The ipod: a small portable digital audio player capable of storing thousands of tracks downloaded from the internet or transferred from a CD (dictionary.com). The denotation is simple and extraordinary. With music in the palms of our hands, the path we take through life animates—via soundtrack! The possibilities for livening up your walk to class, to the Rite-Aid on Broadway, or even to St. Charles for a street-car ride to Shenanigans Street—are only limited by the number of songs you can fit on your ipod!
I know that the January chill encompassing the walk to Rite-Aid is more enjoyable when Peggy Lee warms me up with “Fever”. And seeing a Big Red “F” on a Biology test is a little more bearable to the tune of “Obladi Oblada,” emphatically singing the chorus “Life goes on! Brahhh!!”
While reading “Walking in the City”, I noticed a theme of “opaque and blind mobility”. In the writing, de Certeau elucidates the cause for a person to choose the pedestrian path he or she takes through a city. He says that we carve out our path watching the structure of the place itself, but also listening to hollow memories that haunt the place.
I believe that we navigate through music in a similar way; when a song plays, we are taken to the places that song recreates. For instance, at the end of every summer camp dance, “Stairway to Heaven” drifted in the spaces between the hands of my fellow (coupled) campers. Listening to this song always draws me back to the musky darkened gym of my youth, and I feel anxious as I wait for someone to ask me to dance.
So while an ipod is fairly useful for playing music, it is also unmatched in the ability to transport you to spaces vacated by your most present memories, places we neither want to remember nor forget.
Speaking of medical treatments for children, isn’t it miraculous how Dora the Explorer bandages have such a greater sticking power than regular old boring Band-Aids? It’s like funky designs or familiar faces magically keep those irritating adhesive strips in place.
This may not be the most recent advertisement, but I’m sure you can remember in the dawn of your childhood having to take some sort of medicine or supplements—and hating it.
Yes, I’m talking about Tums coating chalk down your throat and the allergy meds reminiscent of sour O.J. staining your tongue vibrant, unnatural colors (which was no doubt the only cool part about any medicine, if you recall.) In my youth, no spoonful of sugar or promises of treats could ever get me to swallow Rx anything.
In those days, I wasn’t worried about being sick because I was busy being a pirate, carving up old rotten trees into swords and boats to invade the infested dreary germy muck of the Southeast Louisiana swamplands. Now, if you have an idea of the sanitation this particular child’s playtime lacked, then you may understand my mother’s incessant whining about my well-being. But to me, medicine was a cruel and unusual punishment only to be subjected to the real bad guys. Needless to say, little me resented chalky pointless pills.
During this time of my life, I was also consumed by a fascination with the Land Before Time and the Flintstones. I loved dinosaurs, and my little rubber replicas of Stegosauruses and Triceratops never left my hands (except when replaced with previously mentioned sword.) So you can imagine the joy my exasperated parents felt when they discovered the Flintstones brand, dinosaur-shaped vitamin tablets for sale at Walgreens next to the stuffy, unadventurous meds that other kids had to take. Suddenly, my hatred vanished like a group of terrestrial vertebrates ranging 1,000 different non-avian species over 65 million years ago. Bright, colorful, historical recreations of my favorite animal made medicine worth taking for the first time in my life. And best of all, the tablets dyed my tongue unnatural colors. I never had to be told twice again.
