Record Player

Each issue, this column will feature one writer's favorite object, illuminating the complex emotional relationships between individuals and their possessions: the thoughts, moments, and philosophies that come to be embodied by a single item. It is not an attempt to analyze or critique the designs themselves, but simply to reveal the bond between person and product.

I have never been good at listening to music. Few people consider that a skill, but I know that it's one I assuredly lack. That my name, Samantha, means "listener" is a mildly cruel irony – and it's become something I think about often, this name, as if by ruminating on it I might channel a gift that's never been my own. This is not to say that I cannot hear, but rather that I have great difficulty focusing on what I do hear. Some people listen to music throughout the day – on the subway, at work, while walking – but I've never been willing to let headphones take the place of overheard conversations and rats squeaking and pages turning and trains arriving and departing. Nor can I listen to it while home, though I always have it playing; after a few chords I forget to pay attention, lost instead in my own thoughts or the book I'm reading. Getting lost in the music itself is a rare event.

None of which is to say I don't enjoy music – I love it, and at concerts, when it's being made right in front of me, I'm able to listen. I have favorite songs, many of them. I just have never been able to sing along.

But a few years ago, something changed. I was having dinner with an old professor of mine, and underneath the wine and the conversation swam the soft, insistent sound of a jazz record, playing somewhere in her apartment. And what I remember is not at all what was playing, but the way it felt. And I remember thinking that, for once, perhaps experiencing music as feeling was enough.

So when I moved to New York, I was determined to fill my life with jazz music and dinner parties. After a brief period of transition (read: sleeping on a couch), I finally managed to find a sublet that was both within my modest price range and – by some definitions – inhabitable. I knew the place was right: a beautiful little row-house, just far enough from the subway to be undesirable to the majority of apartment hunters, but close enough to work, provided I embraced the idea of a long morning stroll. It had a fire escape I could sit on, two flamenco-dancing roommates, and the biggest record collection I had ever seen.

So began my love affair with the record player.