Records are synonymous with nostalgia, sentiment, memory and a bypassed era (in the same way, though this is hardly an original thought, celluloid will probably one day be). This passage I read from Haruki Murakami's South of the Border, West of the Sun, where the narrator describes one of his key childhood experiences - listening to records with his childhood friend, Shimamoto, with whom he later shares a powerful love story that is the rest of the novel - is probably symptomatic:
Shimamoto was in charge of the records. She'd take one from its jacket, place it carefully on the turntable without touching the grooves with her fingers, and, after making sure to brush the cartridge free of any dust with a tiny brush, lower the needle ever so gently onto the record. When the record was finished, she'd spray it and wipe it with a felt cloth. Finally she'd return the record to its jacket and its proper place on the shelf. ... Only when the record was safely back on the shelf did she turn to me and give a little smile. And every time, this thought hit me: It wasn't a record she was handling. It was a fragile soul inside a glass bottle.
More than a historical detail, the record is also a powerful invocation of memory and, with memory, love. Twenty-five years later, the narrator meets up with Shimamoto and they attend a concert together. He admits he couldn't enjoy the concert because "The record we used to listen to, at the end of the second movement there was this tiny scratch you could hear. Putchi! Putchi! Somehow, without that scratch, I can't get into the music!" When he finally confesses his love for her, it was to Nat King Cole's "Pretend" spinning on the turntable, a song they used to listen together as children. South is therefore a love story bound by memory, where memory in turn is held together by music on old records.
All of which makes for an interesting comparison with Al Pacino's memorable spew in Sea of Love. (Aside: now that is a GOOD cop duo movie, as compared to, oh, say Hollywood Homicide, which was utterly unwatchable. But then with a cast of Pacino and John Goodman - how could you go wrong?? (As opposed to the astonishingly talentless Josh Hartnett and a Harrison Ford who clearly only needed the money and couldn't even bother to put half a heart into it) But that in turn begs the question: does the cast make the movie, or the other way around?)
(Aside #2: apropos to nothing, this movie also has one of the oddest foreplay scenes I've ever watched - viz, in the Korean grocery shop amidst peppers, cans of soup etc. Very strange.)
Anyway, so in Sea of Love, Pacino, an old cop, is hunting down a killer who keeps finishing off naked men in bed, the scene always shown to the song Sea of Love played on an old record. Pacino is convinced the killer is some deranged femme fatale who picks up men and then kills them off and explains his reasoning in the conversation below with his officer:
Lieutenant: Yeah, but how do you know the trim is strange? Maybe it's a steady.
Frank: Strange. You know how I know? Records. 45s. Nobody whips out their old 45s, except on a first or second date, when you're doing "the wonder of me" thing. Getting to know you. So what do you do? You take out your old records, show the broad you kept them after all these years, meaning you're a wonderful, sentimental individual. Who does that with somebody they know already? I mean...once you know them, y'know, who gives a shit?
It's a great speech (I really like "doing the wonder of me thing"!), and, of course, turns Murakami completely on its head - a record, so full of itself and all that it stands for, therefore is also a wonderful cover, a conjuration of false sincerity, an appeal for memories which promise lies.
There's nothing like the hiss of a needle meeting a vinyl record? Of course. It's a profound sound which encompasses love both enshrined and forsaken. And you know I like dichotomies. :-)
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