When I was young, I could put on a record, sit down with the album cover, and disappear.
For a little while, the room I was sitting in didn’t matter anymore.
I was somewhere else.
The music, the artwork, the photographs, the words on the sleeve — all of it belonged together. A record wasn’t just something playing in the background.
It was a place you could go.
Somewhere along the way, we lost a lot of that.
Music became something we scroll past, skip through, shuffle, and squeeze between everything else demanding our attention.
The songs are still there.
But the world around them is disappearing.
I miss that world.
And I don’t think it has to stay gone.