Piles of CDs surround me. I have been feeding them into my computer to suck the music out of them. And then I pack them away.
My Mac does not discriminate. Dufay or du Pre, Eno or Ellington, the computer digests them each with the same chipper whir, and check marks appear on my screen next to each MP3 file I have just created. I think I am supposed to feel accomplished.
But this has been an exercise both exciting and melancholy. My own CD collection once commanded a proud stretch of home-office wall space, but it has become a casualty of urban living with a growing family and I have been slowly transferring it into an iTunes library on my hard drive.
Of course, the conveniences of this approach are vast and, several years into the digital music revolution, still astonishing to me. A few keystrokes pull up exactly what I'm looking for. A couple clicks and 10 majestic symphonies of Gustav Mahler pour onto my cellphone, ready to be summoned while I'm stopped at a red light or sitting on the train. The novelty has not worn off.
My Mac does not discriminate. Dufay or du Pre, Eno or Ellington, the computer digests them each with the same chipper whir, and check marks appear on my screen next to each MP3 file I have just created. I think I am supposed to feel accomplished.
But this has been an exercise both exciting and melancholy. My own CD collection once commanded a proud stretch of home-office wall space, but it has become a casualty of urban living with a growing family and I have been slowly transferring it into an iTunes library on my hard drive.
Of course, the conveniences of this approach are vast and, several years into the digital music revolution, still astonishing to me. A few keystrokes pull up exactly what I'm looking for. A couple clicks and 10 majestic symphonies of Gustav Mahler pour onto my cellphone, ready to be summoned while I'm stopped at a red light or sitting on the train. The novelty has not worn off.
