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Podding While Rome Burns
From BoF2
I’ve lived through vinyl, cassette and CD. I even once saw a 78 in action, plate sized
discs now only used for World’s Strongest
Man contestants to lift onto barrels as a trial of strength. Yes, the revolution brought about by digital
audio devices is great. I can’t deny
it. No more scratches, skips, or
accidental mummification by unravelling tapes.
No more mountainous piles of CDs tumbling on your head late at night as
the cat takes a fancy to the Best of Bert Bacharach. The glory of all the world’s music available
at the flick of a switch. A 1950s
futurist’s dream come true. The digital
revolution has returned people to music; it has opened up the market to new and
exciting possibilities and dealt a blow to the restrictive fist of the industry
monoliths. Yet, faced with this avalanche
of mp3 positives, something in me still revolts, palling at the sight of a
stranger strutting past, wires dangling from his head, oblivious and self
absorbed. Something just makes me hate
the damn things.
To begin with the obvious. Perhaps I am enjoying a train journey on a
beautiful summer’s day, countryside rolling out before my dreamy eyes, the
worrisome brain lulled into reverence by the metronomic clack and click of
wheels against track. As my Zen like
self floats onwards and upwards what’s that that tugs at my incorporeal boot
straps? Could it be the hideous
sibilance of someone’s digital audio player hissing out a distorted… is it
ABBA? No, give me a second. I know this one. Chris De Burg? Ah, no it’s NWA isn’t it? Therein lies the first problem. The owner of this device may be having a
wonderful time listening to ‘Your mother’s got a penis’ or something, but I
don’t want to hear it. In an ideal
world, possibly Britain in 1932, the listener would recognise his role in a
wider society and enquire of his fellow passengers if, in the first instance,
anybody objected to his musical impulses and, in the second, arrive at a
consensus of suitable audio levels for everyone involved. Such pleasantries dispensed with, this
carriage of Bertie Woosters could quite happily exist in harmony with the
digital audio device. Sadly, we live in
21st century Britain where the cult of individual has triumphed, saluting the world with the single
raised central digit. This is my problem
with the digital revolution. It is
portable. It is public without
invitation. It is aural graffiti. Had the technology emerged in a gentler, more
refined age, devices would no doubt (no doubt in my mind anyway) have been
designed for the home; for private, considered appreciation of the auditory
arts.
Maybe I should be grateful. After all the population could currently be
toting shoulder mounted digital ghetto blasters, pumping out Lilly Allen at 20
decibels. But my gratitude is short
lived. Is there not a direct line from
the emergence of the ostentatious iPod and its invasion of public space to the
current vogue of youths coagulating in underpasses and outside shops as one of
their number emanates some god awful dirge from a feeble, yet intensely
irritating, speaker on a mobile phone?
Firstly the iPod makes it acceptable to play music wherever and whenever
you want, with a creeping egotism that assumes the listener is the only person
in the world who matters. Now in these
juvenile circles it is acceptable to invade public space openly with whatever
they want. Kids these days eh?
So, technology now makes it possible to experience music
whilst out and about in the most annoying and anti-social ways. Did
this need emerge with the technology or was it buried in the human genome? Do
people have an urge for a team of thespians to follow them around declaiming
Henry IV Part One as they buy a bacon sandwich?
Have someone hold a Caravaggio in front of their eyes whilst they pay
their car tax? Perhaps it is my personal
preference, but I feel art is in essence a private experience. I don’t want others to see me experience art;
it gets in the way of the experience itself.
I’ve tried the podding aloofness.
I feel faintly embarrassed. I
must resist the urge to blub as Elaine Paige and Barbra Dixon launch into the stirring
chorus of I Know Him So Well.* I must restrain my twitching feet as the
Brothers Gibb beckon me to the dance floor.
Salmon like, I must wrestle against the musical and emotional currents
flowing counter to the grim incongruity of standing in Asda waiting to pay for
a tin of cat meat and a collie flower. Incidentally,
I also fear that I’ll be garrotted in a horrendous headphone/ passing lorry
incident. But that might just be me.
Perhaps I should be looking beyond the narrow present to
the forbearers of the pod and blame the Walkman for the invasive ego of the
music enthusiast on the go. However, how
can anybody hate a device that Cliff Richard sang about whilst wearing
elasticated leather trousers and riding around on roller skates? Indignity enough has surely been
inflicted. It is possibly the nostalgia
for thirty year old thinking and fashion that makes me regard it more fondly
than its modern day equivalent.
Innocent, and rather embarrassing times. I recall Bill Oddie, clad in
shorts, vest and sweat band, warning of the dangers of excessive Walkman use on
eighties trend setting ears. Presumably,
one day the iPod will be viewed as quaint, cumbersome and faintly ridiculous by
22nd century citizens who don their rocket boots and float about
with 5 terabyte chips implanted in their ears.
But therein lies another of my pod embracing caveats. Ah
yes, we all remember the fateful emergence of the device which started it
all. Where were you in 1998 when the
MPMan F10 and Rio PMP300 first captured
the imagination of the world. Don’t
remember? It’s not surprising. Despite being the first on the market MPMan
and Rio didn’t cut the mustard. It wasn’t until three years later that the
iPod emerged to stimulate everyone’s need to not move without listening to a
song. It was only when portable digital
audio was marketed correctly that the public took notice. The iPod is a fashion accessory, and to
cynical BoFfed eyes, in the midst the flood of pod enthusiasm, advertising and
publicity, music becomes secondary.
We’ve been here before, of course, as mobile phones were items to be
carried with fake nonchalance poised for the admiring gasp as tones rang and
lights flashed. But the emergent brick
of a mobile only carried the inane extraversion of business or social
babbling. Yes, the owner of the iPod
wants to show the world he or she owns an iPod, but it carries music and
with it expression of the human spirit. Unfortunately,
the iPod turns it into a pair of earrings.
Pod marketing seems to aspire to the status of perfume; a
brand that is as insubstantial as a vague stench but nevertheless implants that
message that if you wear it you become instantly desirable, youthful,
appealing, interesting. It doesn’t
matter in the least what it’s composed of, whether a noxious brew of chemicals
or Daniel o’ Donnell’s Greatest Hits (possibly both in this instance)
A small confession. I do recognise that my rage at the pod may be
to some extent psychological scapegoating.
Post-Christmas time blather at my place of work included my boss talking
of ‘listening to her iPod.’ Something
rankled with this sentence. Now, as the
saying goes, no man is a hero to his own valet.
Or, as I like to put it, I hate that bastard who tells me what to do, so
maybe I’m taking out my authority issues on the innocent iPod. But nevertheless rankle it did. As I sat grinding my teeth and thinking of
where to insert the next pin in “voodoo boss” it occurred to me you don’t
listen to an iPod. An iPod doesn’t make
any sound. You listen to what’s on an iPod. The gadget has triumphed over what it
provides. In his illuminating tract on
the infantilization of modern life Michael Bywater comments that:
So the
office and the business changed places, and the job of the business became to
earn enough money for ever bigger, grander, cleaner, brighter officers…
Office and iPod, business and
music – the roles have reversed. Music
serves to facilitate smaller, flashier, more desirable iPods, namos and
shuffles. What’s on them doesn’t really
matter. Especially to my boss who
mentioned the presence of James Blunt on her etiolated hard drive.
One of the oft mooted delights
of the portable device is its ability to cocoon the listener in a private world,
rebuffing the rude assaults of modern existence. Dr. Michael Bull, an academic specialising in
iPods, (no sniggering at the back please) described them in a BBC article as “multi-facteded
transformative devices… whereby users manage space, time and the boundaries
around the self”. Like the Tardis
then. The article’s author, Mark Ward,
states that:
Donning a pair of earbuds also
grants a certain amount of licence. They
let listeners become witnesses without the risk of getting too involved. The earphones absolve them of some
responsibility.
In the age of bloated ego, the iPod
returns the adult to the narcissistic world of the infant where the only world
that exists is the one the flows through its senses. It is an unpleasant paradox of withdrawal
from society engendered by public exhibitionism as music becomes secondary to
the needs of the grasping self. Back in the mists of 1964 media theorist
Marshall McLuhan pointed out that:
…the
point of [the narcissus] myth is the fact that men at once become fascinated by
any extension of themselves in any material other than themselves… With the
arrival of electric technology, man extended, or set outside himself, a live
model of the central nervous system itself.
To the degree that this is so, it is a development that suggests a
desperate and suicidal autoamputation, as if the central nervous system could
no longer depend on the physical organs to be protective buffers against the
slings and arrows of outrageous mechanism.
It could well be that the successive mechanizations of the various
physical organs since the invention of printing have made too violent and
superstimulated a social experience for the central nervous system to endure.
So,
next time you listen to Agadoo on your iPod remember this is in fact suicidal
autoamputation. However, McLuhan’s
thesis that ‘the medium is the message’ holds true with the iPod. My boss and thousands like her don’t chat
about listening to music, they chat about listening to their iPods.
And I
may not be a lone crank gibbering the wilderness. Even the Tardis like powers of the iPod have
come in for criticism. The Sydney Morning Herald
reported in 2005 that Principal
Kerrie Murphy had banned iPods in her school:
People were not tuning into other people
because they’re tuned into themselves
Andrew Orlowski of The
Register picked up on this, stating that:
Apple's advertising for the iPod makes a virtue of people
dancing on their own, locked up in a private world only they understand. And
what can this lead to, but anti-social values later in life? How? Because every
second spent with an iPod is an opportunity lost.
What was once a communal
expression of the human spirit is now used by the lonely 21st century
individual to drown out the monotony of traffic or the conversation of
others. Music is to dance to, to have
emotions squeezed and toyed with, not to make a wander down a dire city street
or a ride on a bus endurable. Returning to the beeb, Ward’s
article continues:
…removing
earphones when talking to someone sends a strong to message about how
interested one is in what is being said.
It pays the speaker a compliment.
Ah yes, anyone with the misfortune to work in public
service will be familiar with the wonderful new world of iPod etiquette. Thanks for not blocking your ears as I speak
to you, how can I help… For some reason
reading in public never had this problem.
Would you carry on with Salem’s Lot whilst being asked if you
wanted your chips open or wrapped?
Witness the multi-layered complexity of the new manners:
1) Approaching the service desk
both headphones are removed, device turned off – highly respectful. In fact, it’s just like treating someone as a
human being rather than a piece of dog shit.
Thanks.
2) One headphone removed – ah,
that’s alright then. You’ve really put
yourself out there.
3) Headphones remain, but the
courtesy of lowering volume extended.
Oh, the respect. 4) Both headphones remaining
glued to the side of the head, volume turned to maximum, communication through
gesture alone. Hey, you’re a piece of
dog shit.
Perhaps
it is these pernicious pod owners that irritate, rather than the unduly
maligned device itself. Those people who
seek to define, possibly even create, a personality through the acquisition of
music, and increasingly films, and, critically, show it off to anyone they can
get to listen. They become the sum total
of what music or which films they have bought.
Technology is seized on in the battle to create an identity which has
been lost through a commoditised service industry existence. Noticeably there is increasing use of the
term DVD collection in marketing,
catering to those lost souls who buy to fill the hideous vacuum where a
personality should be, be it with a ‘DVD collection’ or a ‘music library’. The commonplace acceptance of the iPod
renders walking down the street increasingly like a scene form a David
Cronenberg film as human experience and technology meld. Which is handy, as crowbaring in this quote
about David Cronenberg would have been difficult otherwise:
…[Cronenberg] is a visionary
architect of a chaotic biological tract where mind and body, ever fighting the
Cartesian battle for integration, are so vulnerable as to be easily annexed by
technology
To me, the pod age exhibits a
wilful annexation of mind and body to a modern technological consumerist
project which hollows the life out of people. People who are compliant, filling their iPods
and their building DVD collections paid for by their soulless existence, never
quite managing to overcome the quantity anxiety of collection with a purely
numerical basis; Jim’s got 60gbs, I’ve only got 40. I feel so worthless…
You may think the BoF would adore the pod with its power
to block the tedious assaults of modern life.
But we are not the Shield o’ Fury,
we are the BoF, and BoF we must. The
point is to engage, tackle the world and its foibles, diminish the ego. The hood up, two wires dangling from your
head while communities crumble, grannies are assaulted and continents burn
approach isn’t enough. That is why the
iPod grates on me.
But maybe I’m wrong and people just like listening to
music through one. But please, like
taking a crap, just don’t do it in the street.
*Musical tastes used for humour purposes only. Honest.
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