Listening to the remix of The Midnight's Arcade Dreams brought me back to Spotify. OK, so it was a LOT more, or more accurately, the potential of a LOT more.

I love music, I do. I appreciate High Fidelity's autobiographical organization of a record collection. I love the tactile element of its ritual for preparation. It feels real, as if I'm holding my soul in one hand and a time machine in the other. I felt that today as I held my vinyl of Simon & Garfunkel's Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme—so many memories of the faces in the mists.

The problem is, I no longer own the albums I once did.

And while I like them in a vacuum, as part of the whole picture, even if they were dumped by the truckload for FREE, it would clash with my desire for simplicity—invoking minimalism almost comes off as a cliché these days, and honestly, that's a hard position to define. While I value complexity, it is simplicity that we seek, even if the simple is complex and the complex is simple.

Yesterday, I found myself more consumed with music than when I had Spotify—not a great trend—as I considered strategies of building a small collection. I even put a few dollars toward that objective, which ran counter to my initial intent of cost savings.

Would I continue to spend time & treasure on music?

As far as the last post on the inundation of data, I'll be exploring ways to serve up a greater experience at this buffet. Today, I enjoyed jazz CDs that were $1 thrift store finds. It was a special delight of discovery.

But, do I want to resurrect a collection? No, of course not! I weighed the benefits of buying a vinyl of The Midnight's Nocturnal, but, if I bought that, then I would want to buy something else, followed by another purchase and loop that one right up into Ecclesiastes.

Perhaps the takeaway from this whole experience is my recognizing Spotify as a tool to diminish materialism's icy grip. It also highlights to me how many good, old albums are out there that I miss. I know, I know, it almost comes off like Cinderella's Don't Know What You've Got ( Till It's Gone).