Come On In My Kitchen. Robert Johnson. 1961. Columbia.
Writing about Walter Benjamin in 1978, Susan Sontag describes the great German essayist as “a collector, weighed down by things; that is, passions.” Expanding upon his interests, she notes his fondness for the miniature; “To miniaturize is to make portable—the ideal form for the wanderer, or a refugee.” In this same way, we come to understand the obsessions of the 21st century’s vinyl fetishists, those happy collectors whose unstated aim is to collect the world by owning its immense and varied songbook. Taking possession of the world in this way—from the seat of the imagination, powerlessly, without danger of causing anyone any harm—is to understand the broad contours of human behavior by arranging our verisimilitudes within intelligible formats; playlists. Whether by the LP deep cut, the 45 single, or the densely compressed MP3 file, putting world history into your pocket and carrying it with you to the beach to celebrate it, or making a Kabbalah of it with your friends, procuring evi...