In reading about the latest wonder widget, the writer reminisces about comic book swamping and how all the fun of comic books was sharing, seeing what other kids had found, and setting their own definitions about what they were worth.

This article found a radio piece, filed deep under the clutter of the desktop of my mind, about how we experience music. By “we” I mean “the kids these days”, though extension to anyone over the target demographic is unconsciously implied. Also by “we”, I mean one, individual person, because “we” don’t do anything together.

We used to wait for an album to come out, anticipated maybe a week in advance. We used to pile in a friends car and drive to the record shop and buy (for what seems a pittance today) a - vinyl. record. album.  The cover art was as much the experience sealed beneath the cellophane as the music. Music, which, we would then go over to another friend’s house where there was a hi-fi stereo, gently crack and peel back the plastic, and listen. Together. We would listen to the album, from beginning to end, just the way it was arranged and ordered by the original artist. Then we would talk about the music, trying to express an ineffably incredible but shared feeling that welled up and made us connected, and hopeful. We found ourselves in each other, gained footing and took off; making our own music, our own art. We shared, we connected, we created.

Now we drive our four-passenger cars alone, listening to a customized playlist, a personally tailored internet radio station, or a genre-specific airwave transmission. iListen to iMusic with our iPhones while iIgnore and/or complacently iDismiss and iDistance ourselves moodily from the casual connections around music. We don’t listen together, we don’t have to. We all have cars and our own stereos and our own living rooms. There’s too much going on to hang out and listen together, but we’ve got them! We don’t even have to buy music from a slightly self-superior music aficionado, who, with a raised eyebrow, may nod or non-nonchalantly smile as he rung up your latest collection piece. {In my mind, music guy has a goatee.}

The connections still happen. They do. Sometimes it seems a little sterile, a bit less personal, smoke-like and intangible; we’ll always find new and fascinating way to connect.

Of course these are all imaginings, hued with the rosy lenses of nostalgia. When I say “we” I mean my parents’, or almost even my parents’ parents generation. I had a walkman.