I prepare for leaving home for 2 years, fully intending to leave much of my current life behind and reinvent my self. I am sick of all the damn music on my computer anyhow. I pack only a small radio and headphones with a splitter adapter so that I could plug my headphones ino someone else`s ipod. I intend to discover new music, both Paraguayan and that of my American counterparts. I also manage to forget my small ipod in Florida at my uncles house a month before departing.
Chapter 2
I arrive in Paraguay disoriented and exhausted with the alien culture. I am desperate to listen to and escape with familure music. Paraguayan radio is often just the same endlessly repeated elctro-pop or reggaeton songs, with very little variety. I`ve heard the Barbara Steisand song about 1000 times. At best they play traditional polkas in Guaranì, but these can be hard to find.
Chapter 3
I buy black CDs to burn on other people`s computers. I am the only volunteer in my `G` that did not bring a laptop, so it should be easy to get lots of music. I also borrow my host nephew`s crappy little guitar which I love to play. It has a looseness and a twangyness that is perfect for the blues.
Chapter 4
My first attempt to get music from a fellow volunteer is a success. I burn a mix of Zach`s computer and enjoy listening to it on my host family`s small radio/cd player. My uncle sends my ipod to my father whom I beg to send to me in a package. I ask him to include a 1 to 1 cable so that I could plug it in to speakers and stereos.
Chapter 5
Further attempts to burn cds fail for a number of reasons. Many volunteers keep thier music on hard drives which they don`t bring out with them, Jaimee`s music was totally unlabled and unorganized because it had all been erased somehow before arriving, Johanna`s music had also been erased, I didn`t want anything from several people`s libraries, seemingly successful burns would yield still-blank cds. Also my family`s ghetto blaster was on the fritz and often wouldn`t even recognize cds.
Chapter 6
I received my ipod in the package from my dad! It`s only about half full with stuff that I wouldn`t have put on if I`d known I wasn`t going to be able to change it for 2 years. It turns out that I can`t find any stereos to plug it in to. I enjoy listening to it with my headphones in my bed. In a week I feel like I know many of the songs better than I had from months or years half interestedly listening to them in the states. I also manage to burn 2 good cds from Champe`s extensive library, one a MP3 cd with some 120 songs (of wildly disparate sytles: Architecture in Helsinki, Paul Simon, Satie, Prince, Passion Pit) or so and the other some strange Phillip Glass album.
Chapter 7
I head out to my site. I bring my random ipod music and my random several cds. Within the first few weeks I buy a radio/cd player. Not quite a boom box, not quite a ghetto blaster. But it plays DVDs too! And it has a usb port, so it can play pen drives. It turns out that the Paul Simon, Passion Pit and Architecture in Helsinki albums that I put on the mp3 cd are ordered by their track numbers, so I get one PS song, one AH song and then one PP song then back to PS, which is totally jarring and unpleasant at first, though I end up getting used to it. I was thinking the thing had an input for my ipod 1to1 but that was a different model. The radio reception is not that good.
Chapter 8
Johanna comes to visit and leaves me one of her pen drives. I put some music on it from her hard drive, but for some reason my radio doesn`t read it. Because it is a new fangled style that folds up into a card. Pretty cool. No dice. Also cds tend to make a high pitched noise when they are spinning in the cd player. I despair that I bought a cheap pieceofshit.
Chapter 9
I buy a normal pen drive and put all the music from my mp3 cd onto it. And it works! But the files are strangely organized. They are not arranged alfabetically or in any ordering that I can discover, however files with the first part of thier name, like Paul Simon - Graceland and Paul Simon Kodachrome, tend to be grouped together, but not always. All my efforts to control this organization are futile.
Chapter 10
I buy a tv! I am able to watch dvds on my "mini-componente" and see the display when playing my pen drive. Unfortunately this does not clarify things much. I can at least navigate through the strange clumps to find something like what I want. I put some of Lauren`s great music on my pen drive at the VAC meeting.
Chapter 11
In attempting to bring some semblance of order to my music I try to put my music into folders on my pen drive. Inexpicably only one of the folders ever appears on my tv, that of Buena Vista Social Club.
Chapter 12
I buy two mp3 cds of music from a vendor in the bus station in Colonel Bogado while visiting Johanna. One of Paraguayan guaranias and polkas and one of Brazilian and Paraguayan Sertanejos. Brazilian Sertanejos are interesting because they bear close resemblance to american country music, especially in the use of fiddles and guiatars. Some of the music is good but mostly it all sounds the same. Do I need to learn to appreciate the music better or should South American musicians work on developing thier stylistic individuality?
Chapter 13
On my way back from Col. Bogado I pick up the package my father sent me in the postal warehouse in Asuncion which is a hideous and terrifying building carved out of the old locomotive roundhouse. It`s got a bunch of great cds in it: Charles Mingus, Yo-yo ma/Bach, Chet Baker, Abbey Road, Ukele dude, Mel Haggard. Except Abbey Road is in reverse order for some reason, which really doesn`t work on account of the long medley. Fortunately I can program my cd player to play them in the correct order.
Chapter 14
I go to San Pedro, the department capitol, to buy a little gas stove and a few things and on a whim I buy a 2 to 1 cable of the sort I have several of in boxes back home. My thinking is to plug it in to the front of my tv and listen to my ipod through my tv speakers which aren`t great, but are better than nothing. I take it home and no dice. For some reason the tv needs to be receiveing information from both the audio and visual parts of a single red/white/yellow AV cable to play sound.
In my disapoointment a thought comes to me. It would seem hopeless, a last try simply to combat inevitable failure a minute longer, but I feel something, some divine inspiration, that tells me that this will work. I plug my ipod with the 2to1 into the back of the minicomponente. It only has one set of ports and I simply assumed that these were output only. Not so!
Voila!
Anda ya!
I can blast my ipod through my little ghetto boomer to my hearts content! Music which is pointless to listen to on headphones is unlocked. Music which fills the room, the home, with its happy logic, which renders incomprehesible time a matter to delight in and celebrate with spontaneous dance.
Halleluja
Now if only I could modify my ipod library. Perhaps I can hack it?
Ian,
ReplyDeleteEvery-once in a while I check your blog and this was the best thing I read in a while but only because it has a happy ending. I guess it hit home because I have been unable to update my ipod for 4+ years for fear of losing all my files. Am i seriously going to chance it? No way and the only other option is to write down the 532 song titles down (i only filled it halfway in an attempt to loose myself of the "lame stuff") and then find them again since my computer broke and I had to get a new one.
My only solace is that my friend Helen whom I moved in with kept the old mix CD's I made her in highschool so I can indulge in nostalgia but I want something new to listen to and just haven't gotten it yet!
I hope to see you when you get back. When is that again? Have fun with the rest of your time.