It was just an average walk home from work when I had a sudden whim. I know not from whence it came, but there it was—I had the urge to watch Shogun Assassin. Upon arriving home, I cracked a bottle, prepared a simple dinner and sat down to find out whether or not my desire could be fulfilled.
There's no art to the search for specific films, music or literature anymore. It took me about 30 seconds to find a platform from which I could legally stream a remastered version of Shogun Assassin, and at no cost beyond the nominal subscription fee. While I was happy with the convenience, I found myself slightly downcast about the whole thing. I thought back to when I was becoming obsessed with film in my teenage years, recalling the challenges of getting ahold of esoteric movies that I had read or heard about. Information was much harder to come by, and sometimes I'd begin seeking a film based on nothing more than a glimpse of a compelling vintage poster, or the fact that I'd enjoyed another film by the same director. The search invariably meant leaving my house, and sometimes involved a convoluted wild goose chase to obtain primitive transfers of films that weren't worth watching in the first place. The process could seem interminable at times, and one or two movies eluded me for decades.
Similarly, there was once an art to discovering exciting music. One’s research might be as simple as taking note of band T-shirts worn by arbiters at school, interviews wherein tasteful musicians would discuss their influences, or trustworthy friends raving about recently-acquired hits. Obscure artists on independent labels usually didn't have sufficient distribution for their records to be available in Calgary, so there was extra incentive to attend live performances. If you liked a touring band’s set, you could invest in their recordings and hope that they were good too. Sometimes none of this worked out. Anybody over the age of 35 has probably spent way too much money on shitty music because one often had no choice but take a chance on albums without any possibility of hearing them first. But when you dropped the needle on a true gem, you knew that life would never be the same again.
One thing that you certainly couldn't do was jump on your computer or phone to sample any song by any band you'd ever heard of, and then download the good stuff for free. Computers were (eventually) for typing out schoolwork, and phones were for calling your friends to tell them that your mom had let you borrow her car for the afternoon so that you could drive them all to the record shop. Now we're literally inundated with unavoidable recommendations based on sterile logarithms. When I stream music on my phone (which I never use as a phone), my selection ends by segueing directly into songs that the program thinks I'm going to like. My logarithms must be complicated as I’m just as likely to select Bad Brains as Sibelius, but even when I enjoy the coldly provided recommendation, the way I got there leaves me dispirited.
This might seem like the rantings of a crotchety luddite—”It's insufferable that all this great music, film and literature is so easily accessible! Life was much better when you had to special order a $45 Japanese pressing of some obscure record, only to wait three months for it to arrive to find out that it sucks!". But it's undeniable that we're spoiled, and in the process of becoming spoiled we've forgotten the intrinsic rewards of organic, hard-earned discovery.
The best way to fill your life with great films, music and literature has always been to align yourself with enthusiasts, specialists or obsessive freaks with good taste. There are five or six people—both prior to and following the advent of streaming platforms and algorithms—who have informed my own pursuit of these mediums to such a profound extent that I would consider them “lifechanging". Their insight has inspired me to gently attempt to be this person to others in regards to another area of obsession.
I'm glad that wine won't be flowing directly out of our phones or computers any time soon, and not just for reasons of my own job security. It's essential to us as humans that some holdouts of aesthetic expression not be replicated digitally. There's still an art to identifying and tracking down good wine, and trust me, it has nothing to do with the parade of vainglory on Instagram, nor the cacophony of amateurs on Vivino. The art has everything to do with passionate people in possession of good taste and experienced palates doing careful, tireless research. It's an expensive, time-consuming and ultimately interminable process, but one with immense rewards.
Assuming that your schedule precludes you from deliberating upon wine for most of your waking hours, it's the great pleasure of my colleagues and I to share our finds with you. If shopping at Metrovino doesn’t improve your life the way that mine was by certain music aficionados or film professors, we at least hope to be useful stewards on your journey to delicious and meaningful vinous discoveries.
