I called the library beforehand to ask when they took donations for the book sale, and how much I could provide. I followed directions on time, but not so much on volume - they got what they got, which was mostly what I'd bought from them over the past couple years. Nearly all of it was DVDs, CDs, and Blurays where I kept telling myself I didn't want the object, I wanted what was stored on the object. It was lovely to get this movie or that album, and now that I had what I wanted on my computer, I didn't need the object anymore. It was nice to grab all four seasons of Black Sails and the whole series of Fringe, and I don't have the space around my apartment to keep those with what I've already got on the shelves. Especially when I haven't yet gotten around to watching the shows. Soon, in due time. But keeping the objects of the box sets around won't help.

All that, and it's nice to get a few square feet of floor space back. Enough to notice, which is enough to make me want to keep going. Do another book cull, drag those clothes to the donation bin. Say "goodbye and thank you" to the stuff that isn't giving me anything but nostalgia. And maybe see about which extant box sets on my shelves are objects I want for the particular value they have as objects. Is it "the value of the object qualia object"? I'm sure there's a term for it.

It's my Livejournal's birthday today. I'm always a little taken aback when I get the emails about it - a bit of "really? that thing's still on?" and a bit of "it has been a while since high school." Most years it passes by with just those thoughts, a day in, a day out, and for most of today it was going that route up until I heard Cameron Crowe at Symphony Space.

Not Cameron Crowe for the innate value of Crowe himself, not Crowe for the shine of someone worth all the applause, not for someone who said Joni Mitchell could talk in third drafts and said music is a way to tattoo moments. He spoke well, he read aloud with a lot of charm, he answered questions thoughtfully, and when the interviewer asked the last question of the night - whether there was still hope for music to blow his mind the way it used to. Crowe leaned over, put his hand on his arm, and said to keep hoping. Words to that effect, at least; I lost the exact phrase in the immediate applause right after. And very much words to that effect. Keep hoping, stay open, keep listening.

It sparked the memory of my dad saying it's hard for music to hit him the way it used to, and of several memories reading different people's comments that they wish music could hit them the way it did when they were in high school, or college, or some other point in their life that's simply when they were younger and, I suspect, didn't have as much on their minds and hadn't heard nearly as much music. It goes beyond having listened to a lot more and having had the world sand down a lot of the edges. There's some of it - how much, I don't know - about not being open to having your mind blown. Of course it takes more work to blow your mind when it's already been blown so many times already. And to say it can't, it won't, is to commit to a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you're not open to it, if you don't keep looking, of course it won't happen.

I got a lot of good music in college and grad school, true. And I've heard so much since then, I'll often come across a new song and it'll strike me as a very good one, a superb variant on something I already know, a clever turn of phrase that's a pleasant arrangement of words. And I'm still willing and open to hearing new music, and it's true it doesn't happen as often that I hear a song that makes the world feel absolutely new, and it's true that it still happens.

My Livejournal's old enough to graduate college. It would've spent the last four years listening to music it never could've imagined, and in a density and intensity that's probably not going to come around again. And it's going to be listening to more music than it can believe.

To stay open and keep listening. To periodically get a reminder to keep hoping.