Doors Of Perception

Vinyl records are double-sided, are paper-thin yet, it’s their insides we’re interested in: the often long-dead voices speaking out of the black grooves (graves?), I’m thinking of Roy Orbison and Kathleen Ferrier. And I’m always on the lookout for an album-cover with a picture depicting a dead singer clad in a corduroy suit (such an album must exist): the grooves of the record containing the dead/alive vocal cords: the cords of the corduroy suit containing the dead/alive crooner.

Doors say, yes and no: keep the outside out and the inside in, but some doors are paper-thin. Walls have an outside and an inside – are double-sided - and as everyone knows: walls have ears. Doors have a letterbox, and records used to be played on the jukebox (voice-box). Who could forget Kitty Lester’s “Love Letters Straight From The Heart” or the Carpenters cover of “Mr. Postman”?

It’s possible to speak through a door, and records speak to you (if sung in the right key). 

What’d happen if doors go the way of records? As Perec says: “If there wasn’t a door there wouldn’t be a key”.  And for me the key to the record is the cover: bring me a groovy, corduroyed crooner on an album cover.