Reading Old Essays, Part 2

Since I haven't had much time to Twitter to find cool stuff out there on the web to share, I decided I'd follow up with another sample of writing!

Tom Chiarella is one of the coolest people I've ever known.  DePauw is so lucky to have him, truly.  Tom is a part-time writing professor for the university, and also writes celebrity profiles for Esquire magazine.  His Jon Hamm profile is awesome, but two other non-profile articles hold a special place in my heart: "The $20 Theory of the Universe" was the first-ever Chiarella piece I read, assigned to my first-year seminar class by Chris White, his girlfriend and DePauw colleague; "Every Woman I Know" is a discovery that my friend Carol and I made our senior year and inspired us each to make our own "Every Man I Know" that we both update on a semi-regular basis (sorry, folks...that one's staying on my hard drive).

I had the pleasure of having Tom in class three times.  Yes, three.  First was Poker for Winter Term (I'm sure my parents were thrilled about that one).  Second was Invention of Place, a fiction writing class where we created the history of a fictional community through a series of writing exercises, sketches, maps, photographs, and family trees.  Finally, there was Magazine Writing, which was obviously Tom's forte.  Below is one of my short pieces from that course; Tom gave us a list of prompts all about listening to and experiencing music, and each person wrote on a different one.  We had a 300-word limit.  Though this isn't the best thing I've ever written, it's fun and certainly post-worthy, as my last several posts have been music related.

(For those of you who are familiar with the movie High Fidelity--I was going for a Rob Gordon kind of voice here.)


The Case for the CD Owner

Tangibility is the driving force behind the CD owner’s purchase of music. His purpose is to acquire, to collect, to exhibit. He may place his compilation alphabetically, chronologically, or perhaps by cover design. He is proud of his collection. Such possession of the physical gives him the authority to mark himself as the alpha male of music ownership.

This near-fetish is not the CD owner’s sole motive, however. The CD is a pledge of fidelity; a monetary exchange for the music is not enough. Care is needed, attention due to the material album. The CD, whose time capacity is limited, is a testament to an artist’s creative editing. Choices must be made, songs cut, tracks rearranged. Playlists and shuffles are simply heard—background music to working out and gardening. They appeal to certain moods, can be started and stopped at any particular time. CDs, though, are listened to. They tell a story from beginning to end—exposition in the opening songs, rising action, climax around tracks seven or eight, falling action, and resolution by the final number. One must not skip from song to song, enter here and leave there. Such play is for the hearers of MP3s.

Indeed the CD owner listens. He will not succumb to the ease of downloading music onto his computer. Instead, with honor he will browse, stumble upon, and buy the CD. He will play it from opening to close, read and sing the lyrics printed in the liner notes, study the cover’s artwork. He will slide his newly purchased jewel case into that long line of albums on the shelf underneath the stereo. And running his hand along the ribbed plastic spines, he will simmer with warm satisfaction.