Cynthia often pokes fun at my ears. She says my ears are promiscuous. I used to buy many compact disks regularly. My favorite pastime since the day when compact disk format was made popular was to camp at record stores, staring at the nicely wrapped disks trying to decide if I should buy just one more. It was an obsession, before the time when consumers rely on listening stations and online reviews to decide if they should part their hard earned money in exchange for a forty minutes of an unknown piece of music.
I suppose there is an ounce of truth for Cynthia to choose that descriptor for my ears. I suppose if you have a few girlfriends to juggle at the same time, you probably would not have a good memory on who they are, not even their names. At times when I listen to a beautiful tune playing on the radio, I would turn to Cynthia and asked, “I think I have that song in my music collection. But I can’t recall which one it is.” Cynthia would give me a standard reply that my ears are promiscuous.
What happens to the days when we could remember the lyrics and sing along with the songs?
When I share with the people around me that my phone comes with a legally unlimited music download service, some are surprised while others cannot relate. When I walk into a record store these days, I am no longer in my usual euphoric state. The entire recent collection, I almost have it. OK, I recognize the album covers, music that I have downloaded with a click of a button. But I doubt I have listened to all. It does feel good though knowing that some albums are inside my computer’s hard disk somewhere, ready to be listened to when my ears are free.
I reckon the idea of a harem full of girls is not to sleep with all, but keep some to look at.