Paradigm Shift.

When C and I first met, when I lived next door but was over here all the time, we spent hours lying in bed listening to music. He played me his favorite songs, and I made mix CDs for him of songs I thought he’d like, and he did. Most of the songs we played for each other were slow, emotional, romantic, Dolorean, Iron & Wine, Fleet Foxes. That’s just how things were.

My Xmas present to C was a Jambox by Jawbone. It’s a speaker that connects wirelessly by Bluetooth to your computer or phone or whatever device. He has about a million CDs, and he hasn’t really made the leap to iTunes yet. But the only CD player we have now is an old clock radio that was so big it took up the whole top of his nightstand. In the office, we have my old Mac G5 tower, a great computer and very fast considering it’s about 8 years old (I edited Life in a Box on it), but it becomes more and more obsolete daily because the processors are not the kind required for most applications. I couldn’t tell you why. It’s like most computer things, it just is, and if you want to find any measure of contentment in your life you have to accept it. All that to say that the beloved G5 can’t play music anymore. The speakers died and since the computer is in its last days it doesn’t make any sense to get new ones. I am so unbelievably bored with this paragraph.

Whew. Much better. The contingent present was that I secretly uploaded all C’s CDs onto his iTunes on his computer so that when he got the Jambox he could play all his CDs! This was no small task. Like I said, a million CDs. And I’m not in the apartment alone much. But I got it done by Xmas, or so I thought. It turns out I had missed a big stash, a fat CD wallet which I didn’t know about and which held all his favorites. Hundreds more, and these are the important ones, the heart of his collection. So I’ve been uploading on and off all month, and C has learned how to do it, too. I did a bunch today. There are only about 50 left. It’s endless.

Also for Xmas, from his sister and brother-in-law, C got Apple TV, which, among the many things it does, plays your iTunes through the TV. I felt a little scooped, since now it’s not so impressive for C to be able to play his music on the Jambox. But the TV is in the living room, so it’ll still be useful to play music in the bedroom. Or in the car when we take trips.