For years, I’ve played lots of compact discs each day. In time, I would engage in the zen of refiling music CDs.
You might say, “Why don’t you just play your music digitally?” And I have quite a bit of music accessible on both my laptop and my newish cellphone. But somehow, it doesn’t bring me as much JOY as the physical music. For one thing, I tend to read the liner notes. Who wrote those songs? What other artists appeared on the tracks?
Optimally, every three or four months, I sort through my recently played CDs First I sort them alphabetically by artist. There are separate piles for TV and movie soundtracks, classical music (arranged by composer), and other specialty categories.
We recently got a round table from my MIL; no knights were involved. It replaced a rectangular table we had borrowed for over a decade. Square or rectangular tables are easier to sort than round ones. Those 90-degree angles make it easier to create piles of A-F, G-L, et al.
As a matter of course, I always cover the table with a thick blanket or quilt, lest I scratch the surface with nicks. That bad outcome would make my spouse… unhappy.
Taurus, Gemini
And I know I took WAY too long because some of the piles grew so tall, they risked toppling over. It was necessary to put several letter categories in small boxes. You’d think, being retired, getting to this process would be easier, but no.
I could tell I hadn’t sorted the CDs since May because I had albums from David Byrne, Bob Dylan, and the Stevies Winwood and Wonder. Yes, I tend to play the music from the artists’ birth month in that period.
What I find useful in the sorting. Some of it is the exercise of alphabetizing. But the other is trying to identify the artist by album cover color/design/font. This is an oddly satisfying exercise, as I do rather well.
At some point, I suppose, I’ll start to get rid of my physical music. maybe next year. Or the year after…
