Old and busted; new hotness

Anybody who knows me knows that I am an iPod freak. I love the little things. The ability to carry my entire music library with me is one of the miracles of the modern age. Forget cell phones, TIVOs, and GPS navigation — iPods are the great technological breakthrough of my lifetime.

Okay, okay — maybe they're not all that. But it used to drive me nuts when I wanted to hear a song in the car, and I didn't have that cassette with me — if I'd even made a cassette of that album yet. Now, thanks to a device the size of a deck of cards, if I want to hear something I own, I can, right then, no questions asked.

Better yet, I can use the shuffle function, and let it surprise me with songs I had forgotten about, had never heard, or didn't even know I had. This becomes important for people who, like me, tend to get stuck in musical ruts. And I don't even get me started on being able to buy just one song if I don't want the whole album, or make different playlists to suit certain moods.

But, as my niece-in-law Aleatha (whose artful blog fisticuffs versus the guards still stubbornly refuses to let me link to it in my Fellow Travelers section) put so well a few posts ago, having all this power changes things. iPods can lull you into relying solely on the shuffle mode, or just buying a song here, or a song there. People don't listen to CDs anymore as entire artistic creations; instead they take pieces her and there to suit them. Worse yet, the hidden gems you might hear on a CD you bought for one song are lost to you if you bought just that song off iTunes. Musically, the iPod can discourage exploration and patience in some ways — both crucial traits for music listeners.

But, as Spock once observed, just because we can do a thing, it does not necessarily follow that we must do a thing. For that reason, I have resolved to return to my old ways of listening whenever I can. Lately, when the the mood takes me for a specific song, I try to listen to the entire album instead. When I became obsessed with the song "Possession" by Sarah McLachlan, I spent days listening to the entire Fumbling Towards Ecstasy CD, enjoying once again the process of cramming an entire new album and artist into my head. And most recently, when we had a little money in the family budget for luxuries like iTunes shopping, I used my cut (at my dear wife's subtle suggestion) to buy the 9 remaining tracks from Thomas Dolby's The Golden Age of Wireless that I lacked (I'd bought "Airwaves," one of my favorite songs, as one of my first iTunes purchases). It is, I think, a change for the better. It certainly feels more like the natural order of things.

A final note on the subject of blog upkeep and maintenance; I enjoy posting whatever media (books, film, CDs) I happen to be enjoying at the moment, as a way for my readers to know where my head is at artistically, even if I don't have time to post. When I started, I would link these lists to sites with more information about that title; amazon.com, the Internet Movie Database, etc. I plan to continue posting the list, but I'm going to stop adding the links. They're a little more work than I like, and you guys can use Google at least as well as I can...

As usual, any thoughts, agreements or disagreements are most welcome. And, as always, may the Force be with you.