The album
Every entry, newest first.
The record with the coffee ring on side B
Someone left a mark on the label years before I found it, and now I know exactly where the song changes.
The stairwell between the second and third floors
A vertical room that holds echoes differently depending on how many doors are closed.
The kitchen window at four in the afternoon
Light moves through this room in a way that changes how everything sounds.
The record player that runs slightly slow
I've been keeping it on the floor by the radiator, and everything plays half a step down.
The record I bought for the liner notes alone
Sometimes the music is beside the point.
The hallway at my grandmother's had a sound
A narrow hall, a wool runner, a clock at the far end. Some rooms are instruments and nobody tells you until they're gone.
A cassette labeled "summer, do not tape over"
Found in a thrift-store bin for a quarter: forty-five minutes of someone else's summer, mostly a porch, partly a song.
Contact sheet: the laundromat, six a.m.
Thirty-six frames of one room before it opened, and the four worth keeping.
The record that only sounds right after midnight
A jazz trio LP that is merely pleasant at dinner and becomes a different, better record somewhere after 12:15.