When I tell others about this project, I say the same thing — “It’s my third mid-life crisis….blah, blah, blah.” When I started this a few months ago, it was true. The stories of the people that bought my records have been a pleasant surprise and a valuable addition to this project, but it’s still just a vanity project that allows me to look back, reminisce, and re-live my youth under the twin guises of “art” and “teaching my daughter about the music I loved in the format I liked best.” (Before you read the next sentence, just know that I have not ingested any drugs, I’m not currently in therapy and I haven’t had any alcohol) Today, I realized that I’m using records as a sort of physical representation of who I was from 1992–2002. Putting the collection back together is like completing a jigsaw puzzle of who I was for a decade and adding it to shelf. They weren’t horcruxes — they were the connective tissue of my identity.
As I shared earlier, I spent a good portion of my youth obsessing over two things: music and baseball. Buried beneath this was an identity crisis that I’ve only recently come to terms with. I was African American child growing up in the city. Compared to many of my friends, I had it pretty good. I had great parents, I was supported in all of my academic endeavors, and I was smart — I never struggled with school work (until the demon class known as Organic Chemistry hit me square between the eyes during sophomore year of college.)
There was another side though — doing well academically didn’t get me accolades from the kids on the street that I grew up with. They constantly teased me about how I “talked white”. Top it off with my parents (rightfully) doing the best they could to keep those kids at arms length for fear they’d grow up to be bad influences, and I never got a chance to fit in with them. Between fourth and ninth grade, I went to six different schools in six years — both public and private. I never had time to get close to any one or have a peer group for years. When I finally got to high school, it was a private, predominantly white school and the identity crisis intensified. Everyone just noticed my black skin, and I didn’t fit into their stereotype of a black guy. I was only 12 when I started high school (I skipped kindergarten) so I was small. I loved baseball, so I never played basketball, and although I liked football, I wanted no part of playing against guys who were already shaving. My music tastes at the time was R&B and top 40 — Prince, Michel Jackson, Run DMC, etc. Most of my classmates were hard rock fans. I was physically, musically and socially an outcast.
My high school cafeteria had a jukebox and every morning, someone would play Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’. At this point EVERYONE had Michael Jackson fatigue. The songs on the Thriller album had been overplayed and then overplayed some more. The minute the opening riffs were heard, someone would jump up, unplug the jukebox and receive a round of cheers. A few minutes later, someone would plug the jukebox back in, and with the reset, would play Led Zeppelin’s ‘Rock & Roll’ which was much better received.
I spent the next few years trying on various music identities — listening to Led Zeppelin, Eagles, AC/DC, Van Halen (and Van Hagar), Huey Lewis & The News and any other bands that I heard other students talking about. For a while, I dressed in OP shirts and Converse All-Stars. Then I tried to look like a Cosby Kid in oversized shirts and Z. Cavariccis. I wore penny loafers with pennies in them. I wore docksiders. I bought cable knit sweaters from The Gap in bright colors with matching socks. I wore Benetton shirts. I tried on every identity looking for a tribe. I tried to blend in as much as possible and only succeeded in not knowing who the hell I was. I still cared what people thought and it was paralyzing.
College brought me a new start and the chance to start over on my terms. During my college years, like many kids, I realized that I didn’t need to try to fit anyone else’s expectations of me and I could just be myself. I devoured Rolling Stone and Spin magazine in those years. Every reference to a band I’d never heard made me seek them out at the record store. (Spotify, where were you in 1990?) I had a pretty diverse musical background now, and a desire to just hear what else was out there. I listened to Velvet Underground, Hendrix, Ministry, Allison Moyet, Yaz, New Order and anything else that caught my ear. The girls I wanted to date brought new artists and authors into my world. The girls I actually did to date led me to artists that I now cherish. Suddenly, my bookshelf was something that any FBI profiler could look at and make a pretty good guess about my personality.
Our books, magazines and record collections (really anything we proudly collect or display) become physical manifestations of our personalities. How often when visiting someones place for the first time did you take a glace at the CD/record collection or browse the books on the shelf and make an instantaneous judgement? What we own becomes us. Maybe that’s why I want my records back. I want my daughter to understand who I am, but I also want her to take bits and pieces of my collection to create her own moasic.
Or maybe this really is a midlife crisis.
