Mentalechoes

I’ve been obsessed the last few nights with trying to get my entire CD collection digitised. I don’t have that many discs, maybe somewhere around 160 I would say, perhaps 10 or 20 more. But they’ve been sitting in a dark closet for the last three years, waiting for a home on a bookshelf that I promised them I would make. Three years on, they are still sitting in a dark closet, actually pretty well protected from light and dust, so they are all still in pristine condition, which I guess is one consolation of them never being used. But then a couple of nights ago I decided I would rip a couple of Moby discs I have because I just had to listen to a couple of my favourite tracks of his, so I decided to rip them to the computer using winamp. Then I figured since I’ve done the Moby cds, I would just rip one or two of The Chemical Brothers discs I had. Thus started what has become an maniacal obsession to rip every single disc that was in that closet.

I’ve been losing sleep over this too. It will get to 1.20am and I will be keenly watching the ripping progress of a cd, saying to myself, I’ll go to bed after this one has finished. And when it’s finished, I have this brief little internal struggle, and then put another cd into the computer, and say again, after this one I’ll definitely go to bed. I literally have to pry myself away from the big cd stack which I’ve made in front of the computer and console myself that they will be still be there tomorrow waiting to become part of the new digital collective.

I have discovered two things about myself while undertaking this project: -1- I have really great taste in music, and if I didn’t know me and I visited my flat and saw my music collection, I would be totally impressed and want to be friends with me so I could borrow stuff. And -2- I might be slightly obsessive compulsive, which would probably explain a whole lot of bizarre behaviour that women in my life put down to “personality quirks”. When it’s done I will be both happy that I’ve got all of my cds part a shiney new digital library I can listen to anywhere, and sad because I will have run out of cds to rip. Then I’m going to have to find something else to obsess about.

Andy.