It’s been almost six years to the day since I packed my belongings into a good friend’s Crown Victoria and moved to Buffalo. I was barely 17 and had only $240 to my name. It was definitely a cold February, and between coming from relatively warmer parts in Eastern Pennsylvania and still harboring my native-Californian naivety about weather, I brought nothing but a small coat and a pair of Chuck Taylor’s held together with duct tape. What was worse was my bedroom was a porch. It was the porch to a punk house at the far side of a dead end street, insulated only with the fliers of shows that hung on the wall. It was freezing, dirty, and smelled like onions most of the time. I thought all of this was perfect.

I moved here for two things: For punk rock and to fall in love. That’s about as romantic as you can get. So, sitting here, on Valentine’s Day, mid-twenties, with that love long faded and a long day of Generation production ahead of me, still here in Buffalo, I think it’s easy to see why that day is resonating so heavily right now. After years of dedicating my life to a subculture, it’s kind of a different experience of living in the real world. As I grow older, I grow more and more “mainstream,” I guess you could say. I grow more and more normal, whatever that is, compared to my younger self. I no longer feel the need to fly the freak flag, to wear the badge of my ideals on my sleeve. It’s only been six years, but I find myself worlds away from the person I used to be. I’ve traded in the lip ring for lip gloss, and the X’s for cans of PBR. I’m not ashamed of any of this because, frankly, I think I am pretty awesome, but it really makes me wonder what could possibly be sacred in a world where who I am can change so quickly. I don’t think this feeling makes me special in any way, because I think we all experience this as we get older, “normal” or not.

That’s not to say I’ll ever forget. There’s a black, faux leather case that sits on my desk, about seven-and-a-half by seven-and-a-half inches, that holds some relics of my former self. Vinyl records of all sorts of colors and textures, slipped between heavy card-stock. Sitting here, listening to some shitty punk band I barely remember paying $5 in lunch money to see in a suburban Pennsylvanian basement somewhere, it’s kind of making sense now. For a lot of people like those in Ryan Mallette’s “The Vinyl Frontier,” these records are moments in time. Music for some people is more than a commodity. Music for many of us is our history.

While I am as far as you can get from a Luddite and fully-embrace the new technology of music, I think vinyl is something beyond just the act of listening to music. It doesn’t just stop there. The books that line our shelves serve a similar purpose in reminding us of who we are and where we’ve been. My Bratmobile 7” reminds me of the time my band went on tour for the first time. I bought it in Bloomington, Indiana, and I think I screamed when I first found it in the dollar box. Tom Robbins’ Skinny Legs and All reminds me of how I hitchhiked across the Northeast when I was 18 with an old boyfriend. I think I picked the book up at a used book store somewhere between here and Boston, and then finished it on my way to New York City from Portland, Maine. Karl Marx’s Capital Vol. 1 and Sharon Olds’ Satan Says reminds me of my first few years of college at Erie Community College, and of my professors who mentored me and showed me the value of education and scholarship. I won’t go on, but I think you get the point. As kind of Rob Gordon from High Fidelity as this sounds, this stuff really matters.

I think there’s a lot of fear at this point in history about where technology will take us and what technology will eradicate. But I think a lot of people, on Valentine’s Day more than ever, will come to a similar understanding that technology will not do away with the human need for touch. An MP3 on a computer for a lot of us won’t replace the act of holding a record. Love will not be digitalized.