In art as well as in life, you can only achieve greatness through obsession. Things you do not obsess over are bland and easily forgotten. In the final moments, on your deathbed, alone or else surrounded by people, you will not remember them. Not a flash. Not a fucking flicker.
Filmmakers who do not obsess over their characters simply waste your time, as do poets who drive cars and musicians who write to order. They have no sense of passion, loss or true enjoyment of what they are doing. Like anyone who falls in love with an idea of getting married, they have no grasp of the process and will only look for the result.
So I bought a vinyl player.
God knows when the sense of obsession will hit you. But it will, and not necessarily the moment that "A Whiter Shade Of Pale" starts crackling softly but distinctly around your apartment. Could be Mark E. Smith snidely intoning 'Oh! Little brother! We are in a mess!' Could be at any point during "Town With No Cheer".
The thrills are not cheap, and there is nothing materialistic about the needle plunging into narcotic depths of The Delines' Colfax (still one of the greatest albums of this century). And once, lying on the floor after a great day at the gallery, you and I, we fall in love with the voice of Edith Piaf like never before.
It is the voice of Paris as it used to be, slightly muddied by the time and the dust. It is time-travelling, and it will not be forgotten. Because you know what I think? A trip is not a trip if it's not a journey.
