I am ridiculous.

 

In the past three days Larry and I  have gone through 5 suitcases full of CD’s – with a few cassettes – a TV cabinet stuffed with movies – some even on VHS – and started to dig into books. A little. We dropped off six boxes of media to Good Will, he set aside a box for a friend of various items and I have a rolly cart threatening to burst that I will take to work to share.

Still I sit among 300+ CD’s.

About a year and a half ago I left the PC world behind and returned to the magical world of Apple. I bought a MAC book Pro. I used MAC’s all throughout art school and in most of the creative jobs I’ve held, but when it came time to purchase my own laptop I went with the Toshiba that was a fraction of the cost. Then I was stuck in the PC loop. Finally I bit the bullet and returned to MAC. Home again.

But my music apparently went with the PC.

I had spent days, weeks, probably months uploading my CDs to iTunes on that first laptop. I thought after I was complete that I could probably just discard the CDs since everything was now in one magical place, you know, the cloud, but I held onto them anyway.

Glad I did.

In March of this year I had the brilliant idea to load nothing but yoga nidra’s onto my tiny little iPod and leave it behind for Larry while I traipsed across the globe. I’d set up the little Bose iPod player in the bedroom with the iPod docked and he’d be all set.

Except my music was gone. It was on my iPod, but gone from iTunes.

I looked online for answers. I did all the tricks recommended. Nothing. Finally I asked a friend if she’d had to deal with this issue. She had. When she switched from PC to MAC. The music she had uploaded stayed on her PC, she had to manually transfer it. My hard drive and old laptop were delivered to the dump, that wouldn’t be an option.

So. Now.

As I’m in the process of uploading and curating and creating playlists of these diverse shiny circles of music, the thought occurs to me… it took me over a year to notice my music was gone. Is it really worth the time to go back through and upload everything? Did I really miss it?

The answer is yes, mostly, I missed some. I missed my classical and jazz playlists and my crooners and blues ladies, but I am uploading almost everything. Or I had planned to.

I haven’t listened to Weezer in maybe three years. Trik Turner? What did they even sing? Is it a they or a he? Yet, there those CD’s sit. Waiting.

It’s about control. Perhaps.

I love that I can turn on the TV and search for something on cable, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Netflix and I don’t need to house DVDs, but it still feels a little scary. And I still want some sort of structure with TV and usually I want not TV at all.

Music is different for me. I want to put on my computer what I want. I want to KNOW what’s on there. I want to CREATE playlists. I want to create STRUCTURE. Ultimately I want to CONTROL something and this seems like a safe place to do that.

Truthfully, if you were to come to my house, scoop up all my CDs up and take them with you, I’d adjust. But for a minute or two I’d search my mind wanting to know what you took. Ok, there were about 500 CD’s, what were they? I would probably actually start to make a list.

Then I would let go.

Then I would allow music to come to me. I would remember that it was Vivaldi’s Four Seasons concertos that I loved. And anything by Mozart. And no one can set a mood like Billie Holiday or Ella Fitzgerald. I would summon up Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and maybe even Weezer. I would immediately find Melody Gardot and Madelaine Peyroux and maybe even stumble across someone new I didn’t know I needed.

Instead I grip. I cling. I control.

And I learn.