Where Is Sentimental Value Located? (with regard to "The Songs of Leonard Cohen")

[muninnhuginn]

Listening to an old, old favourite on the hifi. It's obviously old it's on cassette (could be worse, I suppose but the ravens have very little on black vinyl and don't indulge in ABBA Greatest Hits sessions that often).

And there's the rub. Whilst out ghetto blaster upstairs was expressly acquired a dozen or so years ago because it had continuous play on the cassette player. The rather newer cassette deck downstairs doesn't have this essential (but never easy to find) feature. So every few minutes we have to stop what we're doing and turn over to the other side. With the ravens' habitual listening patterns this is going to happen at regular intervals for the next few hours/days/ weeks.

There's a solution to this--several even. We could go upstairs and work at the other PC, sit on the posture stool rather than balance precariously on the dining chair that's mainly occupied by feline invader. Short term solution only, doesn't address occasions when we're definitely downstairs, in the car, or otherwise not able to use a "loopy" player (our Walkman can do this too) or a cassette deck of any variety.

Buy a CD then. It's obvious, innit? Go out, or even just hop over to Amazon, and buy a new copy. We balk at this. We've a perfectly good cassette already, so why buy another version? We don't like duplication: it wastes space for a start. And, we can't throw the cassette out, since it's not broken, and anyway--coming by a roundabout route to the crux of the matter--it's special.

Hah! Caught you in an act of sentimentality! accuses the crowd.

Well, yes. Precisely. It was a birthday present, must've been our nineteenth. It was given to us by a friend who also first introduced us to the joys(?) of Len by playing that particular LP to us, a friend who through the inevitable twists and turns of relationship turned friendship is still important. So, where does the sentimental value (can't think of a better term) reside? In the physical object, the cassette that was handed over (almost certainly beautifully wrapped, though we don't remember the detail)? In the content of the cassette, the music itself? Or just in the memories, the first time we heard the tracks (and the associated memories: in London to see Len on stage at the RAH and meeting up by the statue of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (deliberately chosen we're certain to provoke grumpy and snide comments from the ravens to which provocation we inevitably knowingly succumbed))?

If it's the object itself that contains the value, we're probably stuck with duplication (actually we're amazed that the cassette's lasted so long: it's been played repeatedly and was even one of the cassettes that the ghetto blaster with built in taste of its own didn't either "eat" or refuse to play<*>). We do after all have the odd duplicated LP/cassette/CD. Also the occasional duplication on the bookshelf (LOTR's an obvious example, except we're covering different editions and languages in the spread, and Chaucer and Shakespeare (two complete works in each case plus additional single volumes). If it is a value associated with the object (and the number of knick knacks we can't quite bear to part with attest to the fact that there's something to the argument), then oddly the fact that it is a commercially produced, legitimate, copy and not a privately-made copy with a neatly filled in inlay, makes it less important: the (we've only recently discovered the term) mix-tapes made for us are of far greater value because the personal input goes that much deeper.

If the value's not in the object, then it's in the tracks themselves and replacing the cassette with CD, and eventually with some other format, should be no problem. But it is.

Keeping the cassette, ripping the tracks onto the PC and playing them as MP3s on the computer isn't a solution. It's hard work, requires lots of spaghetti across the living room and does not permit of sufficient, decent quality, volume to fill the house from one location.

Doesn't answer the question, either.

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<*>The ghetto blaster with built in critic didn't like Bob Dylan (especially disliking Blood on the Tracks) or Marillion (though that could have been the brand problem, see below). It didn't like our self-taped copies of the radio adaptation of LOTR and used to play them with an irritating deceleration most noticeable through Stephen Oliver's wonderful music: gradually slowing violins were painful. Gandalf was also badly impaired.. It ate Ultravox for lunch and various works of Faure: not a popular versus classical problem. It also disliked particular brands of blank cassette: anything recorded onto a TDK cassette was immediately unplayable. Sadly a number of people preferred this brand so a large part of our pirate collection was pointless. It didn't mind BASF as much, was dodgy about Sony.

We tolerated this beast for about five years, through the end of school and university. It became the radio/cassette that lived on the landing to be listened to in the bathroom. Then Big(gle) rolled on it in his sleep and it plummeted off the edge and didn't survive landing on the coat hooks below (Neither did one of the coat hooks.) Big(gle)'s sleep was not fortunately disturbed in any way whatsoever.

Comments

Not solutions but ..

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

... simplest panacea ... rip the tracks to the PC and burn them to *audio CD* ... carry the CD over to the hifi and put it in the CD player. Put the cassette box on top of the hifi where you can see it every time you look across ... leave the cassette in the cassette player but play the CD ... it will have some sort of morphic resonance

For high quality audio from PC to HiFi there are various options

There are wireless "broadcast" options for PCs which will allow you to play the music on the PC and either use a high quality receiver or an FM tuner to pick up the broadcast (depends whether you are concerned with the next door neighbour receiving the broadcast too).
E.g. http://www.amphony.com/products/trans.htm for a 3megabit uncompressed audio broadcast/receive set on 2.4Ghz

Or for a wired connection, perhaps something like this http://www.ahernstore.com/hifilink.html

If you pick up the latest What HiFi there is a brief article on page 29 (if I remember correctly) about several new wireless music jukeboxes coming from various manufacturers this year. The idea is that you have one music server and up to 10 separate receivers around your house, each capable of playing a different track ... sounds wonderful!
Actually, I think the whole article is here http://www.whathifi.com/newsMainTemplate.asp?storyID=120&newssectionID=2

Or for a paper on future wireless home automation options, read this http://www.vtt.fi/tte/samba/projects/wwm/reports/Wireless_Solutions_for_Home.pdf

As for the sentimental aspects ... I'm not going to answer.

Re: Not solutions but ..

[muninnhuginn]

"Put the cassette box on top of the hifi where you can see it every time you look across"

Huh? We know we claim to have two heads, but neither of them can see round corners.

As for the other solutions. We need to network the two PCs sometime. It's bad enough having to remember to transfer the OED from one machine to the other. Can't stand the thought of more wires. The addition of a music server would be great (so thank you for the linked info). But... no cash... expensive plumbing imminent... allergy to debt. As soon as the ravens get an income of their own again (hollow laughter), they're buying an iPod.

Wireless networks cost money

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

Just not a lot ...

a wireless basestation (which would allow you to share a broadband internet connection) costs under 100 pounds (and many of them give you four network wired ports as well.

Wireless cards for each PC/laptop are under 50 pounds a machine.

More expensive than cables, but much more portable and easy to set up and move around.

Something like a Pentium 90 or so with a network card running Linux or similar would make a fine music player machine hooked up as part of the hifi, and cost next to nothing (i.e. cheaper than an iPod, probably under 100 pounds)

Talk to sbisson as he's got a fair bit of distributed networked music around his and marypcb's place (including iPods)

And I've no picture in my mind of where your desk is relative to your hifi, I was just thinking that even if a CD was spinning in there, that you could have some symbol of the cassette ... put the box on your desk if it makes you happier.

How old are the two PCs? What operating systems? Have they got spare card slots?

Genteel poverty and obsolete kit

[muninnhuginn]

In reverse, one PC recovered from bits over four years old, motherboard and some bits about four, happier and not crashing at all since it was relegated to the front bedroom as the spare: no access to the cable for broadband. Downstairs PC, new case and motherboard (AMD Duron), all else around four years old, or older. We rebuild and recycle.

Windows 98.

Cables are a problem 'cos we've no carpets to run them under downstairs and too many running around anyway. They're untidy, dust gathering, clutter.

£200 is a lot at the minute (the repairs to the central heating are going to cost about two grand) and would be a fair chunk of an iPod, which would allow us to get rid of Walkmans (less clutter) and retain the option of taking out as well as using at home. Anyway, they're sexy. We like sexy gadgets. Or just gadgets in general. (And yeah, we read sbisson's comments on his iPod and those in TWAS, too.)

Yeah, poverty

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

Ok, you don't need to spend 200, closer to 150 since you can have a wired connection from the hub for the downstairs PC (since you do already, otherwise you couldn't connect to the internet).

Anyone know if the systems for sending data over powerlines is actually available in this country? Otherwise it's possible to use an old phone line I believe.

Yes, a portable MP3 player sounds more useful to you if you don't need broadband on the spare PC, and just wait to see what other options come out in the next year or so ... iPods are nice but there are cheaper options (I particularly like the idea of the ones with video screens on them so that I can download Buffy episodes etc. to the player and can take them with me ... in the not too distant future people will have hard disk video recorders that network around the house (yeah, possible now, but either too much homebrew or too expensive for me) and so I'll be able to record University Challenge and Never Mind the Buzzcocks while I'm at work and have them downloaded onto the portable when I get home so that I can take them to bed/into the bath with me, or just throw them in my shoulder bag to watch while commuting or during lunch at work the next day.

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

the value you is in *you* and the thoughts that bubble up when you think of the artefact; you can't transfer it but if you copy from the cassette you may get an association that works for you

I dunno where you live, but if you're near London, come by some time and play with cats and see the different wireless gizmos we have set up for moving music around... wireless networking is going to get cheaper after the spring when Taiwanese chips hit the market

[muninnhuginn]

To answer the first paragraph, well, yes, maybe so. But, and this is almost certainly due to an ever-present sense of the fragility of the human beings in which all such "stuff" resides coupled with a firm disbelief in anything continuing beyond the dissolution of any individual human body, there's something--some need--that imparts a talismanic quality to artifacts. If one suffers brain-damage, and let's be honest a fall from a bicycle and mild concussion can do this, sufficient to cause the loss of parts of one's memory, mightn't the very presence of those physical objects be clues to explore partcicular interests/occupations/experiences rather than others? (Given the fact that most of us live in a state of undifferentiated clutter and too many things, maybe, unless important items as opposed to kibble are clearly labelled, this is unrealistic.)

The other question is, does the quality of the association or the recall of the experience, diminish without a tangible referent? Without the stimulus that the object provides, do associations dwindle? It's a serious question when as a long-term activity (started over twenty years ago), I've been building up a personal, handwritten anthology of mainly poetry but also prose extracts and song lyrics. I've made the occasional plan to put this into electronic format, but haven't, even though the requirement of having three volumes now (yup, I've been very selective) makes the portability and convenience arguments less persuasive. It's not indexed, either. I know quite a lot of the verse and lyrics by heart, having made a deliberate effort to learn some: if damage occurs, without such a record how would I know what to redesicover (assuming rediscovery is the choice rather than the interesting notion of becoming a tabula rasa and starting afresh) (let alone the knowledge that this particular habit of anthologising is part of what makes me, me?)?

And in answer to the second. Cambridge. And thank you for the invitation, which I'll bear in mind.