New York Diary

I <3 iPod

My parents recently gave me an iPod (a thing I have very much wanted for some time now). I am quite taken by it. Already I've grown attached to slipping it into my back pocket and running a soundtrack to my life. I like choosing the music; I like being absorbed in the sound; I even like the slimness of its body.

But wearing an iPod is a problematic thing, far more problematic than listening to music in other ways. It is unlike the radio, because you can't share it with anybody else while listening, or, at least, you can't effectively talk about it (or anything else) while mutually listening. It is unlike a Walkman, in that a Walkman is too bulky to always carry with oneself, and too unreliable, generally, even to take jogging (buffering notwithstanding). It is unlike both in that one can easily pick out songs to listen to on an iPod. These are all selling points: an iPod is quiet and doesn't bother the people around you; it is small and easy to carry, and can clip onto an armband if you're jogging; and you get much more choice over your playlist than you do if you rely on tapes, CDs, or a DJ to play the next song.

As I listen, however, I can't help thinking of Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind: "Nothing is more singular about this generation [that of students and "young people"] than its addiction to music. This is the age of music and the states of soul that accompany it," he wrote (in 1987, the age of the Walkman). So far, so good, and apparently true today as well. But then Bloom continues, perhaps as an alarmest, but nonetheless essentially correct in what he says: "It makes conversation impossible, so that much of friendship must be without the shared speech that Aristotle asserts is the essence of friendship and the only true common ground.... As long as they have the Walkman on, they cannot hear what the great tradition has to say. And, after its prolonged use, when they take it off, they find they are deaf." Extreme? Perhaps. But not essentially wrong. Indeed, even if we toss out any philosophic attachment to "great tradition," the point about friendship still stands boldly on its own two feet.

Or let us consider "Harrison Bergeron," Vonnegut's short story about a truly equal dystopia. Those who are "unfairly" smart are fitted with earpieces; and the constant sounds in their heads break up their thoughts and distract them from the activity at hand. This resonates rather strongly with me at the moment (resonates-- get it? get it?). After all, the iPod, with its excellent technology, is not merely an earpiece projecting disruption into you; rather, it really makes it seem that the music is inside your head. If it is a disruption, it is therefore a rather more disturbing disruption than the one Vonnegut envisions.

So does wearing an iPod make you antisocial? It is perhaps arguable that strangers in New York are never very social anyhow--but it seems clear that the short answer must be "yes." Do they addle the mind? Well, let's just say that the precipitating force behind this blog entry was that I spent over an hour trying to solve a sudoku puzzle today--and then I gave up. Before I was the kind of person who plugged in, I was the kind of person who would do a sudoku every morning in the seven minutes it takes me to get from 86th Street to Grand Central Station. I could probably still do that if I wasn't listening to my iPod at the same time-- but the point is, I probably will be listening.

There's a third problem with the iPod, though, and one that seems very widespread indeed. It may even mark a significant social and cultural change, one that radio and Walkmans (Walkmen?) have not prefigured during their respective heydays. With the iPod and other mp3 players, listeners are, for the first time, able to choose their songs at a whim. Of course you can call in to a DJ, make a mixed tape, or burn personal CDs and thereby hear the song you're looking for-- but those activities require planning and forethought, and with them you can't reorder something next week when you feel like a different song. The iPod, however, is a very different creature. It offers the capacity to write one's own playlists on the fly, to pick individual songs as one goes, or even to scramble between a very select group of songs or artists. But, cool as these things are, and gratifying as it is to hear just what you want to hear, it is in this wealth of choice and subsequent near-immediate gratification that there lies the most insidious problem with the iPod: emotional masturbation, to say it crudely.

We all like picking our songs (myself included). But at some point--a point which, it seems, most iPod owners quickly reach--this means that we are no longer merely listening to music. What we are doing, rather, is consciously writing the soundtracks to our lives. Angry? Turn on the Ride of the Valkyries or Tupac Shakur. Happy? Go for Weezer. Sad? Find something in a minor key. And don't worry about sharing it with anybody else--it's your iPod, after all, a nice hand-held portable headphone-rigged personal music player. But what does this active approach to choosing one's music actually mean? Well, suddenly our music has become a thing where we express ourselves to ourselves. We feel one way, we share it (with our iPod!), and it responds sympathetically. Meanwhile, no other person is involved. No longer is it just that personal music isolates you from the rest of the world when you're listening (which is Bloom's big concern); now, sometimes at least, we show strong feelings through the iPod while at once not caring that nobody else is paying attention. This, some might say, is a productive dialogue with the self. But I think I buy that it is a dialogue with a muddle-headed self, an indulgence that at once expresses a mood and dulls one's capacity for thought Vonnegut-style.

posted by Skay @ 7:08 PM