The Wake

Illustration by Dixon Bordiano

My iPod broke the other week. I didn’t drop it. I didn’t leave it out in the cold. After a year and a half, it just stopped turning on. The little apple stopped popping up to greet me. Sixty gigabytes of music ceased to exist. Since most of that music is on my computer, CDs, or records, I survived, but I realized how dependent I was on my iPod. It pisses me off that a stupid mp3 player had assumed such a large role in my daily life, because after all, digital music is really just a bunch of ones and zeros. It doesn’t really exist in any tangible form. So after I ceased being angry, I began to consider my options. Do I buy a new iPod? Do I dig out my portable CD player? Do I sing to myself as I ride the bus?

My first realization: Tangibility is important to me. I still buy CDs because I enjoy the satisfaction brought by holding them in my hands. The ritual of choosing a record and putting it on is nearly religious. I have never downloaded a song from iTunes because I listen to whole albums, not individual songs. I have never downloaded an album from iTunes because to me, the idea of clicking a button and entering my credit card number just to have twelve songs pop up in my iTunes library holds significantly less meaning than the act of going to Cheapo, selecting an album, anticipating it on the way home, and finally ripping it open and throwing it in as soon as I get in the door. Maybe I haven’t been as affected by our culture of instant gratification as severely as others. Perhaps I am afflicted with an acute case of the compulsive consumerism that is ravaging our society. Whatever the case, I am certainly stuck in my ways. Therefore, I decided not to purchase a new mp3 player.

My second realization: I hate portable CD players. They are bulky, they skip all the time and my CDs get scratched when I carry them around with me. The player could just break at any moment and I would be just as stuck as I was when my iPod broke. The benefits, however, of using a portable CD player over an mp3 player is the limited selection of music I can bring with me. This aspect appeals to me because I enjoy the pre-departure album selection process. Perhaps, on a certain day, I would select Sailing to Philadelphia, Dreamboat Annie and Born in the USA. On another day, I would choose Rainbows in the Dark, Best Friends Forever and Dirty. It’s important to me to have to think about what I want to listen to instead of allowing myself to flit from song to song and album to album on a whim.

Although the CD player sounds like a good compromise, I have found a better solution: tapes. I can buy them for $1.97, they are small enough to fit in my purse or my jacket pocket, and I can usually fix a tape machine. Mix tapes are considerably more meaningful and interesting than mix CDs because I can record my voice, stop in the middle of a song and speed up and slow down the recording, and here’s the best part: the person I give it to has to listen to the whole thing, because there is no passing over tracks on a tape. I have the ability to buy blank tapes for 50 cents, record an album I want to listen to from a CD, and then tape over it whenever I feel like it. I can listen to whole albums without being tempted to skip to the next song. I can just be delighted to listen to music without feeling the pressure from my “number of times played” column on my iTunes. I can force myself to be choosy, therefore allowing myself to think clearly about what I am listening to. I was lost in the chaotic digital woods, and now have found the light and simplicity that is analog. I have found peace. I am converted.