I've got to be careful when I visit my CD shop.
I've got to make sure I don't reach for my wallet.
Lunchtimes on Friday, usually.
The weekly visit takes me down from my city office on the 16th floor, into a side street and then a laneway .
I've got to resist buying some bargain bin CDs, a few new releases, some T-shirts, a couple of DVDs and maybe even vinyl albums.
I've got to tell myself that such purchases would be indulgences rather than imperatives. No, I don't need the latest Martha Wainwright album. No, I don't need another Leonard Cohen concert DVD. No, I don't need a T-shirt with a picture of a record.
I've got to be careful. What does Springsteen sing on Nebraska (in the $10 bin): 'I've got debts no honest man can pay.' I'm lucky enough not to be in quite so deep but, nonetheless, as Kelly sings on Stolen Apples (Australian artists, under K), the bills 'just won't go away'.
I've got to remember those bills piling when I'm browsing, say, the vinyl albums. I could buy an album right now, just for the fun of walking back to the office with it under my arm, just for the heck of placing its large cardboard cover, so much more visible than colleagues' iPods, on my desk, beside the humming computer, the blinking phone and the never-empty in-tray.
But, no, I'm only here to look, to breathe in enough to keep me going until five o'clock.
Standing in anonymous office clothes I flick through the shop's T-shirt collection, thinking: I'd like to wear my music this close to my chest every day. I could buy a pile of these T-shirts for a year of casual Fridays but I don't even check their sizes, because then I'd start reaching for my wallet.
As the lunchtime ticks away I notice other customers, some in suits, some in neat-casual. All of us are revealing a little of our non-work selves, latching onto something invisible — a riff, a chord, a chorus; holding onto something intangible — a melody, a key change, a lyric.
To thine own self be true, before returning to the desk. But is the visit, the pilgrimage, a simple break from a satisfying working day or an all too brief respite from fading dreams, from ambitions gone astray?
We each have singular reasons, I suppose, as well as a collective constant craving.
I've got to be careful