PUT ANOTHER NICKEL IN....

If I saw an old person sitting somewhere listening to music on an iPod I’d laugh and think how silly they look. 

However, I’ve been known to do just that…..actually I did it yesterday when I was in the lobby of the x-ray lab waiting for Jerry to finish with his upper-GI test…..but for some reason I don’t think I looked silly, since I’m really not that old!

(Liar, liar, pants on fire!)

I am very proud of myself that I was able to somehow get all my 36 music albums (that figure doesn’t include my Christmas albums) onto my new iPod.

I am not very techy, but with a little preliminary advice from my daughters, along with a minimal understanding that one end of the cable looked like it should be plugged into the computer and the other end was a male part looking for a female part, and having found all the proper holes….I became brave and gave it a try.  First, I could see that all my albums moved from the D: drive onto my C: drive, (I think), so then I had to be brave and hope that pushing the SYNC button would move them from the computer to my iPod. 

It did.  Then I had to ask my great-grandson about turning the iPod on and off, and once I had that mastered, and seeing as I don’t yet have a router to go much further up the learning curve, I have limited myself to just listening to all my wonderful stuff.

I wasn’t sure how long I would be waiting at the lab, so I took a book and my iPod with me.  I got all hooked up and turned on, and I became so engrossed in reading and listening that I didn’t check to see if anyone was laughing at me.  Finally I just had to stop reading.  The music took over.

Somehow I pushed something, so that instead of listening to each album in its entirety, my music pieces came to me willy-nilly.  First I would hear “Amazing Grace” by the University of Redlands bagpiper Kevin Blandford.  Expecting to hear his next offering, “All Creatures of our God and King”, instead I heard Michael Crawford singing “The Music of the Night” from Phantom of the Opera.  Next up was the 1972s Looking Glass hit “Brandy.”  Oh, that brought back such memories.

Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor followed by Il Divo’s “Enamorado” and Dave Brubeck’s famous “Take Five” were next in line.  The British tenor Russell Watson, who recently had brain surgery, sang a beautiful rendition of “Caruso” – and then Irish Violinist Eileen Ivers played a wonderful Riverdance piece from her album “Crossing the Bridge.”

The best thing about sitting in this medical facility and listening to this music was that I was surprised and delighted by each different piece as it came up.  The order was random, and because I liked each of them so well (as well I should, since it was my choice to buy the albums), it was like being surprised by joy over and over again.

I tried my best not to look like an idiot by striking a beat in the air, or by using body English to the rhythm of the jazz tunes. And when the “Best of the Brothers Cazimero” turn came and I heard “The Beauty of Maunakea” start up, it was all I could do to keep myself from humming along with their beautiful Hawaiian music. 

If I had seen a woman my age listening to an iPod I probably would have punched Jerry in the ribs and said surreptitiously, “Look at that old gal and her iPod.  Isn’t that silly?”  And he would have laughed along with me. 

I’ve learned some things from having this new to toy, even if I can’t yet use it to its fullest extent. 

      a)     It isn’t possible for me to listen to Bach and do anything else
           at the same time.  Doing so certainly short changes Bach.

b)     George Antheil wrote a whole lot more good stuff than his “Eight Fragments from Shelley” that I bought the album to hear.

c)     I am in awe of good choral singing and just shake my head in disbelief when a soloist picks his or her note out of the blue and comes in perfectly on pitch.

d)     The pop music of the 70s can bring me to tears.

e)     Any of the three tenors (God rest Pavarotti’s soul) can sing below my balcony any time they want, and Russell Watson can join them.

f)       I don’t miss the lack of country western music in my collection though I might like some good bluegrass strong on the harmonica, fiddle and banjo. 

Going to concerts is first best, of course, but I’ll never call what I hear on my iPod “second best” – because I now can here all this magic whenever and wherever I want.