunting task) but having to admit to scarfing up a fair number while it was still possible on the net. I went after new musical genres,; soundtracks, and lounge music primarily
I get why the new generations have reverted back to long players, regardless how many audio engineers explain how vinyl can't reproduce sound as well as, say, uncompressed PCM. A couple of factors are at play, all making it a more active listening experience. Holding the big album cover in your hand, a piece of art if done well, actually being able to read the liner notes. I miss that. More importantly, the physical act of putting the stylus in the groove, the limited listening time required. Twenty minutes lets you actively focus on the sound before drifting off. Too often the sheer length of a CD, up to 80 minutes, makes it background music.
The real joy in my life are 5.1 discs, expensive but fantastic. After being shocked at the prices of most speakers, I purchased an inexpensive but good system from Circuit City as they were closing stores. I go up in audio quality while everybody else goes down, seeming satisfied with mp3. Same with Blu Ray, although I'll pass on 4K.
Books are the older type of communication, and I've loved them all my life. It was tough finding them when I was younger, searching musky stores with odd proprietors. Now you can search Amazon, find anything in minutes, even the stuff they can't get. A world of third party sellers are ready for a deep dive, extracting those really obscure nuggets. Not as much fun, but certainly more thorough.
Books are also heavy and bulky. If you like hardcovers, when available, like I do (not rich enough for first editions), it can get to be a problem. I still managed to weed out at least 500 volumes, mostly titles that would never be read again. Being over sixty, my eye sight struggles navigating some of the small type found in paperbacks, but I keep some anyway. It's authors I value, their stories and thoughts, not the paper.
All this media is supposed to help me have educated opinion, at least in theory. There are plenty of on-line resources, and there are a few that I go to religiously, such as the DVD Savant and Trailers From Hell. As to why I need to have an opinion on all these topics, leave that up to the psychologists. I'm too busy navigating my way through art and culture.
Just letting you know that, while these are my opinions, I just don't shoot from the hip. There are connections behind everything, maybe even a unifying theory. That why I write this blog; the act of changing thoughts to words is hard, but it clarifies ideas. I may be wrong, I may be right, at least I got there honestly.
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