I don’t have an iPod. Sometimes I feel like the only one in the world. Over the long weekend, I traveled to Washington, D.C. Little white cords draped from the ears of everyone from college students to businesspeople to grocery shoppers. I always wonder what they are listening to. When you have an iPod, you get to choose what you hear. As I walked the streets of our nation’s capitol with my open and often freezing ears, I heard all kinds of things those listening to music didn’t. I heard the clicking of young professionals’ heels. I heard cars honking and accelerating and sometimes slamming on their brakes. I overheard conversations that made me laugh. I heard the sounds of the city. I loved it.
The iPod is so appropriately named. When you walk through the world constantly mediated by a device you control you really are in a pod of sorts. A pod that is all about yourself or I. While you are out and about, you aren’t really participating. People can’t ask you for directions, or the time. If you bump into someone listening to an iPod and say “excuse me,” who knows whether the person heard you? If you’re listening to music or a podcast (which, on a side note is actually a webcast but has just been branded quite well by Apple, kind of like what Kleenex did for tissues) you miss stuff.
The iPod is not the only MP3 player in the world. My traveling companions both had types other than the iPod, which we named the SarahPod and the JoshPod. They listened on the plane, and traded earphones a few times, but that was it. They didn’t wear them around town, but we sure did see a ton of people walking around in their own little world. So many, in fact, that we started naming them.
While you are isolated, in a way when listening to (or, on the new video iPod, watching) your own media, you are still visible to everyone else. Your emotions, no doubt influenced by what is going in your ears, still shine through. So we started naming people we saw listening to iPods. These are a few of the people we saw and some predictions about what they were listening to:
AngryPod: A dark haired male with a frown on his face and squinting focused eyes. He was walking really fast like he was going to yell at someone. I think he might have been listening to Rammstein’s angry anthem, “Du Hast.”
UpsetPod: A blonde haired girl in her early 20’s who looked about to cry. I think she might have just been dumped, and was consoling herself with Sheryl Crow’s “My Favorite Mistake.”
InconsideratePod: Sarah saw this guy from the back. He was standing on the left side of the Metro escalator, which is reserved for escalator walkers rather than escalator riders. This was at the bottom of the moving staircase. When Sarah said “excuse me,” the fellow of course didn’t hear her. While she wanted to hit him in the back of the knees so he collapsed, Sarah instead stood still behind him, and waited the whole way up. He was probably totally engaged in a recording of “This American Life,” not realizing that his rude behavior would make a great subject for one of their shows.
SpacePod: A guy in a suit on the Metro with his mouth hanging open. With glazed eyes and a drying tongue, this guy was in another universe. We all zone out at times, but this was extreme. My guess is something totally engaging, like a Dan Brown audio book.
GeekPod: Disheveled youngster in a Star Trek T-shirt. He was smiling to himself and had a funny walk. Perhaps he was so happy because he was rocking out to his ’80s playlist.
There were just so many: HotPod, PissedPod, LazyPod, LatePod, LaughingPod. It was fun. The best part was being able to name them while they were still within earshot. They never knew what kind of impression they were making on strangers because they were ignoring them.
Now I’m not saying I hate the iPod. I’m not trying to be pretentious and say I’ll never get one because they’re too trendy. Actually, I would love to have one. All I’m saying is that the real world is fun, and if you’re constantly plugged in, you miss the wonderful little bits of life that would otherwise pass you by. Like today, a bird flew past me at what seemed like warp speed about two inches from my ear.
It made a really cool noise that I would have never heard if I had been wearing earphones.
iPods have no doubt been a revolutionary, well marketed device. One day I might get one, but for now I don’t mind not having one. I think I still have an old Discman laying around if I ever want music on the go. But for the most part, I love the sounds of life. If I had an iPod, I wouldn’t have overheard a conservative looking business man say “I advised him to blow his fucking head off.”
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