Part of your wisdom portfolio

(Before you start, remember you must read this poem aloud. Come on, don’t be shy. You’ll enjoy poems much more when recited, for they are meant to be. Okay, okay, at least murmur it sotto voce.)

The Pleasure of Vinyl Records and Other Things That Age

Why is music more charming on a vinyl record
Does ageing together create some mutual accord
With time come scratches and squiggles on its surface
Like creases and wrinkles on our hands and face?

Is it because it needs us to load, position, and start
Go back, turn it over and listen to the second part
Many a time lift the needle back to the beginning
Does all the effort lead to mutual connecting?

Every disc develops character and personality
Each time we play it, there’s subtle originality
Is it one more pleasure of hearing an LP
It’s ours and unique no one can disagree.

The groove, needle and speaker are faithful fair
To sounds from drum, string, or throat through air
Our senses and minds work with waves, not digits
Prefer the unbroken sound to samples and bits.

Give me old jeans, broken-in shoes, well-worn tools
Give me houses with wood, carpets and house plants
Not for me cold glass, unyielding steel, hard marble
Antiseptic, unchanging, anodyne, bad for my soul.

What we need is something like what we are
Close to our heart and not the intellect’s star
We may admire what’s eternal and unchanging
But we’ll never love them like things gracefully ageing.

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