THE MEMORY BOX

WILL THEY HAVE A TANGIBLE HISTORY

When we were in San Francisco several years ago visiting our friends, Adam and JoHannah, Adam happened to play a lot of The Bombay Dub Orchestra. I don't exactly know what Dub means but I fell in love with the ethnic moodiness of the music.

I forgot about it for a long time, but once the trailers for The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel started running the music of the Bombay Dub Orchestra started playing in my mind again. Rick had put the exotic music on his iPod Nano via iTunes. Speaking about iPods and iTunes always makes me feel like I'm talking in some alien tongue. I don't own an iPod and I always thought that other music service Pandora was some character from Greek mythology. I'm too technologically deficient to be considering buying one of those handheld gizmos so I'm not going to be downloading music or god forbid videos anytime soon. So about a week ago I decided it was time to go out and buy the CD before I drove myself crazy with sitars playing havoc with my psyche.

The Madison of my college days had been a hot bed of music stores. It was that Woodstock era where everyone owned a phonograph and the songs of Janis Joplin and Patti Smith blared from the smeared smoky windows of college rooming houses. In my head these record stores still lined State Street, but when I returned to the storefronts that housed those historic psychedelic LP record jackets of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones I discovered they had turned into Chipotle Mexican restaurants and GAP stores. Those record stores just didn't exist anymore and just by calling them record stores I've totally dated myself into insignificance.

I got back in the car and headed for the malls where the likes of Best Buy and Barnes & Nobles held what I hoped would be the CDs I'd been desperate to own. In my head these big box stores were all loaded with aisles of CDs with sections like Latin music, Techno and Easy Listening. Not so. The music sections of these big box stores had shriveled to the size of my manhood in the dead of winter.

I decided to wait until I got to New York and I'd buy the Bombay Dub Orchestra's CD there. New York has everything or so I thought. The story was the same as I walked through the Village both East and West.

Tower Records and The Virgin Megastore had turned into American Apparel stores and electronic outlets selling the latest version of virtual books. I was still thinking ten years too late.

It made me realize I just can't do itunes and I'll tell you why. It's out of concern for my daughter and all the other daughters and sons of our generation.  I fear for the future of the cultural heritage of the current youth. They are going to be a generation without a physical trail of memories. Fifty years from now when you go to the Flea Market you aren't going to find orange crates stuffed with the LP jackets or CD jewelcases of the early twenty-first century. There won't be anything tangible to buy, only a bunch of old ipods that you can't operate anymore.

The shoeboxes now filled with creased black and white photographs of our parents weddings and pictures of children running through sprinklers on suburban front yards will be filled with dust and air, empty boxes full of forgotten memories. The ephemera of this generation won't exist.

When Kodak stopped making film I saw the writing on the wall. I was never so thankful that Emmy was born before the demise of real film.

Every photo I've taken of her still exists staring back at me on a real piece of paper. The music I listened to can still be found tucked away in the back of a closet. I may not play it but the technology is still out there. The music my daughter buys with her itunes gift cards only exists as long as she can find it on her current MP3 player. When that form of technology is replaced by a new form, that music won't exist anymore, at least not in any form she can hold in her hand or look for in the back of her closet.

I continue to resist the pleas of friends to get with it and download a piece of music or a new book. I'm sticking to the old ways and hopefully the music we relaxed to, the books that expanded our horizons and the pictures of my little girl growing up will be there for her when she sorts through the artifacts that were our lives.