• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
Widow's Voice

Widow's Voice

  • Soaring Spirits
  • Donate
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Categories
  • Authors
    • Kelley Lynn
    • Emily Vielhauer
    • Emma Pearson
    • Kathie Neff
    • Gary Ravitz
    • Victoria Helmly
    • Lisa Begin-Kruysman

Revolution 34

Posted on: September 25, 2018 | Posted by: Mike Welker

If many of my posts sound like a broken record, it’s because they are.  For those of you old enough to remember, the slightest scratch on a vinyl album could stop the music in its literal track and replace it with two seconds of repeating sounds.  It was aggravating when it happened. You could hope that it was just a blip. A speck of dust or an oddly perfect combination of bass vibrations that was causing the needle to jump back in time.

It usually wasn’t.  Being that the spiraling track of a record was actually a groove cut into the plastic, you couldn’t just “buff out” a scratch all that easily.  You couldn’t completely erase that imperfection. Every time the turntable spun to that exact point in your playlist, you would be greeted by a reminder that you didn’t handle your album with enough care, or that someone else mishandled it.  

If you remembered early enough, you could gently lift the needle and “skip forward” by placing it into the visible gaps between songs.  You would never have to hear that infernal, repeating series of notes that there was no way around, other than to artificially suppress it.  You could put the blinders on, and pretend that your album had one less track. One less thing to worry about. Nothing bad had ever happened in that few minutes of missing music.

You could move on with the arrangement.   Soon enough, you would reach the halfway point of the album, and you could flip the disc and listen to the rest, You, and the album, were no worse for wear.  The songs played on, with every note taking you further away from that one scratch that triggers aggravation and thoughts of imperfection.

We all reach the end of the album at some point though.  At the end of it all, taking stock of the producer’s creativity, care, and composition, we’d be missing a track.  We wouldn’t have heard the whole story of the album, simply because of a scratch that we didn’t want to deal with.  Whether the song we had skipped was our favorite, or it was something we considered simply a point in time on the 500 meter groove, it was never intended that we ignore it.  

Scratches happen.  We certainly don’t create them on purpose.  It’s just a fact that a fragile object is, well, fragile.  For every minute of music, a record turns 33 ⅓ times, and revolution number 34 was where my record scratched.  

I started listening, knowing not where or when I would hear that frustrating sound, but knowing that it was “flawed” from the beginning.  Knowing that there was a scratch on the record, somewhere in the first minute or two.

Had I chose to simply skip the first track, placing the needle ahead, I would have never heard that song.  I wouldn’t have known how it sounded. There were a few pops and hisses leading up to the deep cut in the vinyl.  That’s just the nature of records. When I reached the scratch, I let it skip back a few times, before getting up, walking across the room, gently moving the needle a microscopic groove or two to the left, and letting the music play on.  

I may never hear the exact series of notes, in sequence, that that song was intended to have.  I will always have to wonder what it would have sounded like had it been a full, uninterrupted piece.  As the turntable continues to revolve, the song winds down, and the scratch becomes simply a memory as the next track begins to play, as long as I’m not visibly watching it turn.  

But if I sit forward and watch the record spin, I can SEE the scratch orbiting.  It is so deep, and so substantial, that I can visibly be reminded that the first song will never be perfect.  It will always be there, both audibly and visually a broken record, regardless of if I choose to skip it in the future.  I’ve already heard the song. It’s not something I can pretend doesn’t exist. I may choose not to worry so much about the scratch as the album plays on, but I will never forget it.  

And every so often, I will even deliberately play that broken record, just to remind myself that although scratched and imperfect, 99 percent of that song is beautiful, and the tracks following it only compliment it.  

Categories: Widowed, Widowed Parenting, Widowed Memories, Widowed by Illness, Miscellaneous

About Mike Welker

Three months after my discharge from the Marine Corps, at 22 years old, I met my wife Megan, on December 10th, 2002. The very next day, I was drawn like a moth to a flame into dealing with a long term, terminal illness. Megan had Cystic Fibrosis, and after 8 years or declining health, she received a double lung transplant, and a new lease o life. Our daughter Shelby was born in 2007. In early 2014, those recycled lungs, which had brought our little family three years of uncomplicated health and happiness, finally began to give out. She died from chronic organ transplant rejection on November 19th, 2014 while I held her hand and let her go. I'm a single father and widower at 34 years old, and no one has published a manual for it. I don't fit the mold, because there is no mold. I "deal with it" through morbid humor, inappropriateness, anger, and the general vulgarity of the 22 year old me, as if I never grew up, but temper it with focus on raising a tenacious, smart, and strong woman in Shelby. I try to live as if Megan is still here with us, giving me that sarcastic stare because yet again, I don't know what the hell I'm doing.

TO LEAVE A COMMENT ON A BLOG, sign in to the comments section using your Facebook or Gmail accounts, or sign up for Disqus.

Primary Sidebar

Footer

Quick Links

  • Home
  • Blog
  • Categories
  • Authors

SSI Network

  • Soaring Spirits International
  • Camp Widow
  • Resilience Center
  • Soaring Spirits Gala
  • Widowed Village
  • Widowed Pen Pal Program
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • YouTube

Contact Info

Soaring Spirits International
2828 Cochran St. #194
Simi Valley, CA 93065

Email: [email protected]

Phone: 877-671-4071

Soaring Spirits International is a 501(c)3 Corporation EIN#: 38-3787893. Soaring Spirits International provides resources with no endorsement implied.

Copyright © 2023 Widow's Voice. All Rights Reserved.