Recently, I have become addicted to my iPod. Tom and I have had it for a couple of years – it used to be a ‘joint’ one. For ages, I’d only use it on long train journeys, if I was on my own, or on plane trips, which were long enough for me not to feel obliged to talk to Tom for the full duration. I liked the way it seemed to provide my journey with a soundtrack, as if I were in a film. I suspect that my giving Tom his own iPod for Christmas has been somewhat instrumental in my rapid descent into hardcore addiction. I no longer have all his crap on the – now my – iPod. (The feeling is mutual. The other night he accidentally put my iPod on, and immediately ripped the headphones off himself and dropped the thing on the settee, in much the way I might if I had accidentally – how else – picked up a slug.) But the odd thing is, that was only really an issue when I used what Tom regards as being the abominable, shuffle function. But, since I started to need, first a daily, and then twice, and now a thrice daily fix, I stopped using the shuffle. Instead, I began to fixate on one album, which I would play, over and over, to the exclusion of all else, until I tired of it and moved onto the next one.
I knew I had sunk really low, right down to the depths of iPod addiction hell, when I started playing it in the street. Ok I now realize that this is no big deal. Everyone does it, but at the time it felt weird. At first, I just kept it on after I got off the train on the way to work. Then, I progressed to wearing it on my way home from the station. It took a while for me to reach this particular level, mainly because I was slightly afraid that someone might steal it from me in the area where I lived. I mean, it’s not that bad an area, but there are some dodgy types around. Every now and again, there’s a police poster up asking for witnesses to some mugging, carjacking or assault, and there has been the occasional stabbing, so I was just being careful. It’s alright for Tom to do it, I told myself. He’s 6ft4 and somewhat on the chunky side. He’s not going to be the first target for an iPod-snatcher. I am. In fact, they’d take one look at him, then at me, and mark me out as their next target there and then. They’d watch my movements day after day, and then, one day, when I least expected it, they’d pounce. One minute I’d be blissfully listening to a very loud song from a Black Lab album, and the next, I’d be ripped out of my emotionally charged cocoon of noise, and they’d be making off down the street, triumphantly clutching my scruffy, scratched iPod, leaving the earphones dangling from my ears, the other end ripped out of my bag.
I think it was the poster with the mobile phone at the entrance to the station that made me think like this. The one warning you to be careful using your phone there. The one that suggested that the moment you took it out to ring and tell your loved one that you were at the station, and on your way home, it would be snatched from you hands and whisked away leaving the person you were talking to at best confused, at worst, insulted.
Anyway, in spite of these misgivings, I suddenly decided to take the plunge one day. When I got off the train, I turned my iPod off, and took the headphones out, keeping it hidden away, while in the vicinity of the station. I wasn’t going to throw caution to the wind altogether. But, once I’d walked down the alleyway that led down to the main road and passed under the railway bridge, with a sense of guilty pleasure, I put it back on.
I don’t know why I did this. Maybe it was a bit like my first cigarette.
I’d resisted smoking until I was 16, puritanically refusing all offers and opportunities whenever they arose, vowing that this was Something I Would Never Do. I had a list of 6 or so things That I Would Never Do when I was in my teens. It included Never Visiting A Zoo – did that at 15, although not voluntarily - Never Owning or Wearing a Pair of Trainers – I still don’t - and Not Wearing a Watch – I gave in to that one when I was working in a shop, around the age of 20, and needed to know what the time was, for taking breaks etc. But, since my last one ‘exploded’ under cabin pressure on the way back from a holiday, I’ve been clean for the last 8 years.
Anyway, smoking.
One day my sister, who had been smoking for years, offered me one, and I took it. Just like that. (It didn’t last long, as I accidentally broke it in half, while inexpertly trying to flick ash off the tip. No matter, my sister, ever the one to nourish a potential addiction, gave me another. I don’t smoke by the way.) So perhaps something similar had happened with my iPod. Some voice inside me said, ‘You know you want to, put your iPod on in the street, go on…’ So, I mentally shrugged and said ‘ok’.
This not only demonstrates how low I’ve sunk, but it’s also immensely hypocritical. Many’s the time I’ve had a silent, mental rant about people wearing iPods in the street – how it makes them less aware of their immediate surroundings and therefore more likely to walk into you, or makes them meander from side to side across the pavement, making it impossible to overtake them. Of course, I convinced myself, I wouldn’t be like that. The meandering bit wouldn’t be a problem anyway, because it was rare that anyone was fast enough to overtake me (although I had my suspicions that some music slowed me down a bit.) And I would be extra careful to be aware of what was going on around me.
I’m not sure why I feel so guilty about listening to my iPod. Why is it such a guilty pleasure? Maybe its because it’s such an immense pleasure, listening to music turned up loud, without having to worry about it bothering other people, it just doesn’t seem decent to do it in public. Such intense pleasure should only be enjoyed behind closed doors –a bedroom, or an hotel room, perhaps.
And that’s another thing. I don’t quite believe in earphones. That other people really can’t hear what I am hearing. Well, I know they can’t, but I still find the whole thing odd. I’m paranoid about having my music on so loud that other people will hear that annoying buzz or, worse still, actual tunes. So, at least once on each of the occasions I am listening to it, I have to take the earphones out and hold them a few inches away from my face to check that nothing’s audible. Sometimes, I do it twice. Some people might say that that’s obsessive behaviour, like flicking a light switch on and off, even though you can see whether the light’s on or not. But I just like to think I am being considerate to others. Or, more truthfully, avoiding embarrassing myself.
Recently I’ve taken to trying my iPod out in different types of places. I know it probably looks rude to be walking through Ikea, Tom at my side, with it on. But it’s an experiment, I tell myself, so it’s ok. The experiment is to see if wearing an iPod in Ikea makes the experience any less hideous. At first, I realize, that it does to seem to be achieving this effect, to some extent. It almost drowns out the sound of screaming children, although it can’t stop them hurtling into you, and somehow the music seems, miraculously, to soften the glare of the harsh lighting. Even my obligatory for-an-Ikea-trip slight hangover doesn’t seem so bad.
So, for a while all is well in Ikea with an iPod, apart from the fact that it’s obviously pissing Tom off. But, hey, so what? He’s just jealous he didn’t think to do the same. (Although, how sad would that look? The two of us, side by side, too immersed in technology to interact with one another, to have a relationship, to all outward appearances.) Anyway, I’m all chilled out here. I can live with his irritation. But, as we get closer and closer to the check out, I feel my anxiety levels inexplicably rising slowly, but perceptibly. They have almost reached screaming level, by the time Tom staggers towards me under the weight of the bookshelves he is trying to lift onto a trolley. Ok. I give up. I turn it off and put it away in my bag. I don’t want to be cured of my addiction right now, and Ikea could well provide the sort of aversion therapy that might achieve this.
Actually, I do feel a slight need to curb my addiction when it comes to using my iPod on the train. I know I really ought to be reading. I enjoy reading, of course, if I can find something I like, but at the moment, it’s taken on a new role. I regard it as food for my own, so far, rather unsuccessful attempts at writing. I hope that if I feed them enough, one day they might grow into something beautiful, or at least serious. I try to ration myself. One journey reading, the other, iPod.
However, I’m not very good at this rationing thing. Take last night, for example. Lately, the writing thing has been getting a bit out of hand, as far as I am concerned. I haven’t been doing the other stuff, stuff I ought to be doing, like putting washing away, cooking and, sometimes, eating even. Or anything really. Even watching TV. Since getting back from France at Easter, I have gone from getting home and automatically turning on the TV, to watching nothing all night. Instead, I scuttle up to the attic to write and/or edit. But, last night, I had a simple plan to foil all this.
I would go home, spend 40 minutes making a chilli for dinner, 15 minutes feeding and watering the tomato plants, write until Tom got home, eat and sit with him for a bit. Then write for another hour. Then watch TV for an hour. Oh’ and I wasn’t going to have any wine that night either.
When I got home, I realized we’d run out of onions. I couldn’t be bothered to go down the hill to get any, or more to the point come back up afterwards, and I couldn’t make chilli without one, could I? There was a pizza in the freezer. That would do, wouldn’t it? And did the tomato plants really need watering? It had rained earlier in the day. They could wait another day for some food surely. So, I poured myself a glass of wine and went upstairs and wrote for the next three hours, neglecting to eat anything, and was not entirely sober when Tom finally got home. You’d think there might be flip side of this - that I could use reverse psychology to get me to do the things I know I ought to. But no. If I told myself I could just have baked beans for dinner, or nothing if that’s the way I felt so inclined, that I could write for as long as I wanted and drink a whole bottle of wine, that’s exactly what I’d do. Anyway, I have digressed.
I find the whole concept of personal music devices a very strange thing. The idea that there are hundreds of people all walking round in their own little worlds, each different. You’d think there might be some sort of solidarity between in-the-street mp3 player users. That they might have some secret sign or code that signifies their camaraderie, that they are in a sense all sharing a similar, singular experience. But no. Of course not. Part of the nature of them is that they isolate you. And then, I suppose, most people don’t think of using them as anything out of the ordinary. Perhaps I won’t, given time.
Tom was on the bus coming home from Balham the other week, listening to his swanky new, much better than mine, matt finish iPod, when the elderly man next to him tapped him on his shoulder. Tom politely slipped his earphones off.
“Can you hear anything when you’ve got that on?” he pointed at the iPod.
“Er, no, not really,” Tom replied.
“Well, that’s such a pity. We’re on such a nice bus, and everyone’s in such a good mood, and you can’t have a conversation?”
“Do you think they’re antisocial?” Tom asked politely. I imagine. The man thought for a moment.
“Stops you having conversations,” he answered. “So, yes, yes I do.”
Like Tom was in the habit of having conversations with strangers on buses anyway. It wasn’t his iPod that stopped him doing that.
“Now, here’s a conversation,” the man continued warming to his theme. “Cricket.” He looked at Tom defiantly as if he had thrown down the gauntlet. “What do you think to that?”
Now, Tom is quite a cricket fan, so he was quite capable of conducting a conversation about the ins and outs of it. Tom expressed his opinion on some technical point which means nothing to me. This seemed to take the man by surprise. Clearly he thought that wearing an iPod meant not just that one didn’t have the opportunity to converse, but that one had lost the ability. That it sucked all intelligence and knowledge out of its wearer like some strange alien device in a science fiction programme. Tom one. Stranger nil.
I am now trying to come up with new iPod experiments – new odd and inappropriate circumstances in which I might wear it. Find out whether being engulfed by own personal sound wall will enhance the experience or otherwise. I have contemplated wearing it in the bath. I assume it would be safe. But I’m not one for long baths. I get bored easily and I hate the way the hard London water makes one’s skin wrinkle up so quickly.
Although my addiction means that I am listening to music at every opportunity, you can still tell that I am not an experienced junkie. My earphones are constantly falling out, they seem to get tangled even though I wrap them round the body of the iPod when I’m not using it. I struggle with the controls. I try to wheel it round to the track I want, then when I remove my finger, it inevitably – perversely, in my opinion - continues onto the next one. I’m not quite sure whether to set the thing going, then put the headphones on, or the other way round. I forget to set the control freeze button to orange, and suddenly find myself deafened. (How come it never goes quiet? I bet there’s some abstruse theory about going clockwise being the natural state of things…)
And another thing, when you’re listening to it on the train, where are you supposed to look? I don’t like reading when I’m listening to music. I either like to really listen to it, or to let my thoughts wander. But, in the meantime, where to look? Looking at the headlines on people’s papers is tempting, as long as one doesn’t try to read more than that. Looking to see what books people are reading is another. Of course, my favourite thing is just to look at people, their faces, to note their expressions, watch their mannerisms. Some people might say I stare, but I say I’m just taking in detail, being observant. But there’s a problem with this activity. I don’t know if it’s just me – Tom says it is – but I can’t really seem to manage to keep this up for more than about 30 seconds before the said ‘victim’ looks up and catches my eye. I have to look away, of course, and then there’s a dilemma. Dare I look again and risk second eye-contact? I mean, one eye-contact incident could just be a coincidence. I just happened to glance their way when they looked up. But twice? They’re going to think I’m weird. And do I care about that? Well, yes, I rather do, actually. So, in between furtive glances, I stare at the door frame, the floor, the far end of the carriage, anything inanimate almost, although looking out the window makes my neck ache unless I’m sitting next to it, and, if I have the choice, I rarely am. Perhaps this is why some people have their eyes shut on the train. It’s not because they didn’t get enough sleep the night before, as I’d always assumed.
Talking about really listening to music, as opposed to drifting off into thoughts, I am frequently surprise how very, very wrong I have got some of the lyrics to even songs I think I know well. For example, I could have sworn that there’s a line in David Bowie’s Quicksand that goes “Knowledge comes with tax relief.” Ok a bit odd, but not totally implausible, I think, given them method of lyric writing Bowie used to claim he used – writing sentences on strips of paper then almost randomly putting them together. And then this evening I discover, after 25 years, that what he is actually singing is “Knowledge comes with death’s release.” (Um, I think.) I like to think that’s just the wonders of digitally remastering, but…
The one bad thing I have to say about my iPod is that I no longer have the right to feel smug. I am no longer safe in the knowledge that, whatever other health-threatening habits I have, at least I won’t go deaf from listening to music too loudly.
The one really good thing is that, wearing it in the street, those horribly overly-enthusiastic people with clip boards, who are trying to make you sign up to a direct debit to a charity, no longer attempt to stop me.
