I’ve been meaning to write about my Nano, but I couldn’t settle on an image for Nano Notes. Everything is marketing these days; until you have the branding, you might as well just stay in bed. Once I gave the matter some thought, I realized that I did not want to take pictures of actual Nanos. Screenshots of my iTunes interface would be far more communicative.

By “my Nano,” of course, I mean: the way that my Nano(s), iTunes and a set of three Klipsch RoomGrooves have restored my Music Listening settings to about 1976, when there was always music playing. And the music was always different. In 1976, I was still in my twenties, and I thought nothing of getting off my duff to put a new LP on the turntable. (Not to mention getting off my duff to turn the LP over.)

I got older and lazier, but I kept on buying CDs. Many of them have been listened to only once, if at all. How often can anyone but a music professional be expected to be seized by the desire (and desire is very important with music, as everyone outside the world of classical music is well aware) to hear a string quartet by Ernst von Dohnanyi? It ain’t gonna happen! “My Nano” allows me to decide ahead of the time that, whether or not I’m in the mood, I’d better hear some Dohnanyi. Because music is like broccoli only when it’s unknown. Listen to something a few times, and you’ll either get to like it or you’ll hate it. Listen to things that you hate a few more times, and you’ll get fond of hating them.

The great cognitive tickle is that I’m actually surprised when the sound of Dohnanyi (or whomever) suddenly fills the room.* By the time I listen to one of my twelve-hour playliststs, a day or so may have gone by. I don’t think that senility has hit yet, but I’m enjoying finding uses for my “ability” to forget things. There is so much information in my life that I can’t remember what I did yesterday. (Well, there’s so much more important information.)

Bemused readers may wonder why, if I don’t really know the music of Dohnanyi (aside from the great “Nursery” Variations), I’m bothering to copy Dohnanyi CDs onto iTunes, as one must in order to play the recordings in one’s library on one’s Nano. The answer is that I recently went on a Dohnanyi spree at Amazon. That’s how my music collection grows, in spurts of blind enthusiasm. In 1976, I’d have listened over and over to the five or six new LPs that some little birdie told me to buy. Latterly, however, their CD successors been piling up unopened. But not any more! Now new acquisitions go straight to iTunes, where they find their way onto playlists.  

I am nothing less than breathtaken by the beauty of the system.

* So to speak. The RoomGrooves are not set to play loudly.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 14th, 2009 at 11:58 pm and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.