Just Off Center

During the hour plus long commute from my home in Queen Creek to my job in Gilbert I have only my Ipod to keep me company. The 1,744 songs on it have survived several deep cuts initiated when I found myself skipping songs four or five at a time before reaching a tune I wanted to actually listen to.

One of the things that strikes me as I drive with the little technical Apple wonder on shuffle is that I encounter many songs that I really do like and yet I skip past them because I’m just not in the mood for them. This is hardly peculiar because one can scarcely be in the throws of a constant thirst for their Richard Marx fix. Though Hold On To The Night always brings me back to a time when the great cognitive dissonance in my life was that I was dancing with one girl while gazing at another. And while I have no current situations in my life that can be expressed in the lyrics of most of these tracks, I find myself imagining that I do. And suddenly, REO Speedwagon’s Can’t Fight This Feeling is all about me and how I just can’t seem to fight off the feelings to… something… anymore.

It occurs to me while wearing the little white “next” icon off of my Ipod’s touch-sensitive control panel that this is more than a simple music device. It is more like a mirror into the mood I’m in. I seem to find myself recollecting certain memories, recounting certain events, and reiterating certain values aloud. I think of the tipsy man leaning over an old Wurlitzer fifty years ago, pumping nickels into the slot and drowning his sorrows in a mixture of beer, melancholy and indecision as to which of the 45s in the jukebox best encapsulated his being at the moment. The Ipod just allows me to streamline this process by skipping right past any songs that don’t meet the mental criteria.

One needn’t be of great intellect to conclude the types of songs that have been fending off my trigger finger of late. Roughly half of the songs in this gadget are of a more somber and introspective nature. But then a little more than half the words out of my mouth are of the same ilk. I can understand how this makes me an interesting person to spend time with in small doses only.

Oh great. May It Be by Enya. Now I’m going to sink deep.

Despite the lack of appearance of posts on my blog with a title and theme similar to “What good have I actually done?” I do find myself reflecting quite often on the impact of my own existence on the people and things I encounter. As quickly as the despair starts to rise, it is summarily put down by the realization that I’m too young to suffer a mid-life crises. Mid-life Crisis is a really cool song by Faith No More by the way. Droning on ad nauseum about how my recent inability to demand a better raise is an indication that I’ve developed no greater personal strength than the time I missed out on the Homecoming dance of my life by asking Michelle to be my date seems more boring to read then it is to write. And that, friends, is pretty fucking boring.

Another benefit of the Ipod is that if I choose to I can much more easily force myself out of a mood and into another. For instance, I can go straight from the personal anguish of Shadowboxer by Fiona Apple and jump straight to Easy E pretending to have an orgasm in Gimme That Nut. It’s like a cold splash of water to the face; administered by a dead rapper with a penchant for fucking hos. This is particularly useful when I am about five minutes from home. After an hour of driving in solitude and rage jamming out to Everything Ends by Slipknot, I can always just switch over to Yellow by Coldplay. And suddenly I’m back to being the loving husband who just wants to cuddle and listen. Though this behavior is usually trumped after about fifteen minutes by Closer by Nine Inch Nails.

For a man who is so heavily influenced emotionally by the music he hears the Ipod can be a great and terrible tool. If not properly reined in and monitored, its powers could overwhelm, convincing everyone around me that I’m bipolar. This is exemplified in the occasional phone calls I receive on my way home. Nina will ask me how my day was to which I’ll respond “Oh… fine I suppose.” Uh oh. Something must be wrong with Nina’s husband. Perhaps she should be prepared to console and comfort her somber husband when he gets home in twenty minutes. Then when I get home I’m ready to put my fist through a wall and roar out all the rage of the ages to the heavens. My wife would be convinced that something dreadful has occurred. Perhaps it’s so bad that I can’t even bring myself to verbalize it. The truth of the matter is that my day was fine and there is nothing to verbalize. She simply called when I was on REMs Losing My Religion, and I got home after Trapt’s Headstrong.

It may be that technology has surpassed evolution. Some gadgets are too powerful to be in the hands of your average thirty year-old, professional, married white man.

# posted by Mike @ 7:04 AM