Do you iTunes?

Do you iTunes? Since I have discovered this service, my life has been changed. For one, I never listen to commercial radio anymore. For a long while I listened religiously to National Public Radio, but all of those talking heads finally bored me to death. I appreciated the lack of advertising, but couldn’t stand the news. It was sufficient for me to read the papers and the news weeklies, and to catch the headlines at the head of the hour. Now, I like the uninterrupted music.

iTunes provides a web-based radio service which offeres commercial free (and often cost-free) music for eclectic tastes. I have been listening to folk music steadily for the past several years that derives (I think) from Boston, from Maryland, and from Ohio. I know there are other stations( is that what they are?) from which to choose, but I am satisfied with this choice; once I think I’ve found what satisfies, I can’t justify change for its own sake. I mean, what other nirvana could I discover out there for which I have now no interest. And so, whenever possible (when I am not required to concentrate on the reading and writing), I can be found headphoned and enwombed in the warmth of my roots. I grew up in the mid-Sixties in Greenwich Village. I sat at the Gaslight Café and the Café Wha? and The Bitter End, and was never unhappy or bitter. Right now Phil Ochs is singing from about 1964; I was seventeen years old and I was enamored of Ochs’ anger and indignation. Oh yes, Mississippi, find yourself another country to belong to! I’m out here at Walden and back there in Jericho. I feel connected in my life through iTunes.

Now, the other part of iTunes to which I am attached is the purchase of music. It’s like impulse buying for me now. I’m listening to web-based folk radio and hear a song/musician I adore and I click right to the Music Store and purchase an album. I have downloaded many albums over the past several years. (I can’t cease referring to them as ‘albums,’ even though they are cds). I think this purchase is how I move out into the world from the solitude of my Walden. These purchases are how I comfort myself in my low moments out here at Walden. And they are how I connect to my past out here, for I purchase albums that I still own on vinyl but do not listen to anymore. Or I purchase albums I never owned on vinyl but wished I had as part of my collection. My children, too, have learned how to use iTunes to explore the world, and for their journeys I am grateful.

Of course, iTunes has also saved me from the sins of commerce and illegal downloading.

It is snowing here in Wisconsin. For me it is too early for this weather. Bob Gibson and Hamilton Camp are singing “Well, Well, Well!” All is well. That ends well.