Tasks of the Plutonic Variety

Taking advantage of this time to digitize all of the vinyl I've carried with me over the years-- a ton (sometimes it has felt like a ton) of records. I am determined to transfer all of them to digital and be rid of them. I am going to be doing the same with a lot of my books. I have been lugging around boxes of books that I haven't read in years and will never read again. They have got to go.

I am feeling other revolutionary tendencies. If I weren't tied to the PhD program, I would be looking for a job in another city probably. Of course, a geographical "cure" for ills is usually ineffective for the transparently simple reason that, no matter where you go, there you are.

Then there will be the enormous photo project. I have to get into the thousands of photos I've taken since about 2009 and catalog, tag, organize etc. Fortunately, Lightroom makes this easier. But it's still a daunting proposition. I have just been importing photos by date taken and I have to kind of guess several times to find particular photos. It amazes me that I can even find photos of a particular cactus species or whatever. One system I have been using is to cross reference to photo albums I have uploaded to FB. But I want to get it all squared away. Some memories will be landmines probably. I'd also like to start offering some of my photos for sale. 

The digitizing vinyl project (as well as the eventual digitizing every CD and cassette tape also) is not just a simple media management exercise. It is also a deep mining expedition into my past. Every one of the albums has resonance with some phase of my life. Currently, for example, I'm transferring a box set from ABC Impulse called The Drums that my mom got me when I was 12 and that was my first exposure to Sunny Murray, Rashied Ali, Milford Graves, etc. I really was pretty much just a Buddy Rich fanatic at that age, with a little bit of Elvin Jones. I remember playing the excerpt from Sam Rivers' Hues of Melanin for some friends of mine and having them basically say what the actual fuck is this? 

I know every note of every solo on all three records. Back at that time, of course, we generally had maybe 10-12 records total, so we played the jeebus out of them and wore them thin. 

Going down deep and repeatedly to bring back parts of myself-- or to bring back invaluable information. This was the main purpose the old crazy heroes went to the underworld anyway. To get something from way down there that just was not available up here in the land of of the shining sun.