There’s a woman I share my office with this summer who’s younger than I. She’s brilliant, with her mother a doctor of medicine and her father a founding member of Adobe. She’s lovely to speak with about writing, as she’s crazy about Austen and Shakespeare, but when it comes to music, she doesn’t know much beyond classical, musical soundtracks and Edith Piaf.
Which is why I was excited when she asked to burn a few of my CDs we’d been playing in the office over the course of the summer. Sure, I have some great stuff that’s worth listening to. I try to introduce everyone I spend any considerable amount of time with to Mates of State and The Clarks. I expected her to pick a few CDs, ask for my input, and put them onto her iPod, then branching out from what she liked and finding new artists even I haven’t heard of.
Imagine my dismay, then, when she took on a weeklong-and-still-going project to burn every disc in my collection. More than 200 CDs I’ve been accumulating in books in my car since I was 17 years old are now all being transferred into the computer of a sophomore at Cornell.
I’m uncomfortable. Read the rest of this entry »
