i-Pod i-Ntrospection

You have one close at hand. It sits like a quasi-cerebellum offering you a small place to store shelves of information. It is a micro-miracle, it is i-Pod. We love them, we crave them, we justify the need for them. The following suggestions reflect at the least ten to fifteen minutes of deep sustained thinkage concerning the aforementioned handheld musical canons. Some suggestions were too obvious such as the Pre-requisite Piper sermon (your i-Pod is not complete without one) or avoiding egregious mistakes of who did a song. No, the Violent Femmes and They Might Be Giants are not the same group, only one of them could have sung Blister in the Sun.

Suggestion 1- Avoid Giga-Lust. Little did you know that those 80 spacious gigabytes you have in your hand are roughly twice the size of my laptop from a few years back. That means you can roughly fit the entire IT infrastructure of several small developing countries on your hunk of plastic and metal. I do hope your CD collection resides in something larger than a few crates or guess what? You suffer from Giga-Lust. I have seen some pretty wicked cases of Giga-Lust in my days. You know who you are. The excuses are many; “I am still uploading my stuff” (hold on while I upload something on the floor), “I save space for pictures I take” (for those times when only that two inch screen can adequately display your posh photo art), “I need the space for my growing music library” (2 John Mayer CD’s, a Grease Soundtrack, any Josh Groban CD, a Top Gun soundtrack, and an obscure indie rocker for artistic impact does not a library make). How do you know when you have pushed the giga-love too far into lust? Here are a few signs. 1. Your could import the ENTIRE library of Rolling Stones tunes and still fall somewhere south of 20% capacity.

2. If the initial importing marathon when you first bought your i-Pod did not leave you with either bloodshot eyes, sleep deprivation, or a severe case of frozen butt you did not need those extra 47 gigabytes.

Suggestion 2- You are not fooling anyone with Compilation Guise. That is when you add CD’s with a variety of artists that add meat to the scroll down but in reality only add to the clutter and as a wise man once said, “A cluttered i-Pod comes from a cluttered mind”. Nothing is quite as saddening as that day you open with fantastic expectation the CCR file and are met with Around the Bend from Remember the Titans. Suddenly you go from a hearty collection of swamp rock to “that tune” from “that movie”.

Suggestion 3- Unleash the Artist Within with Creative Playlists. Some do not realize the creative power that lies just one finger swipe up on the Playlist option. Here you can line up those songs that make you cry, make you fly, or just hold an amazing amount or historical value for you. Give it a go, add a flashy name to the list, pay special attention to the lineup, and be open to revision as life offers new chapters. Futures can hinge on choices like whether to follow In Gods Country with Jump Around or Eight Days a Week.

Suggestion 4- Time for your help, post other suggestions.

Void

Through the deep woods and farther in still. Amongst the epic stands of trees and softly speaking brooks dwells something far more terrifying than any beast that would stalk me or pit that would trap me. Its mere presence causes the eyes to dart and the fear to rise up and seize power of my better senses banishing them to the far side of the horizon of reason whose long fields fade into haze. They will not soon return for fear sits enthroned and the gate by which I entered lies far past any glimpse backwards. From every hollow and high reaching boughs it watches. It slithers just out of sight up my recently tread path and clings and drenches my feet as I creep forward through the high grass. It has no spoken name and exists in no discernable form. To some a comfort but to ears untuned and a heart bent on attention its form takes on the incarnate figure of unease. Who knew this day it would shadow me and be an unwelcome passenger on my trek beyond the midnight forest? It does not even offer a whisper of conversation but only strides just out of sight. It joined me with my first steps through the gate at first causing me great consternation until my breath was allowed me and with each step I feared less for my life and more so in regards to the daunting sensation that clawed at my ears and numbed my percolating brain. I wanted to scream and wave my arms in hopes of scaring it off but felt that it would not flee far and would just as soon return when my voice ceased tearing at the collective peace around me.

Up hill and down dale through cloistered woodland with each step something else wells up from within. Like the golden tinted dreamscape of a divine internal choir never ending, something deeper than any anchoring root or deep-seeking spring lithely hisses from the inside of my inner-most soul. The ghost. A new voice or a constant cosmic companion I had lost along the terrestrial way? I fear the latter but revel in the comfort of such a friend as this in such a location as i find myself. It illumines not the path ahead but the path of the days ahead. The creature still drapes the path ahead and behind but as strides melt I can see the destination gate ahead. It will not join me beyond the gate, it will await the next traveler. Outside its reach everything that I thought I needed came flooding back to appease my wanton desire of crippling static. How odd the coincidence that the golden song was never so prevalent as when walking the woods with the nameless antagonist.