By Christina Collie

Often while working I like to throw on a home remodel show in the background. I do this in the hope that I might learn something new to benefit SARAH (the name I’ve given my East Village home) through osmosis, I guess.

Recently I had on an old show (circa 2004, if I remember correctly), and a simple conversation between the show’s designer and builder took me back to a time that I had nearly forgotten.

They were discussing how important it was to showcase the homeowner’s extensive CD collection – probably 300 or more discs – to ensure that it had a place of honor in the living room. This casual dialogue brought me back to when I was growing up in the 90s, and a person’s media collection of books, music, movies, and even video games, was usually on proud display in the living room.

Back then, when media was regularly a feature in one’s home, it served as a quick way to get insight into a person’s personality.

I always enjoyed looking through these collections and having others look through mine. I liked finding media we had in common, discovering new music or books to borrow, and the excitement of suggesting items I could loan someone based on items they already had in their collection.

For example, maybe that homeowner had everything Prince ever released, but they were missing Morris Day and the Time. A good collection of dime-store murder mystery novels was great, but oh the excitement if they had some Sherlock Holmes or Daphne du
Maurier in their collection!

An avid reader and audiophile since early grade school, I would always peruse others’ media shelves like an explorer voyaging through new lands that hold a thousand mysteries. For although a new acquaintance’s media was interesting in and of itself, it also told the story of the person who owned it. Most exciting of all was finding a kindred spirit through these shared media adventures – someone who you didn’t know well but immediately felt like an old friend because they also read that obscure Stephen King book of short stories.

One such incident happened to me about 10 years ago (because yes, I still like to display my books and music). A fairly new acquaintance was looking through my music collection and found a rare CD from Flourescein, an L.A. band that got some brief recognition back in the late 90s/early 2000s but never really made it big.

I originally discovered Flourescein’s music while at one of many concerts I attended while a student at College for Creative Studies in Detroit. The show was at St. Andrew’s Hall, where I was handed a tape with just two songs by one of the band members. They’d just opened for the headliner that I no longer remember, and the band seemed to be passing their tapes out to anyone who would take one.

Ultimately, I was so taken with the two songs on that tape that when it died, I found a copy of the CD online and eventually purchased it.

Anyway, this new friend recognized the Flourescein’s name among my collection. (Keep in mind, this was now decades later, and even the person I attended that show with had long forgotten it!). So when this new acquaintance and I started listening to the CD, and he shared how he too had been at the show that night, you can’t imagine the thrill it gave me to know that we had already shared this intimate, obscure concert experience. Finding this random connection was truly miraculous to me!

I also experienced a similar episode, this time brought on by a book, with the woman who eventually became my sister-in-law.

On her first visit, as she was looking through my library of favorite reads, she pulled one off the shelf that I hadn’t read in years: “She’s Come Undone.” It had hit me hard, this really intense book by Wally Lamb, so when she told me that she’d also read it and was influenced by it, it endeared me to her that much more.

I’m sure this whole exchange might have been rather unremarkable if it weren’t for the fact that the title was published decades before our meeting.

Over the years, I’ve moved so many times that my media collection has taken quite a hit.

In addition to having to purge much of it, last year I was dealt a hard blow when my small stereo CD player with the dual cassette deck quit playing CDs. The tape deck still works though – yes, I still have a few mixed tapes! – and when my neighbor offered to loan me his 20+ disc changer, I was able to hook it up to the stereo and get it to play through the detachable speakers.

Now, it is pure joy to pull out my CDs (all alphabetized, of course) and throw them in there, listening to each one from the very first to very last song. But it also kind of saddens me that generations after X (my generation) don’t know the thrill of listening to a full album and getting the stories that the musician might tell, or the careful curation of where each song fell, the album cover, and even its inside cover, which often shared personal stories from the band about how the album was made, their influences, or the lyrics to the album’s songs.

(I especially liked when the writer of each song was listed so I knew exactly which band member was responsible for my favorite track. Sometimes that lyricist was a member from a totally different band that I had yet to discover, or maybe even another one of my favorite bands. It was always incredible to learn who was responsible for those haunting lyrics that touched my soul.)

And while I am the first to credit the portability of today’s digital media, I do rather miss the fun of getting to know people by looking through their library of music, books, and movies. So I, just like that 2004 home improvement show’s featured homeowner, want everyone to know that I still have a bit of mine left for those interested in looking.

This story also appears in East Village Magazine’s August 2025 Issue.