Let me tell you what happened to me several weeks ago. Those of you who know me fairly well will probably get it; others...probably not. No, this is not one of those revelatory life-changing events that readers will universally relate to. It's not even close. But since this is my blog, it's personal and since it's not about you, you've already lost interest.
Anyway...
On my 50th birthday (2010), Deb presented me with an iPod Classic. I had resisted the Apple gene pool for a long time. There was something cultish about all things Apple and I didn't want to join the crowd. However, I had finally become totally frustrated with the mp3 devices that I'd had until then: they were buggy, hard to use and never had the capacity I needed for my music. The iPod Classic has the capacity for sure: 160 gigabytes. Apple's marketing says that's 40,000 songs at 128 kbps.
Over time, I filled it with 10,000+ songs. I rip CDs using Apple Lossless, which are bigger files, resulting in better quality sound, hence 10,000 songs vs. 40,000.
I probably spent hundreds of hours ripping, downloading and then grooming the files on my iPod. It's a labor of love and it's something that I obsess over. All of the album art has to be right, the year of release precise, and then there's the playlists...
Ultimate Power Pop
Best of the Boss
Best Clash
A Weekend's Worth of Sadness
The Swingin' Sixties
K-Billy's Super Seventies Weekend
Omigod! It's the '80s!
...and so forth.
Again, literally hundreds of hours, usually late into the night. If you purchased every song on it from iTunes or Amazon at a buck per song...well, the arithmetic says there's $10,000 of music on my iPod.
I use my iPod EVERY DAY. I bought an after-market Sony car stereo that I can connect my iPod to. There's no CD player. I rarely, if ever, listen to the radio (well, NPR on the way to work). My iPod is the best radio station on the planet, in my view. At work (when I had my own private office), I plugged it into a speaker dock and it played all day. (The iPod Classic does not connect wirelessly to the Internet. You have to connect it to iTunes with a cable to update it. There's no WiFi/Bluetooth like an iPhone, iTouch or iPad). Now that I no longer have my own office, I use my earbuds to listen. At night, listening to my iPod is a bedtime ritual.
About six weeks ago, as I was walking to the office after parking my car in the Providence Convention Center Garage, the iPod fell out of my briefcase and I did not hear it fall. (I don't use the iPod for the 5-minute walk every morning...pedestrians in downtown Providence run the risk of sudden death if they don't pay attention.)
When I arrived at the office, I discovered that I had failed to close a zipper on the pocket that I use to store the iPod, my earbuds and a charger. No iPod. Not in my jacket, or my pants pocket, or in the other briefcase compartments. Panic crept in. Maybe it fell out in the car. Maybe I plugged it into the car stereo this morning. I told someone I'd be right back and ran out of the building, retracing my steps, eyes on the ground, traffic be damned. I arrived back at my car. I searched everywhere inside: under the seats, glovebox, under the floormats, in the console, in the stereo. No iPod. Took out my iPhone and searched under my car with its flashlight, on my hands and knees and then looked under the cars on either side. No joy.
I returned to the office, eyes searching everywhere, slowly resigning myself to the notion that it was gone for good. Past the Civic Center, past the Hasbro building, across Fountain Street, past Trinity Rep, across Washington St., down Aborn St., past the Satin Doll up to the office on Westminster St. No iPod. As I entered the building, I asked the security guards if anyone had turned in an iPod. Nope.
I arrived at my desk and a co-worker asked me if I'd found it. I called home and asked Sarah to check my nightstand, the kitchen table, the driveway outside. Nothing.
It was gone and that was that. I spent time during the day explaining my loss like it was a death in the family. I said that it sounded really stupid to be so upset over losing a thing, an object. a geegaw, a gadget, a device. Everybody was polite and said they understood. It wasn't the thing, it was the hours, it was the attention to detail. Have I mentioned how important my music is to me? (That's probably a topic for another blog post. Maybe not.)
I mourned. Yes, it's silly. I'm 54 years old and I was all verklempt over losing an iPod Classic. Did I mention that Apple stopped producing them last fall? And that the secondary market has plenty of 'em for sale, if you want to pay through the nose? They retailed at $249.00. I couldn't find one on eBay for less than $500.
Yeah, my iPhone is an iPod. There's 47 songs on it because most of the rest of the 32 gig is full of apps and texts and photos and...there was only music on my iPod. No photos, videos, notes, etc. Just 10,000+ songs, obsessively curated.
I put a lost notice on Craigslist, I was so desperate. First-time user, first-class loser, that's me.
A work colleague said she'd say a prayer to St. Anthony for me. (I thought it was St. Christopher, so what do I know? ) I thanked her for that, feeling more than a little petty about the whole thing. I mean, there are wars and hungry, homeless people in the world. I needed to ---- yes, say it along with me --- let it go.
For the next week, I walked to and from the office with my eyes down, a futile, fruitless exercise in risking my life to a careless Rhode Island (or Massachusetts) driver. Deb and Sarah, God bless them both, truly took pity on me and let me be morose and whiny. (Well, not whiny. Deb would never stand for that.)
Exactly one week later, as I made my way to the garage after work, I passed a glove on the sidewalk outside of the Hasbro building. Walking with my eyes down, you understand. I didn't stop right away but a few steps later, I did. I went back and picked it up. It was a leather glove, rather expensive-looking. Probably someone would be upset at losing it, right? So, I decided to go inside Hasbro and turn it in.
I walked up to the security/reception desk in the lobby and gave it to the guard, explaining that I'd found it outside. He said thank you without looking at me, distracted by someone saying goodnight while exiting the building, I turned to leave and then stopped. I went back and said, "While I'm here...did anyone turn in an iPod they might have found outside? I lost it a week ago. It's black with a chrome back." Shits and giggles. Grins. Why the hell not? What's to lose?
The man rummaged under the counter, murmuring, "There's a box here somewhere..." He finds said box, reached in and said, "Is this it?'
It was, and I've come to the end of my little tale.
There's more, but I suspect that many abandoned this several paragraphs ago or, because this is not about them, completely lost interest. (That's one of my favorite Seinfeld references, by the way:
George (or Kramer or Elaine) is telling a story.
Jerry: Is this about me?
A shake of the head.
Jerry: Then I've lost interest.)
You'll note that one of the playlists I mentioned near the top of this post is called "A Weekend's Worth of Sadness." Well, that playlist has 286 songs on it. Probably took me a good 5 hours to compile it and groom the tracks. It contains some of the saddest songs in my collection and for one reason or another, I love songs like that. (It's 180 degrees from "Ultimate Power Pop", another one of my musical obsessions.)
I'm going to blog about the songs on that list, tell you why I think they're great and that you should think so, too. Maybe you'll discover a gem or two you've never heard before or maybe you'll opine that a particular song is not even worth anyone's time. That's completely fair. As someone once said, there's no accounting for taste.
As for my iPod: all is well again and all sense has returned to me. It was completely undamaged and works perfectly. It goes into an inside compartment in my briefcase these days. I readily acknowledge the shallowness of my emotional connection to this hunk of metal and plastic, but there you go.
Wouldn't this have been a really cool story if I found a glove outside of the Satin Doll? Think of the possibilities!
Until next time, in which I will write about:
Ain't No Sunshine - Bill Withers
Buenas Noches From a Lonely Room (She Wore Red Dresses) - Dwight Yoakam
Come Back - Pearl Jam
Day After Day - Badfinger
Cry Baby Cry - The Beatles
