Friday, March 19, 2004
So I did it. I finally bought an iPod.
And here comes the justification. More for myself than for you.
I've been longing for one for months. Years, if I'm being honest. When they first came out, they made sense to me. The same way that digital cameras finally match the way my mind works with photography (spontaneous, looking for that tug of color or texture, the chance to edit, and no need to spend a bunch of money), the iPod matches how I think of music. Why can't I hear one artist after another whom I love, instead of having to be relegated to single albums or carefully crafted mix cds?
Music is constantly flowing through me. If there isn't music on in my house, it's only because I'm a) asleep, b) meditating/trying to maintain a meditative state of silence, or c) dead. No thanks to the last one. And even the three-disc changer in my cd player isn't enough for me. Now, a colleague of mine has a 100-disc player, or some such nonsense. Of course, he also has a typewritten list of which disc is in which space. Um, not going to happen in my house. So I'm left with three discs. And increasingly, that isn't enough.
Music has been one of the great healers for me in this recovery period. The others? Sleep. Dark chocolate. Meditation. All my bodywork. My smart, approachable doctor. Writing. And mostly, loving people and feeling loved. (Insert Raymond Carver poem here, if you know it.) With the help of all these, and my determined, positive nature, I'm slowly healing. And learning, enormously. But that's for another entry.
And so I've been carrying around my discman, as I walk around Greenlake, or walk through the twilight air in Queen Anne, or taking out the trash. Music is ineffably beautiful Hearing the joy, ache, longing, jubilance, caustic humor, and mostly the deep gift of creativity from other people has brought me out of myself in this process. But there are only so many times I can listen to the "Recovery music: yes; healing; love; rest" mix cd I made for myself in the middle of the worst sciatica pain. Or Rufus Wainwright's new album. Or Beck's Sea Change.
Beyond that, physiologically, I need music. Especially now that I'm back at school. You see, my sympathetic nervous system was activated by the accident, and it hasn't calmed down since. This I just realized during my ten-day respite. Or at least, my physical therapist put a name to it during that rest. Because my pulse has been racing, consistently, since the accident. My muscles are having a hard time relaxing. And my senses are so heightened that I have almost-superhuman powers of perception. If you blindfolded me, I could walk into any produce section in the supermarket and walk you to individual fruits. I can hear all the individual conversations in the main hallway of the school, as well as the general din. I can smell every person who walks by me at Greenlake. I can smell cleaning products through closet doors and tell you which ones are in there.
Can you see why I'm a little overwhelmed at a school with 410 teenagers?
Well, now, so do I. Time off allowed for quiet. Space. Sleep. Healing. And therefore, the headaches dissipated. Enough so I could tell what drove them up again. Driving. Oh god, driving still freaks me the fuck out. At every moment, with every movement, I'm physically aware of how it could all go wrong. How that car pulling out could hit me. How that stupid woman talking on her cell phone while driving could just barrel through that light turning red. How I could lose my awareness for a few moments and just drift. After a long drive, my head bulges with pain, because my muscles have automatically tensed up.
What can I do? I put Beatles cds in the car, music I know like my own breath. And whenever I'm driving, I'm singing. Singing makes the muscles in my neck and jaw keep moving, which keeps them looser. And keeps the headache in abeyance.
What else starts the headaches? Well, since I'm so aware of sounds and smells and sights, too much sensory stimulation sets me off too. This from someone who was already pretty damned aware anyway. As you know, I love my senses. I hate cutting myself off from them. But I figured out that if I have just a little less sensory input at school, my mind wouldn't have to process so much. My sympathetic nervous system would calm down and not send the urgent message to my muscles: gird yourself! Tense! Accident coming! You see, my sympathetic nervous system reads too much stimulation as more trauma. And so I'm experiencing the car accident over and over again in my body.
I'm tired of being Sisyphus.
So I figured out that if I bought a good pair of heaphones--the kind with giant puffy ear muffs that block out noise--and listened to music while I'm at school, then I could have more control over the sensory input coming in. And at the same time, block out the inane conversations of some my colleagues. Choose when I want to talk. And always have music playing in my ears.
So I did. I bought a pair of Sennheisers, the kind that look like Professional Headphones. I thought that would be enough. But then I thought about listening to one cd all day long. Or having to carry a bunch of cds in my backpack, for the variety. But I don't need any more weight on my back.
And then I thought about the iPod.
Actually, I had been thinking about it for weeks. Thinking about it too much. Two or three times, I was in the Udistrict, running errands, close to the Apple store. And two or three times, I almost drove there and bought one. But they're $300! And do you have any idea how expensive it is to recover from a car accident? New shoes, new backpack, lumbar roll, a variety of heating pads, new keyboard configuration, more and more Motrin. Ack. And besides, there are so many starving children. Could I really justify spending that much money on a music player?
Yesterday, I said yes.
Actually, blame it on the acuity that writing brings me. Yesterday, I was writing an email to someone, telling him why I was justifying the restraint. And I wrote this line: "But instinctually, I know I want one. And when my instincts tell me what I want, I listen. " After I wrote that, I knew I had given in. How could I lie to myself anymore? My gut kept telling me to buy one. So I did. I walked into the gleaming Apple store and bought an iPod that holds 3700 songs. 37 years I've been alive. That sounds good to me. I loaded it up last night, and I already have 1257 songs on there. (If you should wish to give me more, send them my way.)
And now, I'm sitting at the computer in the Humanities office, typing away, the words flowing from me in a way they haven't at school in months. Perhaps never. Because as I sit here, listening to Yousou N'Dour, Dar Williams, Magnetic Fields, Sam Cooke, Annie Lennox, and whatever the name of the band that did "Afternoon Delight," (I swear that's what is playing right now) I can watch my colleagues talking, growing annoyed with something, and I don't have to hear it. I can't hear the creaking of the floorboards above my head. I can't hear the raucous, joyous shouting of teenagers in the sunlit main hallway. I'm only hearing music.
And I don't have a headache. This is the first time since early December that I haven't had a headache at school.
Thank you, iPod.
And here comes the justification. More for myself than for you.
I've been longing for one for months. Years, if I'm being honest. When they first came out, they made sense to me. The same way that digital cameras finally match the way my mind works with photography (spontaneous, looking for that tug of color or texture, the chance to edit, and no need to spend a bunch of money), the iPod matches how I think of music. Why can't I hear one artist after another whom I love, instead of having to be relegated to single albums or carefully crafted mix cds?
Music is constantly flowing through me. If there isn't music on in my house, it's only because I'm a) asleep, b) meditating/trying to maintain a meditative state of silence, or c) dead. No thanks to the last one. And even the three-disc changer in my cd player isn't enough for me. Now, a colleague of mine has a 100-disc player, or some such nonsense. Of course, he also has a typewritten list of which disc is in which space. Um, not going to happen in my house. So I'm left with three discs. And increasingly, that isn't enough.
Music has been one of the great healers for me in this recovery period. The others? Sleep. Dark chocolate. Meditation. All my bodywork. My smart, approachable doctor. Writing. And mostly, loving people and feeling loved. (Insert Raymond Carver poem here, if you know it.) With the help of all these, and my determined, positive nature, I'm slowly healing. And learning, enormously. But that's for another entry.
And so I've been carrying around my discman, as I walk around Greenlake, or walk through the twilight air in Queen Anne, or taking out the trash. Music is ineffably beautiful Hearing the joy, ache, longing, jubilance, caustic humor, and mostly the deep gift of creativity from other people has brought me out of myself in this process. But there are only so many times I can listen to the "Recovery music: yes; healing; love; rest" mix cd I made for myself in the middle of the worst sciatica pain. Or Rufus Wainwright's new album. Or Beck's Sea Change.
Beyond that, physiologically, I need music. Especially now that I'm back at school. You see, my sympathetic nervous system was activated by the accident, and it hasn't calmed down since. This I just realized during my ten-day respite. Or at least, my physical therapist put a name to it during that rest. Because my pulse has been racing, consistently, since the accident. My muscles are having a hard time relaxing. And my senses are so heightened that I have almost-superhuman powers of perception. If you blindfolded me, I could walk into any produce section in the supermarket and walk you to individual fruits. I can hear all the individual conversations in the main hallway of the school, as well as the general din. I can smell every person who walks by me at Greenlake. I can smell cleaning products through closet doors and tell you which ones are in there.
Can you see why I'm a little overwhelmed at a school with 410 teenagers?
Well, now, so do I. Time off allowed for quiet. Space. Sleep. Healing. And therefore, the headaches dissipated. Enough so I could tell what drove them up again. Driving. Oh god, driving still freaks me the fuck out. At every moment, with every movement, I'm physically aware of how it could all go wrong. How that car pulling out could hit me. How that stupid woman talking on her cell phone while driving could just barrel through that light turning red. How I could lose my awareness for a few moments and just drift. After a long drive, my head bulges with pain, because my muscles have automatically tensed up.
What can I do? I put Beatles cds in the car, music I know like my own breath. And whenever I'm driving, I'm singing. Singing makes the muscles in my neck and jaw keep moving, which keeps them looser. And keeps the headache in abeyance.
What else starts the headaches? Well, since I'm so aware of sounds and smells and sights, too much sensory stimulation sets me off too. This from someone who was already pretty damned aware anyway. As you know, I love my senses. I hate cutting myself off from them. But I figured out that if I have just a little less sensory input at school, my mind wouldn't have to process so much. My sympathetic nervous system would calm down and not send the urgent message to my muscles: gird yourself! Tense! Accident coming! You see, my sympathetic nervous system reads too much stimulation as more trauma. And so I'm experiencing the car accident over and over again in my body.
I'm tired of being Sisyphus.
So I figured out that if I bought a good pair of heaphones--the kind with giant puffy ear muffs that block out noise--and listened to music while I'm at school, then I could have more control over the sensory input coming in. And at the same time, block out the inane conversations of some my colleagues. Choose when I want to talk. And always have music playing in my ears.
So I did. I bought a pair of Sennheisers, the kind that look like Professional Headphones. I thought that would be enough. But then I thought about listening to one cd all day long. Or having to carry a bunch of cds in my backpack, for the variety. But I don't need any more weight on my back.
And then I thought about the iPod.
Actually, I had been thinking about it for weeks. Thinking about it too much. Two or three times, I was in the Udistrict, running errands, close to the Apple store. And two or three times, I almost drove there and bought one. But they're $300! And do you have any idea how expensive it is to recover from a car accident? New shoes, new backpack, lumbar roll, a variety of heating pads, new keyboard configuration, more and more Motrin. Ack. And besides, there are so many starving children. Could I really justify spending that much money on a music player?
Yesterday, I said yes.
Actually, blame it on the acuity that writing brings me. Yesterday, I was writing an email to someone, telling him why I was justifying the restraint. And I wrote this line: "But instinctually, I know I want one. And when my instincts tell me what I want, I listen. " After I wrote that, I knew I had given in. How could I lie to myself anymore? My gut kept telling me to buy one. So I did. I walked into the gleaming Apple store and bought an iPod that holds 3700 songs. 37 years I've been alive. That sounds good to me. I loaded it up last night, and I already have 1257 songs on there. (If you should wish to give me more, send them my way.)
And now, I'm sitting at the computer in the Humanities office, typing away, the words flowing from me in a way they haven't at school in months. Perhaps never. Because as I sit here, listening to Yousou N'Dour, Dar Williams, Magnetic Fields, Sam Cooke, Annie Lennox, and whatever the name of the band that did "Afternoon Delight," (I swear that's what is playing right now) I can watch my colleagues talking, growing annoyed with something, and I don't have to hear it. I can't hear the creaking of the floorboards above my head. I can't hear the raucous, joyous shouting of teenagers in the sunlit main hallway. I'm only hearing music.
And I don't have a headache. This is the first time since early December that I haven't had a headache at school.
Thank you, iPod.
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