I was about to drive my friend home after watching a movie. Before buckling my seatbelt, I reached across to the passenger’s side and pulled something small, square and plastic out of the glove compartment.
“Is that a CD?” my friend asked, astonished. While opening the jewel case, I confirmed that his eyes weren’t deceiving him. “That’s wild,” he said. “I can’t remember the last time I saw someone use a CD.”
I slid the disc into the car’s CD slot and buckled up. I wasn’t surprised by his reaction. My millennial peers and I have cycled through so many ways to enjoy media in our (relatively) short lives. Now, in the age of streaming, all of the old analog ways can make you seem like a Luddite, or a hipster focused on maintaining a retro aesthetic.
I’m not a hipster and I’m not reluctant to embrace change. Quite the opposite, in fact. As a lover of media, I appreciate streaming options. Music streaming platforms give listeners cheap, unlimited access to millions of artists. We have access to films we never thought we’d be able to see from countries we’ve only read about. And e-readers allow us to hold in the palm of our hands more books than ever.
From an artist’s perspective, digital media opens doors in unprecedented ways. Indie musicians don’t have to wait for a label to sign them before releasing music to the wider public. Authors can self-publish with just a few easy online steps. And independent filmmakers don’t have to shoulder the incredibly high cost of putting a film in theaters if they can use streaming as an option instead. I think this is fantastic! It’s created access that we should continue to expand on.
But I do think something has been lost.
When I lived in Accra, Ghana, as a teenager, I would get to school early so that I could buy a chicken sandwich from a man all the students called Brah Ema. He would grill chicken thighs over an open flame, chop them up, put them in buns and slather the whole thing with barbecue sauce. I loved those chicken sandwiches. Every morning before school I would eat one and read a book.
One of those mornings, I was reading my copy of “Born Confused” by Tanuja Desai Hidier while chowing down, sloppily, and I spilled most of the (extremely saucy) food on the book. For months, the book held the aroma of that Brah Ema chicken sandwich — barbecue sauce, the smell of the grill’s char, and chicken fat.
Now, almost two decades later, when I hold my copy of “Born Confused,” if I close my eyes, I swear I can still smell it.
I believe that objects hold stories. With every piece of physical media I own, I have a memory of when I found the exact DVD I wanted in a bargain bin, or of loaning a CD to a friend so they could burn a copy after they heard it in my car, or of unwrapping a book that my friend bought me because they knew I would love it. So many of our experiences in the world are ephemeral, and these physical pieces of media are anchors that hold our experiences here so we can go back to them as many times as we like.
Beyond the micro, personal level, I think there are large-scale reasons to encourage people in the practice of owning physical items. They act as a historical record — a snapshot of the time in which they were made.
For example, Disney changed their 2002 animated film “Lilo and Stitch” to omit a situation in which the titular character, Lilo, hides in a dryer. I understand why they did it — encouraging children to play in household appliances isn’t great — but it does bring up a larger issue.
The scene was changed after the first edition of the DVD was released, so the new version exists on Disney+ and in subsequent editions of the DVD. That’s why we have editions — people sometimes should make changes.
There’s a typo in my first edition copy of “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.” I don’t think the publishers should be forced to recreate that mistake with every subsequent printing. But, with so much media only existing in digital formats, things can change constantly without most people knowing, and without there being a cemented version of the artist’s original work. Alicia Keys’ cameo in Usher’s Super Bowl LVIII halftime show began on a sour note (literally), but the official NFL version of the video has the note edited to be pitch-perfect.
Not investing in physical media is actually a genuine threat to the historical record. Obviously, Keys’ ability to hit a single note is not the most pressing part of our history, but all of these small things add up to what could eventually be bigger challenges. Like digital textbooks that can be altered to include or omit whatever the publisher — or the government — decides at any given time.
I’m not unaware of the many drawbacks of being an owner of physical media. Packing for a move is a nightmare, buying CDs and vinyl is far more expensive than paying $12 a month for Spotify, and there’s the issue of where to put things when space is one of the most expensive commodities today. And, as I mentioned earlier, digital media enables more independent artists to share their work without having to go through gatekeepers who often don’t know what audiences will respond to.
But I think there has to be a balance. I checked an e-book out of the library and I liked it so much that I bought a paperback copy. I saw that one of my favorite artists had a vinyl version of an album I really liked, so I made that the one physical purchase I made of their work for a while, but I still stream their other music every day. We need to find the happy medium between convenience and posterity. Between access and memory.
I was recently confronted with one of the most difficult aspects of being a collector of physical media — what would you save in a fire? For most people it’s a hypothetical question, a thought exercise about what we value most. For us in Southern California, it’s a real and present concern.
I’m lucky that I was not directly affected by the devastating Palisades or Eaton fires, but I did voluntarily evacuate out of an abundance of caution. As I shoved clothes into a duffel bag, I had to think quickly — what was I going to take? At the end of the day, bulkier items won out over my DVDs, CDs and books. I took my first guitar and my framed college degree instead of the “Veronica Mars” DVD box set I had signed by Rob Thomas or my beloved fragrant copy of “Born Confused.”
Leaving them behind was the right call for me and I don’t regret it. Coming home to them (blessedly, all intact) did, however, solidify for me that I wanted to continue my practice of owning things. They are what makes my home my home. My house smells like my books, looks like the kaleidoscope of DVD cases on my living room shelf, and sounds like the CDs I’ve been carting around with me from place to place since I had my first Discman with anti-skip protection.
So, even though my friends sometimes tease me for being dorky and old-fashioned because I still own a Blu-ray player and bring a travel CD wallet on my road trips, I remind them that my collection is a mosaic of history and memories — and that they can feel free to borrow from it any time they want.