“Time to get a turntable! When I moved to New York City about a year ago, I was pretty obsessed with getting a new turntable. Moving makes one buy things. However, a few months later you usually realize you don’t need half of what you bought. These kinds of changes are a reminder to what is essentially important to us in life—like a little epiphany, like ice cream.”
“Two things I did bring along with me and my guitars were my Moka maker and a small magnet that survived four different refrigerators. The quote on the magnet: “A room without books is like a body without a soul.” For me, this meant something like, “A musician without a music collection is like a car without gasoline.” Where can you possibly go with writing your new song if you don’t appreciate all the groundwork that is already out there? History is a call, always to be new.
I love my music collection—six, dusty enormous boxes—and although I always hoped that one day I would have an apartment only for those albums, I consciously and rightfully left them behind. Obviously, the times they are a changing, and digital world is way beyond just here.
Any collection is potentially a great story, passing from one to another, threading generations and spaces. All those pieces of a particular something we hold onto is perhaps also another way for us to feel less lonely and illusionary immortal too, like those stamps, coins, music, art, and so on. Yet, without looking back, armed with my magnet and Moka coffee maker, I gladly left my music collection in those six huge boxes and headed out to a new beginning in New York City, CD-less and free, ready to start “collecting” something new.
I realized, in some way, all that music now stored in all those boxes grew in and with me, influenced and nurtured me, changed me, disturbed me and touched me in one way or another. They also partially designed the path that led my way to my dramatic move to NYC, to be leaving them behind for my love of what I do. Moving to New York City was an old story in a new book, my story, a story I never really imagined I could tell, exactly what music is all about.
The move was pretty cool; I was very comfortable making the change. Being in my thirties, it seemed like it was just the right time for a well-thought-out adventure to calibrate, re-tune and re-phase my routine. And since it was also for my love, I felt it couldn’t go wrong. Once my first MTA card expired, I knew a storm was going to rock this boat soon. With all respect to the romance in our musical, adventurous life, there is nothing easy or comfortable about moving to a different country. But easy wasn’t part of the deal. It never is. Once you accept that, it does become easier.”
—Tamar Eisenman
“Easy Comes Free” is from Tamar Eisenman’s forthcoming release, On My Way. Tamar plays the Rockwood Music Hall Stage 3 in New York City on March 10. Tickets can be purchased here.
