iPod, therefore iAm

I don’t think that I have OCD, but before leaving my apartment, even if just to run a quick errand, I first do a pat-down of my pockets to check to make sure I have with me all my essential urban gear: wallet (check), keys (check), cell phone (check), iPod (check).  Depending on the weather or destination, this pat-down may also involve reading material, hat, gloves, umbrella, chapstick, and/or sunglasses. 

I always feel naked and vulnerable whenever I forget to do this pat-down and neglect to bring with me one of these “necessities,” but this is especially true when I forget my iPod or cell phone. How am I supposed to walk through the city or take a subway ride without having my own soundtrack to carry me along?

One of my old housemates from Seattle, Jeff, used to chide me because I listened to my CD player during my commute on the bus. He said that I was missing out on all the excitement and energy of city life that you miss when you have headphones cutting you off from the outside world. 

I now realize that he may have had a point.

As Andrew Sullivan writes in the Times of London, observing people walking around New York with those ubiquitous white wires dangling from their ears:

“[their] eyes were a little vacant. Each was in his or her own musical world, walking to their soundtrack, stars in their own music video, almost oblivious to the world around them. These are the iPod people…They walk down the street in their own MP3 cocoon, bumping into others, deaf to small social cues, shutting out anyone not in their bubble...

But what are we missing? That hilarious shard of an overheard conversation that stays with you all day; the child whose chatter on the pavement takes you back to your early memories; birdsong; weather; accents; the laughter of others. And those thoughts that come not by filling your head with selected diversion, but by allowing your mind to wander aimlessly through the regular background noise of human and mechanical life.”

Granted, when I’m waiting for a late-night subway train without any reading material (not even an old copy of amNew York or New York Metro), I do value my cute little white box.  But perhaps I could more often consciously unplug myself from my sleek device and take in the outside world around me.

[ Article via Arts and Letters Daily; image via Google image search.]

Comments

[Teresa]

It's a funny thing - for Lent this year, I gave up my portable CD player (alas, I am one of the few people in the universe sans cell phone, OR an iPod). I went through serious withdrawal for the first week! This surprised me - I mean, I knew that I enjoyed my music as I walked around, but I didn't realize how much a part of me it was until I had to do without it!

Lately, I've been walking around with my portable cassette player/am-fm radio (yet ANOTHER throwback to a distant era!). So I'm still good on the Lenten front, but I still get to have my noise.

Honestly, I think the "city sounds" thing is overrated - now, I'm a writer, and I do appreciate the occasional bit of interesting overheard conversation, etc. But quite frankly, most of the noise heard in the city isn't all that inspiring - screeching brakes, honking horns, jackhammers, people flipping off cab drivers....music in my ears keeps me calm in the frenzy and allows me to arrive at my destination sane.

Meditation with music...

[Forest]

Brian,
I am your friend. You know me. We've seen each other in our PJs. I have a blog. Put the link on your page, bee-yotch.
love,
f-dog :)

[Emily]

Post offensive to people with OCD.
And women. And ipods.

[Rowlf]

Andrew Sullivan makes a good point, but would he apply the same descriptors to a deaf person wandering about the city. It's sometimes good to totally immerse yourself in the world around you, but do buds in your ears change that much when you're alone and not talking to anyone anyway? People don't look "a little vacant" when listening to their iPod, they have simply shifted their attention. When you have ears that hear you can afford to do things like make direct eye contact with strangers and notice those subtle social cues. If you are deaf or listening to your iPod your attention is simply focused more on other things your ears would normally be ever ready to tell you about.

P.S. The supposedly theraputic quality of city sounds sounds like BS to me, admittedly a bit of a country boy. I'll take my music out of my ears for real things (e.g. people, animals, nature,the movement of earth, sea, or sky), not constructed things (e.g. machines, taxi drivers, and other dead echoes ever present in a concrete jungle).

[Steve-o]

...and when you're plugged in at the office, you miss your colleagues' scintillating repartee.

Or maybe that's the point.

[pete]

What planet is Andrew Sullivan on? "That hilarious shard of an overheard conversation that stays with you all day"???? Say what? Give me "Kind of Blue" and Elvis.

[Joe Alexander]

Just a rebuttal, sort of, to Andrew Sullivan by some NYU kid:

http://washingtonsquarenews.com/artsandentertainment/leisure/9155.html

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