Burden of the years

Had listening training with the students and there was a mentioning of an LP record. Half-jokingly I decided to explain the concept to them, asking who knew what an LP is, and suddenly my playful mood churned into a chilly deafeningly silent emptyness when _NO_BODY_ could say what it was - the closest we got to was an audio tape. I mean, man, it was just about yesterday, I can still actually feel the sensation of holding a vinyl disc and dusting it off carefully with a special felt brush... Where is it all going to? When did it go? I am not terribly old, I remember, I re-live, I feel, I can breathe of how cool it was to get a new LP and how hip it was to put it on; and the hands remember the sacred sequence of movements when you raise the cover, unite the male power of the machine with the prone femininity of a record, give it a brisk turn with a finger, turn on the switch releasing the ever-present circular motion the turntable had always been pregnant with, feeling how the intensity of the power translates through the fingers into your whole body in anticipation of those a little cracky waves and streams and soundfalls of energy, and raise the needled spear from its cradle, gently lowering it onto the running magic burrows... What, nobody experiences it anymore - not even in the dusty nooks of the memory? Of the tales from the past? Of a not-so-far-away past, - for I still can call up those emotions of mine that the vinyl witnessed, they are still sparkling with the dew of actuality, which dried up a trifle, but is still humid to the touch of the soul.
One girl said she had never in her life seen or touched a vinyl disc. Another one had a flash or recognition from a movie. I mean, wait a second, I see them as more or less _my_ crowd, I am still in the same league with them if you know what I mean, - but how different our sensations of the world are, the memory lanes on the maps of our lives are not merging. And for them the buildings of consequences and understanding erected on our lanes may be walked in but can hardly ever become having been lived in. And then I felt that we are strangers to them. To a certain degree.