maybe all i need is a shot in the arm

Mom sent me a package last week. It arrived Saturday, and it included my iPod. Thanks, Mom!

You may have certain images associated with the term "iPod." I assure you that they are incorrect with regard to my own. I have one of these bad boys:

You'll be unable to note this from that picture, but this particular bit of first-generation audio hardware doesn't have USB connectivity - only Firewire, which is unfortunately not supported by my Dell laptop.

The upshot of this is that, while it already contains a reasonable library of my regular listening from the last couple of years, my iPod is essentially fossilized for the duration of my time in Germany (assuming the eMac back home is still in our house in working order when I return to the States - otherwise, it's permanently so).

So it's an odd thing, these days, to walk or ride around the streets of Berlin listening to the soundtrack of the time I spent wondering if I would ever get here, creating bits of daydream simulacra to replace fading memories of my own short time in the city. One song reminds me of another, which reminds me of a day, a scene, a feeling, a wish, a routine.

I suppose some of you reading may have had the experience of listening to your music in a radically alien setting. I would have assumed before now that that would import a bit of a sense of at-home-ness into your foreign surroundings. I was mistaken. If anything, the incongruity of these newly familiar sights with these sounds that had been memories rather than presences makes the whole situation more surreal.

I'm of two minds about how good an idea it will be for me to spend a lot of time listening. Certainly it's pleasant to listen while I walk or ride, and I've missed a lot of this music. Then again, I can understand the critiques of American iPod culture - that general trend toward isolation from the human environment through closed car windows, headphones, and cellphones. The iPod gives me a little bubble of America to go about in. That's a comfort. But they don't speak German in the bubble.

For now, the music is winning out over the need for soaking up the culture. And there's no question that Wilco's Summerteeth is perfect U-Bahn listening.