Breaking Point

Till death do us part

Photo by Kevin Andre on Unsplash

Please note: I don’t mean to brag, but this is probably one of the best voiceovers I’ve ever done. Make sure you click Play above for the full experience.

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It was one of those days. A steady stream of minor yet particularly irksome inconveniences, which would have been more or less manageable in isolation, decided to team up on that day to test, with military style precision, the very limits of my feeble patience.

I was already fighting a severe case of sleep deprivation, peaks of anxiety, and untold amounts of stress.

I’m sure you’ve been there.

If you know me well, or you can read between the lines, you will have noticed my temperament is not precisely the calmest.

My husband, who has known me for eighteen years (exactly half of my life) often compares it to a storm. Or a hurricane, tornado, cyclone, tsunami, or one of those meteorological beasts from the tropics.

Warm, inviting, lush… until a storm hits. It’s usually short-lived, but when it rains, it pours.

Someday I will learn to calm down. In a future life. This one? Not a chance in hell.

If and when I have to, I can actually come across as meek and mild. Not for nothing I’ve got eleven years of drama and acting under my belt. But don’t push too hard… unless you’re ready for the fireworks.

The short explanation is that I’m Argentinian. I’m not a football (soccer) fan, but have you ever seen how worked up we can get? It transcends sports (and balls).

Never mind how British I’ve become after all these years living in the Big Smoke (which is not as smoky anymore as some still think, but reputations die hard). It turns out that keeping calm and carrying on did not come to me as naturally as perfecting my accent, remembering to keep left, or checking the wind forecast before leaving the house (yes, in central London, and no, I’m not joking).

Photo by Luke Stackpoole on Unsplash

Anyway, at some point during that tedious day I was having, when everything from my alarm clock to the coffee machine to signal failures on the London Underground to transaction delays to a borderline Kafkaesque sequence of bureaucratic nightmares to absolutely nothing going according to plan — when all those little demons decided to come out from the depths of hell to play on my doorstep, I thought, naively, that my records would have my back.

Surely our records can’t let us down, can they? I mean, we’re vinyl lovers for a reason. That’s what I call ourselves. Lovers. We love vinyl, and vinyl loves us back. It’s reciprocal.

Well, not on that day.

Not content with fiddling with absolutely everything else I needed to do, those pesky little demons from hell decided to start messing with my records.

I couldn’t find titles I can normally locate with my eyes closed. My brush and wipe fell straight to the floor, simultaneously, as in some sort of newly invented olympic synchornised sport (you know it’s not simply a case of picking them up and blowing a few puffs of air — you now have to clean the damn tools as well).

Sleeves not sleeving. Static all over. Is my stylus playing up? Dust everywhere. I cleaned my entire system yesterday. Yesterday.

What on earth is going on?

Photo by Giovanni Randisi on Unsplash

I swear I was about to drop or, even worse, deliberately, in full rage mode, smash my records against the wall. Or on the floor, for that extra dramatic effect (Argentinian and with stage training, thank you very much).

I’m not particularly proud of what I’m about to tell you, but it was also one of my compatriots, old enough to be my grandfather, who became an online sensation for asking, mid-football rage, “What is this shit? Can I smash it?!”. (No, I’m not making this up. See for yourself.)

My anger can be blinding, brutal, unforgiving. Unlike my compatriot, though, random shit doesn’t stir me as much as the things I love most.

Those in my inner circle already know. When things escalate, or if I notice my loved ones are also dealing with their own little demons, we have mechanisms in place, and I remove myself from the situation as soon as the clouds turn sour.

But how do you communicate with an inanimate object?

So imagine my surprise when I gathered strength from goodness knows where, put my records aside, took a deep breath, and lay down for a second.

Breathe. Just breathe. It’s okay.

A few minutes later, I got up, pulled myself together, and carried on. The rest of the day was a breeze. Well, maybe not a breeze, but the gusts of wind were gone. The storm had passed.

Photo by Katarina Cacic on Unsplash

The demons departed in exactly the same way as they had arrived. Uninvited, unprompted, unannounced. I bet they were feeling victorious because, truth be told, they won several battles that day. But they didn’t manage to come between me and my records, so the war itself they did not win.

Why am I telling you this?

You will often find me here, on this page, romanticising about vinyl. The ritual. The enhanced audio experience. The physical connection to the music. All the pomp and ceremony. We love this shit so much that we sometimes even check our thesaurus to describe the indescribable.

I’ll spare you the thesaurus today, because there was nothing particularly romantic about that spinning session other than the not insignificant feat of having rescued my records from the hellish demons that reside in the darkest corners of my mind.

I haven’t quite figured out yet whether this was a sign of how much I love my records or how much my records love me. I’d like to think it was a little bit of both.

Thanks for reading/listening. Happy spinning!