Compact discs came from a time before me, and although it existed during my time, it’s slowly dying out. I think it’s due to everyone’s dependency to have media played from their devices that is causing the inevitable irrelevancy of CDs. However, I believe that there is an unspoken value when it comes to discs, whether it is for collecting purposes or any purpose. People used to use CDs as a way to store information. They came in small gigabytes, and it evolved to storing media, such as photos, music albums, or even two-hour-long movies, but now they’re all accessible within the touch of a screen in the palm of our hands – the phone. Don’t get me wrong, I love the way media comes in a physical form where I can touch it, feel it, and reminisce the memories and inspiration stemming from them. Still, unfortunately, we live in a time where we want to find everything within our fingertips.

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One of the things that these CDs carry is music. These physical music albums hold songs that I can put on repeat. I didn’t realize back then, but now I know that they were like background music. They are reflections of me – the current me, the past me, and the future me. They reflect my emotions of what I was going through, but by the words of amazing artists. I am not good with words, and I do not know how to vocalize myself, but through the help of music, they help me articulate what I was going through in better words.

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Another thing that DVDs store are movies. I used to have a dream. I told my mom that I would receive the Oscar award when I got older because I had visions of acting. I was naïve. Now I have resorted to cosplaying during Halloween season and at conventions. Costumes and characters gave me a realm to explore different identities, and once in a while, it was okay to pretend I was someone else. Sometimes, I can also pretend to be the main character and believe that life is great for a moment, like being the hero and saving the beauty in the fairytale story, like Shrek.

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The back of the disc is so colorful, it’s a chromatic spectrum with colors that bounce of form reflections of lights shooting in every direction, and I just wish that I could be the same, bouncing positivity to people around me and color into the world. However, I am a very dark person, and I have a very negative mindset, which I’m trying to change, of course. Yeah, the chromatic part of the disc is what I kind of hope myself to be someday, I guess.

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The snapping of the disc in half is not as pleasant and satisfying as it seems. Although it creates incredible texture and aesthetic for art, it’s not what I thought it would be. When you see it, you think I’d break it in just one go, but I can guarantee it takes more than that. It does not just take brute strength, but rather a tactical method to destroy it. It can be with scissors, it can be with the positioning of my hands during the break, but it does take a strategic approach to break in half. So breaking is almost like the physical action of when I try to break apart attachments in my life; emotional attachment I have to toxic things – things I should have let go of a long time ago. It’s the physical representation of breaking apart.

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The reflection that the disc gives off is not that as clear of a mirror that I thought it would be, but a more blurry version of me – a version of me that I still cannot fully understand. It’s me but distorted, and fragments. I see hints of myself but never the whole picture. You look at it, and you can only see all the colors of the rainbow except a clear reflection of yourself, and when you break that traumatic surface, it just gets more distorted and confusing. You still see the colors, but you barely see yourself in it. It’s almost like you don’t exist at all. That made me doubt my existence. Do I exist, or do I just exist to myself? Am I real, or am I an image of someone else? What am I? What are you, if not a fragment of imagination? Seeing things in the world in another perspective makes you think harder in the questions that should have the most obvious answers. Technically, we should know the answers, but that is what we’re told. That’s how we “know” it this whole time, but can we trust what has been told to us rather than what we deeply consider when we deeply think about it?

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The utility of the disc is to store information compactly. It is a library, a storage, a product of memory, memoir, music, feelings, emotions, inspirations, moving images, and a whole lot of data. The compact disc carries a compact of history of many things, a record of the trauma we’ve been through, people been through. It is a product of the influence of dreams and stories, carrying stories that serve as a lesson to some, and entertainment to others.

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How do you deem when a disk loses its value, it’s worth, its utility? It is when you see the scratches on the back of the chromatic surface, it starts losing its worth as it’s unreadable by any system. When a disk has endured so much and its lifetime that it starts having physical scratches and dents and flaws, do you think about throwing it away usually, or would you leave it for collection purposes? Just like that, that CD has lost its value. It just sits there on the shelf, not being played again because it’s not readable at all. No one will be able to see what’s in it or hear what’s in it. It’s very much human-like in this process where it kind of goes with old age with physical marks. The marks and scars that you can see the shows its trauma, yet it cannot tell you what it has been through and why the scratches. Sometimes, it’s readable. Sometimes, you can still see a bit of what was happening, but it starts to repeat itself, repeating the same words and then ending its voice. Humans, in this way sometimes repeat the same story again and again, but about the same trauma, as that is the only thing they remember. They can’t remember everything else that has happened in their life because this trauma has covered most of their memory storage. You can only see your history through the scratches, but in the end, they are still worth more than what meets the eye. You’re worth more than your scratches. These battle scars, every though they are the only proof of history visible, are not the only things that put value on your life.

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Compact discs compared to our age seems like a distant memory, almost as if it carries nostalgia. However, it is very much still alive in the current media climate. Yeah, it looks like everyone else forgot about its existence or deemed it useless. It’s so easy to get them. They’re just a computer store or a music store away. However, people will still go for the easier option, which is going on our phones. The memories are not physical anymore. We worried that if all the memory was in one device, and we lose the device, we lose a whole database of memories. We lose the stories that were in CDs. CDs have a special place in our hearts.

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When you break your discs on purpose, it shatters, and the shattering feels like a representation of your heart shattering into pieces. The sharp edges. Of course, your heart is made of soft muscle tissue, but it still can feel like the sharp edges killing you, what’s hurting you, and what is breaking you up are your memories.