I joke about having midlife crises often. I refer to this project as my third such episode. But what if a mid-life crisis isn’t a crisis at all? What if it’s a necessary checkpoint on the march to the grave? A time to stop, catch your breath, see where you’ve been, and assess what you want to do before you stop for good. The clichéd male version involves a second or third wife and a fixation with virility and much younger women. What if the cliché is wrong? What if a midlife crisis is a necessary refueling of your batteries for the next leg of the journey? It would explain why a sudden dive back into limited edition vinyl and live shows from indie bands has sparked a new wave of creativity for me. I love introducing these records to my kids. I love holding the sleeves in my hand and noticing new things in the liner notes. I don’t feel younger when I play records. I’m not a nostalgia junkie who wants it to be 1995 forever. I’m glad to be every day of my current age. It’s just time for me to look back, correct a mistake that I made is selling these records and share the experience.
Too much of our lives is spent tempering our passions — trying to be sure we have an acceptable and healthy interest in our hobbies. No matter how excited I am to discuss it, there is a chance that the person I’m talking to is silently wondering why I haven’t been committed.Mid-life is when you say “Fuck It. This is who I am. Deal with it!” So why not just commit and go even deeper?
I planned on focusing on 32 records and deciding if the chase was fun and if I had the money, that I’d go after more. I chose those 32 records because they had the best stories behind the autographs, they were the ones I listened to the most, or they supplied the soundtrack to a significant part of my 20s. Looking at the full list and knowing there are actually 97 records on it, I can’t escape the thought that I should try to get them all. Now is my signed copy of Sports as important to me as Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness? Not really, but both albums are a part of the whole story, so if I’m going to do this, I gotta go big.
