One take on this connection can be found on the back cover of a favorite Ramsey Lewis LP [Upendo Ni Pamoja, Columbia Records KC 31096] where Ramsey muses about the eons-old connection we have to sound. He speaks of the earliest awakenings of our artistic human spirit, at a time when our rudimentary brains struggled to comprehend the water, earth, wind and fire surrounding and sustaining us. Mercifully, music still sooths the savage in me. And, given the choice, I enjoy music in what I feel is its purest recorded form – vinyl.

After a weekday bound to the world through Internet connection and cell phone, there’s something liberating about taking up sanctuary in my cave. The two-channel amplifier coming slowly to life, its warm glow flooding the room with tonal promise, my senses tingling as I anticipate the escapism and aural bliss that await me. By casting off the vestiges of my modern life I am liberated to dwell for a time on a simpler plane. Interrupted only by the joyful servitude of flipping the platter, or removing another analog treasure from its protective paper wrapping, I can lapse into a meditative state where many aspects of the physical world yield to more metaphysical principles.

This time spent in the company of artists whose lives have been enshrined in shiny black vinyl is at once healing and invigorating, stimulating and soothing. What’s more, for minutes at a time, I wield the awesome power to reach across the abyss and connect with the long-gone legends of music. So that, even from beyond their earthly graves, Jim Morrison and Dinah Washington are free to shine again in all their mortal glory through the resonant medium of their age. Even Miles smiles on me from whatever reality he found on the other side; in ways his modern digitized manifestations simply fail to.

This act of reanimation is matched only by my own ability to defy physics and practice time travel. Meaning, when I’m engrossed in a record side I can suddenly feel myself at Newport, Montreux, and the Fillmore East years before my physical birth. Or I can return to the small public library of my youth, to feel the exploratory rush of flipping through bins of LPs, back when carting home armloads of classical, punk, jazz and rock records was a fearless act of discovery that vinyl still affords me here in my middle years.

Another unexpected joy of my life in vinyl is that I find myself a member of a larger community of purists who celebrate music with every revolution of the turntable. Wonderfully, this group of newfound friends also includes my biological brother and friend, who re-ignited and now shares my re-discovered passion for vinyl. For the gift of hours and hours spent in his company that may not have otherwise been had, I will treasure my records and the time I lose and find myself while listening to them.