On Pen Collecting and Record Hunting

Once you switch your primary method of writing to fountain pens and a typewriter, you’re really less than a stone’s throw away from buying yourself a Sony turntable from 1984, creating a master list of all the music you listen to and proceeding to spend several hours and your wage on obtaining said music.

An intervention has not yet been staged. As a result, I am currently still lost to the pleasantly groovy void.

Record collecting is very much like pen collecting in that it doesn’t necessarily ‘improve’ upon other, more modern methods of doing things. It may offer better sound quality if you spend north of £1000 on a high-end audiophile setup, but in most cases you’ll be just as well off with YouTube and decent bluetooth speakers, unless you’ve got money to burn. Similarly, does a £500 Montblanc really offer many practical advantages over a decent plastic rollerball? I don’t think it does, though I’d choose the Montblanc if I could. Actually, give me a really nice Narwhal or TWSBI.

So I’ll not delude myself here that a record player is more convenient, and while it gives very good sound quality it could be matched by FLAC recordings on the multi-million pound platform of your choice. Sadly, here’s where I leave practicality to have a pretentious, air-headed rave about soul. Records have soul!!

Actually, records don’t have adverts either, which is even more of a selling point.

I listen to atrocious amounts of music – hours every day – and Spotify was beginning to take liberties. No, I am not paying your appalling subscription fees for the privilege of being able to listen to the song I want. There’s YouTube, but then I get Colgate ads in the middle of Piano Man. Billy Joel surely disapproves as much as that tenth dentist.

Essentially, I’m maliciously de-digitalising my music consumption to give a feeble shake of the fist to companies who take monetising content too far. Yes, artists should be paid well for the music they make. Is limiting the listener to six skips an hour really the way to do it though? Could we not perhaps get twelve? Eight at least?

I could buy MP3s. However at that point I may as well invest in a decent thrifted set-up and have the novelty and relative permanence of physical media (permanent in that it won’t go offline). Most of my music taste spans from the 60s to the 90s, predominantly 70s. Why not match the era to the corresponding form of media? It’s like choosing what to write with. If I’m not going to type in Word, I can use a plain ballpoint (MP3s) or a fountain pen (vinyl). The ballpoint will work, but the fountain pen will give me more joy by far.

That’s what my turntable and growing stack of records does. I have ridiculous amounts of fun rooting out songs I’m after in a bricks-and-mortar shop, tripping over boxes and piles of DVDs, finding nothing until my dad miraculously emerges with an obscure Aerosmith record in one hand and a Bob Marley song in the other. The shop owner greets us as I push open the door – the scent of coffee and old vinyl hits me while we’re offered a brew. Helpful strangers I’ve never seen in my life offer to help hunt out songs I’m looking for and somebody pops up out of the second aisle grinning and waving a George Harrison record triumphantly at me. I could buy records online, but why would I want to? Nothing beats the feeling of finally finding that one song in a crate full of random records, or the warm, welcoming atmosphere.

But back to my unclear and rambling point about stationery. The happiness we feel when collecting pens, records or anything else is surely why we do it in the first place. If you have the means to do even just one frivolous thing you love, the only justification that’s needed is that it makes you happy. Not to the point where it gets out of hand, of course. In my case, I plan to buy records over a long period of time to build up a respectable collection. I haven’t found myself with any new pens lately, preferring to stick to those I already have and enjoy using. I’m writing this with an ol’ reliable TWSBI.

All this did give me a thought about pen collecting. All my records, bar one I bought in Wales, are second hand. Why not make it a mission to see if you can buy a pen you want second-hand before buying new? You could save some money and give a pen a new life!