Bells, Doors and Record Stores

A Student’s Thoughts on Consumerism and Life

I’ve been working at this store for a while now. I come in late after classes end, give the owner a nod and assure him everything is going to be alright while he gets his hat and coat and exits the store through the glass door, ringing the bell on his way out. The bell is quite a nice touch, I have to admit. It serves two purposes: it warns the person at the counter that someone just entered the place, and it creates a certain mood in the potential customer. “They know I’m here now”, they think. Or maybe they go with something more like “My, this bell is just like the ones in the old movies I used to watch when I was a kid”. If the potential customer is a bit older than average maybe the bell will bring back memories from his youth. One way or another, everybody is affected by the bell. Truly a useful tool. Nowadays stores tend to have open, clean entrances, with anti-theft machines covered in cardboard ads. You know, the kind that surround you when you enter, like the metro ones, but without the little plastic doors that open when you show them your ticket. They are made to protect the products within, and they will scream like a mad teenager if they catch someone trying to smuggle something out. That way owners can avoid doors, and the separation that they imply. A door is a barrier, both physical and mental. Opening a door means traversing from one place to another, means that this piece of space that you’ve entered belongs to someone else. You’re a tourist inside that door, a visitor. And opening a door is no small feat. To open a door one needs an objective, something they want to achieve or gain from the effort of entering that new space. If the door is closed you need fortitude to open it. But with no doors, then there is no separation of kingdoms, of thoughts. All those shops in the big malls that every city has these days work like that. By having no doors those shops have no barriers to your entry. You can enter and exit without thinking. You can browse their wares without being invested in them or in the act itself. You sometimes see something you like and buy it, typically you wander around and then move on, but it never feels like a change of pace. You’re just walking around this big piece of land, this temple of consumerism, this haven of impossible dreams, consumed by desire of things you don’t have the money to buy but you can see and touch without repercussion. This was the way malls found to defeat the small shops that predominated before these big whales of products appeared. And it works. If you have to expend less effort to buy something, be it physical or mental, it’s more likely that you will do it just because. I, however, prefer small stores, stores that create moods, besides the usual “So Hot I Can’t Breathe, with Modern Music” that most of those other stores have. Stores with bells, with wooden counters, with people that care about what they’re selling behind the counter, not just making a buck in their free time. These places are places of commercial exchanges, true, and their purpose is to sell products for profit, also true, but at least they are more than that. People that enter do it because they’re looking for something there, not just because they’re spending time looking at things they desire but can’t buy. Most people, at least.

Its things like these that I spend my time thinking about behind the counter. Not that I’m complaining, I love my job. I got it due to a fortuitous circumstance, an unusual moment of dare. It’s not a tough job. It does not require much physical or mental effort, nor does it require constant concentration. I merely sit behind the counter of the record shop between eight and midnight, five days a week. If a customer wants to buy a record, they come to me and together we complete the action of purchasing the product. If they want help with something, they come to me and together we go look for that track that they once heard or that artist that they once loved. It’s a peaceful job, a pleasant job. Not many people buy music nowadays. They stream it or pirate it from the internet. People that buy records, be it CD’s or Vinyl’s, are a dying breed. Only hipsters, old timers or true music lovers spend money on physical containers for their favorite tracks. It’s a shame, really. Something is being lost in this modern age. That which is analogue has been defeated by that which is digital. Everything is ephemeral nowadays, everything passes. We consume so much data, so much information, we’re always connected. And yet because of that we are unable to give meaning to experiences that in the past had depth, like the act of listening to a song that someone somewhere had to write down, perform and record just for our listening pleasure. I remember how it was, the pleasure of opening a new container, or plastic wrap or whatever, and revealing the brand new item inside. Of smelling its surface, of touching the lid, of feeling it before I dove into it. Like with books. I love books, not only the words themselves but the whole act of reading a book. For me, eBooks or audio books or things in that nature will never compare. They are diminished versions of the age old experience of going through the pages, entranced in the world the author created. I think things like these are being lost. Not sure if it’s just the natural progress of mankind, or simply that we are unable to deal with the technology we so readily obtained on the turning of the millennium. One way or another, people are becoming shallower. When they want something, they want it fast, right there right now. They consume and then let go. They do not think about the common action, about the small pleasure of life. A shame, really. Nothing I can really do about it. Nobody seems to care that much. Even people like me use services that are meant to hasten our consumption of content. It’s like being a vegetarian. I’d love to do it, but I love meat more. I guess it just means that I’m not able to sacrifice my way of life just to prove a point. And If I can’t, what right have I to ask that others do so? None, really. I’m no scholar. I’m just a student, and a foolish one. With both dreams of grandeur and crippling anxiety. A student that works in a record store and has way too much time to think. Maybe I’ll read a book now, I thought. Only one hour to go, and I don’t see many customers coming this late. I still had that volume on Descartes that I had to read until next month, and I hadn’t touched it. Never really enjoyed the kind of hard headed philosophers that think they had some kind of rule for all kinds of thought. But still, schoolwork is schoolwork. Not that I really care about school, but I do need to get through all of this semester’s disciplines. I can’t afford to pay yet more money for classes I was too bored to study for. But not tonight, though, I thought. Tonight I’ll see The Great Gatsby to its end. We’ll go through Fitzgerald next semester anyway. The minutes passed while I was reading. It was a nice night outside, the air still warm from the strong sun that lingered even a month after summer had left. No clouds, just a bit of wind. Nice night to go to the usual place, had I not gotten this job earlier in September. I still go to the bar, just not on week nights. Oh well, I thought, I don’t like the heat anyway, at least I’m comfortable reading here. I could probably close shop half an hour earlier tonight, I doubt anybody is going to come in. As I struggled with this idea, I heard the bell. Truly a great bell, that one. I’ll never forget the sound. Even today, after all this time, I can hear it clearly in my mind.