Either my iPod connection or its car adaptor died today. It happened quite suddenly and out of the blue. Drive to the bank all good. Bank to the grocery store for a handful of things? Situation normal. Then I leave the grocery store and nada. Well for the short distance home silence is fine, but the half hour drive to practice later is too much. This is normally my warm up time! Where is my playlist?!
So for the first time in I don’t know how long I find myself flipping through the radio channels trying to find something to listen to. There’s a lot of static, a lot of talking, some clear and loud mariachi … okay this sounds like it could be rock. The equalization is right, I guess, — because I don’t know any of the music they play these days. Not a lot of dynamics in this song…
I finally settle on a station, then half a song later we go straight into a commercial break. Worth changing the channel? Well, the DJ mentioned bands I’ve heard of. That’s a good sign. Talking talking blah blah don’t care… And the DJ is back. One witty comment then… okay well I don’t really like this song. But now I have invested an entire song’s length of attention to this station. Do I give up now and change it?
This whole process has left me wondering why on earth I ever listened to normal radio in the first place.
Just for clarity’s sake let me specify that this is a first generation video iPod. Some may say this rude awakening is quite overdue. But if I then specify I purchased it here in Chicago when I first moved to the city, when that was a brand new product, you can also begin to see just how long I have had to become set in my ways.
Continuing my drive home I learn that winter is officially over. I heard the last few chords from the lyric opera station, apparently, and their DJ confirmed. …And that might have been Enanitos Verdes but I could be wrong. My Spanish isn’t as good as I like to think it is. I continue to hit search, and not only are the sheer number of channels available slightly mind-blowing to a girl in some ways still used to her small town beginnings, but also the variety of channels one can tune into.
Now all of this is not to say I haven’t listened to any new music in the last ten(ish) years. On the contrary some of my current favorite artists are modern and just put out new music. The ways in which I now find that music, however, has not involved trying to track down artist and song names based on some lyrics overheard in passing just after starting the engine. In a way I am the prime example of why internet music stations and artists on social media have become the new mass weapons of the business industry.
On the other hand, this is also a practical example of how we have been enabled to silo ourselves with only like-minded people and only marketed things we will likely take interest in. Not only do we not know what competitors are up to, we have no reason to even know they exist at all! An invisible side effect of leaving radio is that you not only step away from the constant stream of new media, you also step away from being exposed to media you don’t prefer or flat out dislike (oh, and the news. There’s that too). On one hand that annoyance is gone, sure. You can spend more time focusing on and enjoying things you like. But the side effect of having no knowledge of what else it out there is actually a larger detriment overall than it would seem. (If you don’t agree, were you surprised at the result of the election? Pleasantly? Not so much? Hmm) To then remedy this situation we then must invest time actively seeking out at least some amount of this information which we used to receive passively. -heaven forbid we can no longer be considered relevant!
Do I plan to go back to listening to FM then? …well, no. I plan to figure out which device it is (hopefully the cable) and get it fixed so I can return to my Hamilton soundtrack bing—er I mean return to my 90’s playlist for band diligently memorizing lyrics. XD However I find these moments of routine upset important to analyze to try and understand why I react as I do, how it happened, and in this case in particular, wider implications of these discoveries.
Oh, and about that band: we have a few more shows coming up! …and more guitar player drama. Have I mentioned that? Well… new update soon, and we’ll see…