I’m behind on my online orders—boxes of CDs, 50 to 100 are going out every day. Tough work. The joints of my hands burn as I pack perhaps the 75th three-dollar U2 CD of the year. A Microsoft update has wiped out two of my computers in one day, putting me another three days behind in the Christmas meatgrind of cheap CDs, the profits of which will keep the store open during the quiet period that follows Christmas shopping and comes before Record Store Day.
The Chimera as Metaphor
I feel a loss of vision at these times. Taking a break I turn to a page of Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary Of the English Langauge, of which I read two every day. I come upon a passage on the chimera. This dictionary describes it as a vain and wild fancy, as remote from reality as the poetical chimera—a monster with the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a dragon. Record stores, I think to myself, the modern kind, are in many ways chimerical beasts.
The dictionary then cites the poet Dryden to illustrate the meaning of a chimera, “In short, the force of dreams is of a piece, chimeras all, and more absurd, or less.” The dictionary then leads into an entry for the chimerical which is a word used to describe the imaginary, fanciful, wildly, vainly, or fantastically conceived. Vain, wild, and fantastic, such as physical media in a digital era? That is our record store, is it not? Of all of our modern cultural institutions which are more absurd? Which more unacceptably unreal?
Vision vs. Reality
Reading Pierre Bourdieu at the same time, I feel the weariness of the notion that there is what we want to do, and work hard to do in life, and what the conditions of our place and time in the world can allow us to achieve. Optimism is my stock in trade. Like everybody else though there are times when I feel it flag. When this happens, writing helps. Journalling helps. Reflection gives me hope.
The hard work of running a record store is unrelenting. Every store does the same—the packing, the shipping, helping customers, the hours of labour spent on small details forgotten by history and invisible to the world at large. But behind it all, for me, is Glitter Records’ vision. As esoteric as it may seem, it’s this vision that keeps me going. Every day I stay in the game, I get closer to the opportunities that will bring the unique elements—the literary, the intellectual, the poetic, the fantastical—into reality, even just a little bit more.
Hope and Persistence: Final Thoughts on The Chimerical
The work itself may feel mundane, but it’s the vision that drives me forward. Each step, each order, brings me closer to defining, articulating, and expressing that dream. Building a ladder toward the dream, no matter how far away it seems. Yet, somehow, even through the weariness, the packing CDs, there’s hope.
Running Glitter Records may not always feel like an immediate success. The work is exhausting, and sometimes it feels like the dream is far from real. But just as the chimera combines fantastical, impossible parts, so too does the store exist in a tension between the dream and reality. The results of my work are not always clear or immediate, but my gradual progress, grounded in vision and values, is what ultimately creates a lasting change.
And so I chisel away, cutting the rough stone of wild dreams into the bright contours of a magnificent record store—a little closer to that vision every day.
