Andrew Cashin writes about the felt experience of record collecting: the search, the needle, the memory a record carries, and the quality of attention the whole practice asks of you.
He has been collecting for more than forty years, from the record shops of Merseyside in the late seventies to the crates he still works through every week in Toronto. His subject is the phenomenology of collecting, what happens in you when you look, find, hold, and listen. Not the record as an object to grade or complete, but the record as a companion, a teacher, a thing that tells you something different every time you drop the needle.
That attention is the thread. A certified mindfulness meditation teacher since 2015, Andrew thinks about listening the way it is actually lived: slowly, with presence, and with room for memory. His book, Zen and the Art of Record Collecting, with forewords by broadcaster Alan Cross and Buddhist teacher Lodro Rinzler, is published by Quarto in early 2027.
He writes on Substack and lives in Toronto with his wife Kelly, his son Rhys, and Elsie the golden retriever.
Andrew is available to speak on records and record collecting, and to lead guided mindfulness meditation, at events and gatherings. Get in touch at andrew@andrewcashin.music.
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