Wes Phillips

Over in the Stereophile Forums, we've been having a conversation about the differences between music lovers and collectors—a conversation that has been considerably enlivened by the participation of my friend Jeff Wong, who is both.

Jeff just sent me this link to a website dedicated to Agrippa—A Book of the Dead by William Gibson and Dennis Ashbraugh, a collector's item that was designed to erase itself as you read it. Talk about dilemmas! Is it all about owning it—or does the act of experiencing it become tantamount? Whew!

Glad we have sites like this to experience it vicariously. And, as it so happens, to experience it as it was conceived as opposed to how it turned out—or something like that.

This isn't exactly a new idea, I had a friend who designed an album cover out of industrial sandpaper so that the act of inserting/removing the LP made each copy "unique." I probably would have been even more appalled by that if the record hadn't been so offensively terrible—which may have been part of the "art," after all.