...i listen to the wind that obliterates my traces by Steve Roden

in such moments i begin to form a world, seeing (or hearing) each thing shift from an individual star towards part of a larger constellation. Of course, i too have sat alone many a night amongst a pile of books, a stack of records or a box of old photographs: conversing, organizing, arranging, connecting, disconnecting and listening to the voices of these inconsiderable things. If you have this love of inconsiderable things and seek quite simply, as one who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier, more coherent and somehow more conciliatory for you, not in your intellect, perhaps, which lags marveling behind, but in your inmost consciousness, waking and cognizance.

Here it is, just as set down, lower-case and all: And sure enough, YouTube comes through with a tantalizing peek:īut it was a chunk of text that really brought me up short, being a perfect distillation of things I’ve been thinking about collections, collecting, and collectors. The two CDs contain a very eclectic menu of remastered 78 RPM disks, many of which are new to me, and which complement the photographs brilliantly. …and the sparse (and all-lower-case) text is incisive. The photographs are deliciously chosen and arrayed: The sort of thing that one acquires sensing its talismanic power and knowing it will never be seen again.

Today’s case-in-point is a strange and altogether marvelous book with two CDs: steve roden’s …i listen to the wind that obliterates my traces: music in vernacular photographs (1880-1955) (2011). Now and again I discover something on my shelves that I’d forgotten about, or never really assimilated when I acquired it, and Light is Cast upon current concerns in unexpected and even downright magical ways.

...i listen to the wind that obliterates my traces by Steve Roden