Stephen Mejias

<i>This isn't "perfect sound," it's perfect life.</i><br>
<b>&#151George Reisch, <i>Stereophile</i>, Vol.20 No.9</b>

Dear Stephen,<br>
You probably will be cleaning records over the long holiday weekend, as your cleaning machine was shipped today.

Part of the problem is that I'm almost always thinking about what I should, or could, be writing here on the blog. I'll be in the shower, thinking: "Man, I haven't written anything <i>good</i> lately. Haven't written anything that's inspired discussion. Maybe, today, I'll write about my father and how his alcoholism relates to speaker cables…."

Her name was E. and the gentle quaver in her soft voice gave me the impression that she was nervous, anxious, young. Something about it seemed sweet, seemed sincere. Which made me want to help her more. She was calling from England, and the connection was crystal clear. I could hear her perfectly, though she was so far away. She was doing research on the high end hi-fi industry.

My first record cleaning purchases: A Hunt EDA carbon fiber brush for dry-cleaning (footnote 1), a MoFi brush for wet-cleaning, a couple bottles of MoFi fluid (Super Deep Cleaner for the really nasty records, and Super Record Wash for the plain old dirty ones), 100 Polyline inner sleeves (because of all the different options these were the least expensive per sleeve, but, at some point, I'd like to try the MoFi rice paper sleeves), and 100 4-mil outer sleeves (because 4-mil seemed just thick enough, and because I liked the packaging).

Still, I have a long way to go before I catch up with <a href="http://www.stlbeacon.org/arts_+_life/music/vinyl_records">this young music lover</a>.

I spent yesterday at my mom's house, celebrating my sister's 14th birthday. Uncles and aunts and cousins are scattered around the house, laughing and eating and shouting at the television screen as if someone is just going to die if the Celtics don't win this game. See me and my sister sitting side by side, somehow apart from it all: She's absolutely engrossed in <i>Weird N.J., Vol.1</i> (I'm very proud of her), and I'm similarly rapt by Acoustic Sounds' "<a href="http://store.acousticsounds.com/sale.cfm?sale=undertheradar">Under the Radar</a>" list.