Until recently I’d owned a video camera. I’d likened its purchase one year ago to how I imagined bringing home one’s first child must feel, and I’ve just sold it for what equates to two month’s rent and a few bottles of wine. It had been my first camera, and, though I hadn’t used it much, I’d loved it all the same. Now there’s an emptiness. I sit in my room, stare at my toes, and see a foot-long stretch of carpet shining cleaner than the rest. It’s been two weeks, and this check in my pocket burns a hole in my heart. But I’m making a new start, I tell myself; I’m making a new start.

Camera Obscura – Your Picture

I missed Camera Obscura when they visited Atlanta with Ben Chasny and crew. Of the songs I’d hoped to see, this had been one of them. No offense to Tracyanne Campbell, but there’s enough remorse in Carey Lander’s voice on this track to kill a small child, several even. Maybe it’s the whistling at the end, more Otis than Andrew, that gets me. Maybe it’s the thought of a Bible rejecting its owner. As it stands, the music alone does an astonishing job convincing me to keep on keeping on, which is in truth the primary issue at the moment.

Aztec Camera – Down the Dip

“I put all the love and beauty in the spirit of the night / And I’m holding my ticket tight.”

When I first acquired my camera it was an expensive (albeit undeniable) step forward. It had been as though I’d taken the plunge. There no longer existed room for on-second- thoughts. Now, however, there’s no ticket, there’s no sprit of the night. That’s all been replaced by the prickly tingle of “all for naught,” the grey drizzle of “back to square one.”

A part of me feels like a heinous consumer. “What’s wrong with selling a camera that just sits there?” Nothing’s wrong with it, but now I’m plagued with déjà vu. This is how I felt when I’d given my mother my computer before leaving for college. It didn’t matter that she’d purchased it from me, and that I’d have enough money with what I’d saved to get a better one. The computer I’d written my first programming language for, created my first web page with, downloaded Bitches Brew on, was gone.

It isn’t the object so much as the sentimental value I have difficulty severing ties with and resigning to the expanse of memory. Then again, I suppose that goes without saying for us all.

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