Santa brought me an Ipod Nano. This tiny thing has more memory that an entire university faculty. I have been diligently feeding it albums from our collection, and the little bar at the bottom of the screen has hardly budged. Amazing.
It's a voracious little device. It feels like I am pouring my favorite music into a black hole that is hungry for more and more. Absolutely fascinating. But unlike a black hole, this cute little thing serves up all this music on command from my pocket.
Along the way, I am listening to dusty CDs that I had almost forgotten we own. I'm feeling that glow of renewed friendships. I am delighted by album after album, song after song. Ah, yes . . . that's why I liked this song. Ha! I love that great phrase in those lyrics. And that one still makes me want to dance around the room.
I've always enjoyed a wide variety of music, and the task of loading the ipod is reminding me just how many kinds of sounds speak to me. Beatles (of course!). Glenn Miller, courtesy of my dad. Classical music I've learned to love. Other music introduced to me by my kids.
And many songs evoke an almost palpable memory, a feeling of time and place and mood and relationships so strong that I feel like a time traveler visiting my high school years, my first apartment, my parent's house, my favorite car, a transistor radio beside a swimming pool, the first FM station I heard.
In the blink of an eye with the first few notes of a song, I'm 14 years old and listening to the AM station from Oklahoma City late at night when the reception was better. Next I'm sitting in a dorm room on a college campus with girlfriends. Like the background music in a movie, these songs provide cues and context for the stories of my life.
The performers are like old friends who have seen me through my ups and downs. It seems that we have shared so much over the years, and it is a delight to visit with them as I load them into this new toy.
What a delightful way to begin a new year: not just reviewing 2007, but enjoying music from many years past.
1 comment:
I don't know what to say; I identify with all of this, except that I don't have the new toy... Oh, and I can't quite identify with the girl's dorm part, either.
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