A chat with 19-year-old me
he has other priorities
(22 September 2025)
I bumped into my 19-year-old self the other day. It was horrifying, in the same way that looking in the mirror every morning is horrifying, but with added horror on top.
I stopped him mid-stride, he wasn’t even looking at me. His attention was elsewhere. Daydreaming. I remember, I used to do a lot of that. I tapped his shoulder.
“Hey. Hi. Hello. It’s me! I mean: you.”
Nineteen flicked his ridiculous fringe out of his eyes and gave me a wary once-over.
“Do I, err, know you?” he asked, as he pulled his Walkman headphones, with their fading orange foam pads, off his head. I heard tinny beats pumping out - a Pixies album perhaps? Doolittle?
“Yes! I’m you! But in his 50s. It’s 2025 where I come from.”
“Weird,” says 19. “What’s it like in 2025 then?”
That was a tricky one to answer so soon into the conversation, so I knocked it aside.
“Ah, mostly fine. So whatcha up to?” I asked.
“Off to the record shop,” he said. “New 808 State album. NME says it’s great.”
“Ah, yes!” I nodded, remembering. “Ninety. I still listen to that every now and then.”
Nineteen nodded, but the expression on his face suggested he could never imagine this balding, slightly overweight middle aged man wearing hiking shoes and a flat cap listening - let alone dancing - to 808 State.
There was a pause while I pondered how to continue. I almost said cheerio then, but then something new popped into my head and I couldn’t stop myself:
“Don’t sell the vinyl,” I blurted.
“What?”
“Your vinyl records. Don’t sell them. In the future.”
“Why the fuck would I do that?” The mere idea of it shocked him. His music collection was essentially all he owned, apart from a few clothes bought from charity shops.
I looked away, around at the world, trying to find an answer in the trees and the houses. That’s not where the answer was, of course.
“Look, trust me, in the future there will come a day when you’ll want to sell all your records. Except the Furniture one, which you’ll keep in the attic for years.”
“I’ve only got Furniture on tape.”
“Yes, for now, but later you’ll get it on vinyl. Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is: when you’re tempted to sell the vinyl, don’t. Hang on to it. All of it.”
Nineteen also looked around - more likely, for a way out of this weird conversation with this weird old man - but then snapped back to me.
“Maybe I’ll need the money,” he said.
“Well, there will be times when you certainly will need the money, but honestly selling the vinyl won’t raise anything like enough. And in the long term, you’ll regret that you did it.”
If I’d planned ahead for this conversation, I might have hoped he’d look at me like a hero. But - no. Trying to make the best of everything, I pressed on.
“Look - life is all about mistakes, and regret, and learning as you go. At first, having access to all the music ever made, any time you like, on a pocket-sized device that does a thousand other things - well, at first it will all seem like everything that you ever dreamed of.”
When I said ‘you’, I jabbed a finger, slightly accusative, towards his face. He flinched, only a tiny bit, but I saw it.
“And later, when you’re older still, you’ll change your mind again. You’ll want to own a music collection that’s yours, and support artists properly, and not support companies with questionable ethics. You’ll give fewer shits and more damns. So, you’ll delete your Spotify account and buy a record player and start buying records again.
“So the lesson is: don’t sell the vinyl. When that day comes, and you think ‘Hmm, I’ll sell the vinyl’, remember that we bumped into each other and remember what I said.”
I felt like I wasn’t handling this conversation well. There was so much else to say to him - about family, about relationships, about parenting, about listening. But I could feel I was already losing his attention. He’d already stopped listening.
But then - I was wrong. He had been listening, and then he’d been processing.
“Um, what’s a Spotify account?”
“Spotify? Spotify! It’s a thing on the internet. It lets you pay a monthly subscription for access to all the music you could possibly want.”
Nineteen’s eyes widened.
“Music on subscription? Like those clubs they advertise in the Sunday supplements?“
I nodded: “Sort of.”
“Blimey. Do they like, send you tapes in the post or something?”
“No, no, it’s all on the internet.”
Another pause. “What’s an internet?”
“OK, yes, the internet. Look, the internet is this new thing. You’re going to see it for the first time very soon, very very soon. It will change the world, change your life, give you a career, you’ll have a website where you can broadcast your every last thought to the whole world. The internet will be a big deal. You’re going to love it.”
“So - Spotify is the internet?”
“No, Spotify is on the internet. It’s a service. The internet is - it’s a network.” I waved my arms in the air, unhelpfully.
“It’s literally what everything depends on. Where I come from. You’re going to totally fall in love with Spotify at first, because it will let you listen to all the albums you ever wanted to listen to, but couldn’t afford to buy.”
“I usually get those from the library and tape them.”
“Yes, I know you do, but that’s a lot of faff isn’t it? Much easier to just look stuff up on your phone and start playing it instantly.”
“Look stuff up on my phone?”
“Oh god, yes - look, someone’s going to invent a gadget, about the size of a pack of cards, and it will connect to the internet and so you’ll have the whole internet with you, all the time, everywhere you go. And it will be your phone, your address book, your portable computer. You’ll have Spotify on your phone, all your music on your phone.”
He struggled with this bit. More processing.
“That all sounds pretty amazing,” he said. “There must be a catch.”
I always was a bit cynical.
“Well - well yes,” I hang my head slightly, “yes there are some catches.”
Again, I looked around at the trees and the houses for excuses and reasons. Nineteen’s Walkman clicked to a halt at the end of side 1. He glanced down at it, but didn’t make a move to turn the tape over.
He looked at me. Waiting. Surprisingly patient, for me at that age.
“Look, this isn’t easy to sum up,” I said, hearing the uselessness in my voice. But here we were: I had to tell him the truth.
“The internet will be an amazing thing and it’ll change your life, honestly mostly for the better. Really.”
“OK. Great. If I can afford it.”
“You’ll be able to afford it. But it will also, you know, fuck things up. Scammers and rip-off merchants and liars and fascists and all sorts of horrible people will use it to their advantage. It will be used to spread misinformation at massive scale, and lots of people will start believing anything they see on the internet. Including the misinformation. That part of it will be hard to take, to be honest. Even Spotify will get tainted by it.”
“Did you say fascists?”
“Yes. Sorry. There will be fascists. And racists, and people who think the world is flat, and people who campaign against vaccines, and loads more terrible stuff like that. It won’t all be good.”
Another pause. He looked at his Walkman. He looked at me.
“So, what’s this got to do with music again? What were you saying about this internet called Spotify?”
“Yeah. Well, streaming music over the internet will initially seem like the best thing in the world, but eventually it will go to shit, like lots of big internet services. Spotify and lots of other internet companies will spend years building up services, luring in millions of customers, basically creating monopolies. Then they’ll crank up the prices and start indulging in all sorts of questionable business practices, and end up trying to shove AI down your throat even if you don’t -”
Nineteen interrupted.
“AI?”
“Artificial intelligence.”
“You’re joking. That’s not real.”
I’d read quite a lot of science fiction by the time I was 19.
“It is, but - look, it’s complicated, and it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”
Nineteen stared at me for a bit. Like he was trying to decide if I was making it all up. Like he didn’t believe for a moment that I was his older self. I mean, that’s understandable. I understood it even then.
He flicked his ridiculous fringe again. He sniffed.
“Look, I really need to get to the record shop.”
I smiled and nodded.
“Of course! It’s a great album.”
He moved to step around me, to continue on his way. I reached out.
“Just - just don’t sell the vinyl, yeah? One day you’ll be glad you held on to it.”
Nineteen gave me a final glance, and took a couple of steps.
“I’ll try to keep that in mind.”
He started to walk off. I could see him opening the Walkman, flipping a tape over, snapping the lid shut. Before he clicked play, he stopped, turned, still wary. But he had a parting question.
“What’s a website?”
“Eh?”
“You said I’d have a website. What’s that?”
“It’s a thing on the internet. It’s like - a cross between a noticeboard and a newspaper and a photo album and all the letters you write to your friends. It’s something you own, and you can edit whenever you like. And people from all over the world can come and read it, if they want to.”
He pondered this.
“And I’ll have one of my own?” he asked.
“Yes. For years and years. You’ll end up quite attached to it.”
He considered this. He adjusted his headphones, his thumb hovering over the play button.
“That - that sounds a bit weird, but sure. Whatever.” he said. Then he pressed play, and strode off towards the record shop, to buy his 808 State album.
giles (at) gilest.org
👴🏻