When I was a teenager I knew exactly who I was.
My identity was defined by the books I read, the television shows and films I watched, and, most of all, the music I listened to.
Browsing my CD collection would tell you almost everything you needed to know about me. My passions, my interests, my obsessions – they were all there in the lyrics to my favourite songs. My friends and I pored over the liner notes, searched music magazines to find interviews with the artists we idolised, and obsessively debated the meaning of songs lyrics. The identities of my heroes and their music influenced how I saw myself in the world – and given that 1990’s UK music was dominated by misanthropic, angsty young men, you can imagine what sort of teenager I was.
When I came to the US, and left much of that collection behind, I also left behind so much of who I was. I found myself in a foreign land, where nothing – the culture, the politics, even the language, was quite the same.
I wasn’t sure who I was, but I knew I was different.
With the move of physical media to digital media, my US, stripped down, CD collection was never replenished. And though now, thanks to the magic of zeros and ones, I can access more music than I ever could have stored in jewel cases in my bedroom, the connection I feel to music has changed. Gone are the days of poring over lyrics, obsessing over album covers, thrilling at the discovery of bootlegs or interviews. Gone are the intimate relationships I always felt I had with artists who were speaking directly to me. Music now competes with every app I have on my phone (and I try and have as few as possible) and for many of us our music collections are on a few different computers, hard drives, flash drives, or servers. Our music is everywhere – yet, somehow, nowhere. It's easier to access any song I could want, but it's simultaneously harder to find the time; whether finding the right digital repository to access, paralysis analysis over which song to play, or simply far too many interruptions when everyone is expected to email, text, post, and communicate all hours of the day. It was so much easier when I could lie on my bed listening to my one Smiths album all the way through. Limitations are freedom.
So now, here I am: realising that over the last 12+ years, a core part of who I am has been withering.
Music is no longer central to my identity.
As I watch my children grow, I wonder how their identities will be shaped by what they read, see and hear. I find myself wanting to be able to pass onto them the things that made me who I am, in the hope that that I can help them find as much pleasure in the culture of their youth, as I did in mine. I choose not to accept the cliche that no kid wants to listen to his Daddy’s music (any Gen X'er remember listening to the Beatles as a teenager?), and that even if it seems uncool to them, they will give it a listen. Plus, since as their father I do have the responsibility of helping them create their memories (and, thus, their identity), I might was well expose them to as much awesomeness as possible.
So although I cannot pass my actual CD collection on to them, or to the world, I can use the zeros and ones of a blog to capture my thoughts and memories about those amazing books, tv shows, films, music…and moments that changed my life.
All feedback is welcomed – with the caveat that I don’t profess to be an expert on music history (I might not even be an expert on my own history anymore), but that doesn’t really matter. The emotions are as real today as they were then, and the emotions and the influences they had on me are the only things that are important. Invariably my views will be different to some other people’s, but I hope at least they’ll be thoughtfully constructed.
So without further a do, here is The Media That Changed My Life: