Sensuality

My credit card debt has officially passed the $12,000 mark. Not like that's any kind of special number. It's just a big slap in my face saying, "Hey! Stop spending all your money on records, you fucking retard!!!"

Yes, I want to support artists.
But I should probably focus on supporting myself first.
I have no idea how i'm going to climb out of this debt.

Perhaps I knew this was coming. Maybe I wanted to exhaust myself, allowing records to consume my life in order to hit financial rock bottom. So I can finally admit that this shit has gotten WAY out of my control, that I need to form some better habits, like obsessing over my own music rather than everyone else's.

I would love to be able to buy all the records I want. But I can't. Especially not with my sub-poverty income. And even if I could afford all the records I wanted, it wouldn't be healthy.
My video professor told me, "The worst thing that could happen to you is if you were to become a millionaire... because then you could afford to buy every record you ever wanted. And you'd have so many records that you wouldn't even have time to listen to them all."
Damn was he right. And the ridiculous thing is... I already have more records than I have time to listen to. Sure, I listen to all the new stuff I buy. But I still have over a thousand records I bought for a buck or less at thriftstores and those public radio station fundraisers... sitting in boxes... waiting for my ear.
Time is a bitch. You can never beat it. Even if I were to live forever, it wouldn't matter. There's always going to be more new music than there will be time to listen to it all.

I have that weekly new release e-mail from juno.uk sitting in my inbox, the one with all the mp3 samples of brand new cuts. Should I look at it? Or should I delete it? I want to look at and just be very selective, only listening to a handful of track samples by artists I trust. But can I exercise that kind of self control? Or will I dump every single mp3 sample into winamp like I have been doing for the last year since I discovered overseas record retailers with kick-in-the-crotch shipping rates. Mailing shit over an ocean ain't affordable anymore, that's for sure. Another reason why so many people want to just stare at their laptops and play their Beatport or stolen Soulseek tracks.

The dilemma, however, with only listening to new tracks by established artists that I like is obvious: How will I discover those gems I would otherwise not have known about?
How would I ever have discovered something like Mountain People - "003", a track so fucking killer that I would instantly lose respect for anyone who heard it and didn't "get it." Period. That's how fucking great this track is. But if I hadn't been listening to every new techno release, I never would have known about it. Just like most of you reading this now don't know about it. And why would you? This record didn't receive the praise it certainly deserved. No Big Name DJ put it on their top ten list. It's not necessarily the best music that gets the most attention.

This is where I should step in. But I have no voice. No one fucking cares what I buy. I want to be "the world's greatest detective". I want to be Batman. But it's costing too much. Far more than money. At least if I were being paid well to play these records on a regular basis, that could be some justification for all this record buying. But I don't even have that reason.

And it's not just about the music. Otherwise, I'd just Beatport and Soulseek everything and be just as "exciting" (ahem) to watch like all you other laptop djs.
No. It's more than the music. It's about having something real. Something in my hands. Something I can grab.

Physical objects have energy. And I can feel this. When I'm dj'ing, and I'm in that zone where I stop thinking, the records tell me what to do.
I'm a sensualist.