xtcian

ideas as opiates

2/2/05

I don't talk about it much here, but I am utterly helpless when coveting cool technology, and the new iPod Shuffle ("give chance a chance" - now THAT'S good copy) was no exception. The sub-$100 price barrier was so physiologically undeniable that I plonked down my money the second I read about it. I bought that motherfucker the way hungry kids grab Zagnut bars at the Walmart impulse-item rack, and I'm now making sweet, sweet love to it.

This is one of those items, like the iPod itself, that would have BLOWN OUR MINDS IN HIGH SCHOOL. If someone had walked into Norfolk Academy in 1985 with a music player the size of a stick of gum that played 240 songs, our eyeballs would have exploded. Shit, I don't even like 240 songs!

I'm remembering all the road trips I took with those TDK zip-bags full of cassettes, and Velcro folders crammed with CDs - and then you had to bring your Walkman and/or have a reliable tape deck AND fight with your friends as to which R.E.M. album you were going to sit through in the car. The iPod shuffle is something I'm still able to see with eyes from the early 1980s, which is why I'm so grateful to have made it into my mid-thirties.

Usually having two music players like the iPod and the Shuffle would seem redundant, but now that I own both, I feel myself creating an organic sense of aural hierarchy. Basically, with this much technology at your fingertips, your own brain becomes a radio station, and it beams out to whatever device best fills the need.

The iPod itself might become the classical music repository, as the song files are too large and un-navigable on a Shuffle. I'll also use the iPod to try out new albums and see which songs make the cut. Those that are deemed worthy of "heavy rotation" will get slipped onto the Shuffle, where they will spend the next few months bouncing around my hindbrain during workouts and dreadful trips on the subway. In essence, it's exactly the way Top 40 radio used to work, only I don't have to be held hostage to the moronic tastes of the American vox populi (or Casey Kasem).

Without a screen, the Shuffle becomes your aural Id. In determining which songs go on the little guy, I've held to the "nothing that's good for you" rule, meaning it has to be stuff that will put a glide in your stride and a dip in your hip and make you come on to the mothership. Nothing I think I ought to be listening to. As such, my Shuffle playlist will remain a closely guarded secret to those questioning my manhood.

I can also see the bulkier iPod becoming the main conduit for all my reading. As it is, I haven't actually "read" a book in a year, preferring instead audible.com - those who think that makes me a lightweight can suck it. Since I started downloading books, I've become better-read than I've been in the decade since school let out. Besides, doesn't all storytelling spring from the oral tradition? Long before papyrus and quills, bards were called around the campfire to sing songs of Roland to a rapt tribe. I'm kicking it old skool. Crucial!

*ahem* - I meant "Croosh!"