Okay, so I know nobody other than SuperForester Jackson does these, but I decided to give it a go anyway. Plus, Jackson’s life is kinda dull (sarcasm!!!). I know the date is a little off, I wrote it a couple nights ago, but due to technical difficulties wasn’t able to post it until now, but nothing much has changed. Anyway, enough of an introduction, here it goes!
Hey SuperForest!
Carla here writing to you all from a messy dining room aside a table covered with base maps, colored pencils, and tracing paper.
Yup, that could only mean one thing. The spring quarter is winding down over at UCSD which means lots and lots of deadlines are coming menacingly close. The calendar days are inching closer and closer to the tune of the Jaws theme song. As SuperForester Chris mentioned earlier, this time of year is incredibly stressful for a lot of students and I am certainly no exception. The past few evenings have been spent staying up until the early hours of the morning redesigning a section of my university campus. And although I find it incredibly fun and exciting, there has been one thing saving me from going insane (relatively speaking)…THIS.
Mmmm! Nothing beats the blues.
A couple days ago, SuperForester Iman came home with a bag of extra-special goodies: a collection of records SuperForester Nina leant us!!!! Every evening, we’ve been flipping the record player on and listening to everything from the sweet tunes of Cat Stevens to the groovy sound of The Temptations or the soulful B.B. King. It’s been incredible! And not only is the music itself worth celebrating, but the fact that they are vinyl deserves celebration as well.
At around the beginning of the year, I decided “enough was enough” and started my own vinyl record collection and when I did, I had extremely underestimated how much I would appreciate and value their sound. There is something about vinyl records that creates a more intimate relationship with the music. For a while now, I’ve been trying to pinpoint what it is that makes them so special and what creates that engagement with the music. Maybe it’s the careful placement of the needle or the need to flip the record over. Perhaps in doing so you feel you are more involved in creating the sound compared to having an iPod on shuffle playing on a dock. I’ve thought of all possible explanations and all of a sudden last night, while listening to Cat Stevens’ Tea for the Tillerman, it hit me. There is an underlying factor that tied all of my observations together. Vinyl records remind us to live in the present moment. Allow me to explain. You see, last night, despite my racing thoughts and all of my worries while working on the project, the gentle shhhhhh sound the record was making pulled me back into the present and reminded me to flip the record over. It’s as if the record was telling me “Shhh Carla, it’s okay, flip me over, just you wait and see what I have on the other side” (LOL)!!!
A big thank you goes out to Nina for sharing those tunes! Those records were god sent. I can think of nothing more relaxing, nothing more therapeutic during these crazy times. In return, here are my own records. Take your pick of which ones you’d like to listen to (they’re all amazing).
Love to all of you wonderful beings,
Carla
P.S. A special thank you goes out to SuperForester Iman as well, probably one of the best hand models to ever grace the pages of SuperForest. <3
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