Losing My Edge

My impending move to New York has put me in a surprising dilemma. I'm admittedly a music snob, and have always enjoyed going out and buying new albums, be it getting something I've heard so much about from a long time ago but never got, buying something by a new band (while not quite on the hipster-level of "nobody's ever heard of these guys," it's not far off, either), or getting interested in a genre I previously had very little of. This was one of the benefits of being a single grad student in New Mexico. While the pay was far from great (had I just worked 10 more hours a week, I would have been eligible for food stamps; I simply didn't because I didn't have an extra 10 hours a week for a second job), the cost of living in New Mexico was so low, I could easily fix my music addiction. Even in Rio, I generally tried to gobble up as much Brazilian music that interested me as I could, and the exchange rate helped me in this endeavor.

However, New York city is neither Rio nor Albuquerque, and in the comparative sense, I'll be making so little that I really won't be able to just go out and blow a couple hundred dollars a month on music.

I'm actually having a really hard time with this. I realize I can still download music, oftentimes for cheaper than buying a CD, but I always took a particular joy in buying CDs, having something concrete in my hand, seeing the artwork, etc. I'm also somewhat of a luddite and a bit cantankerous when it comes to technology, and I just don't care for what MP3s are doing to music in terms of things like sound quality and the concept of an "album." Plus, digging around a record store and finding some hidden gem, some old used album, or some band that looks really cool but that you know nothing about is far more enjoyable than just futzing around on the internet, playing with MySpace or Allmusic or whatever. Additionally, the fact that I won't be able to buy CDs very often in a city that must have dozens of absolutely awesome record stores is enough to put me into a straightjacket.

And part of the equation is simple pride and fear. While I'm a far cry from a hipster (and in my preemptive defense, besides lacking the square glasses and assymetrical hair, I don't generally flaunt bands and Robert Mitchum/Karen Black movies like hipsters apparently do in their mating calls), there is a particular satisfaction in finding out about a band before other people you know have heard them. Plus, by being unable to stay on top of stuff quite as easily, there's the fear that the music might pass me by, that I might miss out on some great movement or just not understand some great music that I feel like I would like it, but I just don't get it in the end (kind of like Erik about Animal Collective, though I absolutely adore them). And any coolness I might have ever had (which would be very little, if I ever had any coolness at all) was probably in my musical knowledge and up-to-date-ness, so I'm bemusedly dismayed by the fact I may have to now embrace completely full-on dorkiness. But that won't be any different than middle or high school (only without the horrible, mean, cliques of middle and high school), so I can cope with that easily enough.

In some ways, I suspect this will also be good for me. It's actually going to force me to be more discerning in what I pick up, which means I'm more likely to get records that I will listen to for years to come, and not just some album that seems really great at that moment but is increasingly uninteresting and forgotten as years pass (and my collection does have plenty of those in it already; just last night, I was listening at a music store to some samples of stuff that seemed like it would have totally interested me 5 years ago, but now is just boring and unoriginal to me). Still, not buying nearly as much music, and especially not being able to buy as much music in the musical mecca that is NYC, is going to prove to be a tough pill to swallow.