R. i.Pod

My iPod really died last week. That kind of phrase is only applicable to electronics and automotives. A pair of jumper cables, a bag of rice—resurrection! If only it worked out that way for the rest of us organics. I’d probably had it for more than ten years. I think it was technically an iPod Touch, maybe second generation. The fact that I had it for so long without buying a new one suggests, to me, that it was already an upgrade of some kind and to continue trading up for the newest, shiniest, latest is just too far above my be-grateful-for-what-you-have digital raising.

I should have seen the warning signs that we were in end stage electronic failure. Off and on over the course of the last year, the iPod interface would freeze. I would have to power on/power off cycle to get it to correct itself; the equivalent of using paddles to shock a person back from the brink. The battery tended to run down faster and faster. And then one morning when I went to charge it there was nothing but a bright, white screen. Run to the light, Carol Anne. I attempted to power it off/on, but it was too late. Flat line. R-i-Pod.

The software was outdated. I was unable to add music either from iTunes or through Spotify. I don’t think I could have added the Spotify app anyway. For the last ten or more years I had been cycling through the same catalogue of six or eight hundred songs whenever I was out walking. The pod got an especially heavy workout at the dawn of the pandemic when I started walking every day for exercise rather than just pleasure. Up until that time I might take it with me on a Saturday when I was traipsing around Boston. I liked having a private soundtrack to these excursions. I liked being able to pull the music up around me like a blanket so that the rest of the world receded. I had been doing this since I was a kid: a child of the Walkman generation.

Sony cracked open the marked on portable music electronics when it released its first generation Walkman in 1979. Until that time it was possible to listen to music on compact devices—car stereos, transistor radios, tape players—but none of these were built for smooth mobility. You could definitely walk around with a tape player held up around your ear. You will probably not have your pick of prom dates. The Walkman changed all of that. Marketed as a kind of “personal stereo,” Sony launched its boxy, blue and silver Walkman TPS-L2 that included headphones and a leather case, on July 1, 1979 for about $150. The company estimated it might sell 5,000 units a month, but in the first two months alone Sony reported sales of more than 50,000 units. The revolution would be portable.

So many buttons and things!! (Image via Sony)

The 1980s is often characterized as the “decade of excess,” but it could be just as readily framed as ten years of shrinkage. The microwave, the pager, Nintendo Game Boy, the Epsom Pocket TV, the IBM PCjr—not all of these products were physically small, but they were designed to compartmentalize. They promised a more intimate, immediate experience with the technology that shifted the emphasis from something communal to something highly personal. For an awkward eight-year old kid like me who struggled socially (I tended to be bossy mixed with an insufferable need to have the spotlight in that “I’m the silliest! Look at me! Watch what I’m doing!” kind of way. My apologies to everyone I encountered from grade school until junior year of college), this sounded very appealing.

And it was. My brother and I both had Walkmans, but I bonded with mine immediately. By this time Sony had steadily iterated their models. Ours had both a cassette player and radio. Why, yes, I was listening to my Barbie and the Rockers four song cassette, pretending to rock a pink stage in front of millions. Thank you for asking. I feel very seen. But my favorite thing to do was to fire up my Walkman in bed after lights out. I would crawl up and down the FM radio dial trawling for anything, for everything; I was an aural Hoover taking it all in. If I was really lucky, on Sunday nights I might be able to pull in the Dr. Demento Show. I would drift off to the high-pitched electronic chorus of roly poly fish heads or, even luckier, “Another One Rides the Bus” by Weird Al. Listening to the radio like this—intensely private—was to me the way reading under the covers with a flashlight was for other kids. There was something magical and powerful about having this insular, immersive experience that was conducive to paying attention, practicing close listening, and activating fantasy. I didn’t get those things from going to the movies with my friends or watching TV with my family or playing video games on our computer either alone or with my brother. And the Walkman meant that portal was open 24-7, no matter where you were as long as you had enough batteries to last.

I dated someone in the early-2000s who was the first person I knew to have a first generation iPod. Though not as big as the earliest Walkmans, the iPod was still chunky. It was a little bigger than a deck of cards. It had a wheel interface on the front that allowed you to scroll through a menu and access music. It was cool. Everything Apple puts out is required to look and feel slick even if it’s only slightly repackaged tech with a few upgrades thrown in for good measure. You stuff it full of songs, he explained to me. Like a personal jukebox. Cool. Neat. I was dutifully appreciative of his excitement (card carrying proof of his hipness), but I didn’t instantly want one. The iPod seemed sterile, no personality, the character in romcom that seems too good to be true like the billionaire promising happily ever after if you just say yes.

I would eventually succumb to the iPod by way of a very inconvenient disc man. Upon the timely demise of this long suffering iPod, I dug out an old iPhone (six, maybe?), transferred most of my library into its iTunes, and have continued on without, literally, missing a beat. I’ve acclimated to the iPod experience.

Sony continues to make its own line of music players. These are also pocket jukeboxes stamped with the Walkman brand, for some of us activating that dopamine drip of nostalgia. I guess the saying “you can never go home again” is as true for technology as it is for life. Because part of the gift of those original Walkmans was housed in its limitations. I had a finite number of radio stations I could access; I listened to one cassette at a time, usually over and over again. As I got older that close listening led to deep thinking, which led to different flights of imagination, creativity, questioning; the longing that fuels our path towards our dreams.