I was searching for something great/perfect/cathartic to listen to today, as I do every day, and as I was sifting through the piles upon piles of uncatalogued albums (note to self: must get to IKEA for more CD storage!), something both wonderful and terrifying was brought to my attention.
It's a simple concept, really, but one that kind of hit me hard, and I have been thinking of it ever since.
Not only, as I get older, does my album collection grow (rapidly), but the collection by certain artists grows. Again, simple. However, when I started thinking more and more about it, it started making me feel really old.
I was 18 when I bought John Mayer's Room For Squares. I remember hearing No Such Thing for the first time (home from college for a weekend and driving my parents' van with my sister riding shotgun), and feeling like I needed to hear everything from him that I could get my hands on.
At the time, that meant illegally (shamefully), downloading bootlegs of his songs - some of which still haven't been released. Now, I look at my album collection, and I have no less than 9 John Mayer albums (and some of those are two disc sets). Studio and live releases. Also, I have his two live DVDs.
Even crazier, I was going through myTunes today, and found three songs of his that I had totally forgotten even existed. I probably listened to them for hours on end back in the day, when I couldn't find anything else and was craving more after listening to RFS. And now, he's got so much music out there, that I actually forget about songs! It's baffling to me!
I started looking through my collection for other artists I have 'grown' with. Dave Matthews (but the guy puts out like, at least an album a year, live or otherwise), Ben Harper, Marc Broussard, Dave Barnes, Brad Paisley and Vince Gill. There are more, I know. Even Kanye, Alicia Keys, John Legend...I can still remember hearing them all for the first time, listening to all their first albums on repeat because it's all I had of theirs.
What's interesting to me, is that I can now have playlists for each of these artists, if I so choose. I can pick the best of the best songs and compile them into lists, and still only have scratched the surface.
I don't really know why this hit me so hard. I've just found myself very aware of my age lately, in both positive and not-so-positive ways, and it just struck me again.
This is what it feels like to get older.
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