everything looks perfect from far away

Three years ago (wow, THREE YEARS AGO!), I was living and traveling to and from California and DC for work. The six hour flights were killer; children crying, turbulence, cramped seats. I needed an MP3 player and a good pair of headphones. Enter Apple, with its 4th generation, black-and-white, 40G iPod and a pair of Shure e3c passive sound isolating headphones.

What a joy that combination provided. On a plane or bumming around the streets of San Francisco and DC, I had the music which I loved with me. But as with all computers, I’m rough on them. In college, I went through hard drives and motherboards (from over-clocking) too frequently. My laptops life expectancy were low — they were always bouncing around in my backpack and thrown on to my couches and beds. My iPod was no exception. A little over a year after my purchase, my hard drive-based iPod started skipping and crashing. I killed the hard drive. So, I replaced it. Fast-forward less than a year, and I killed my second iPod hard drive.

So, I have been iPod-less for the better part of a year. And I didn’t think it was too big of a deal. I received a small iPod shuffle as a gift last May. It was nice for running and quick trips walking around the city. But I missed having my music on my longer trips, so this past weekend, after much thought, I bought an iPod Touch. I like it. The protective gear from GelaSkins is en route, so I am still baby-ing it. But my (perceived) happiness has unexpectedly increased. While in the process of making dinner, I had run out of frozen shrimp, which I usually keep stocked. Enter my new iPod. With it in my back pocket and my Shure SE310 (I stepped, and thus broke, the e3c), I ventured out to find frozen shrimp.

There are a number of grocery stores near my place, but most are small corner stores with a very limited selection. I eventually had to make the fifteen minute trek to Safeway to find them. Even though this took the better part of an hour, I enjoyed the time walking around my neighborhood. I didn’t realize how much I missed listening to music while I walk. The streets which I’ve walked hundreds of times became new again. Instead of focusing on getting to my destination, my focus was on what was around me. Instead of rushing, I was enjoying. Instead of hearing broken conversations from passer-bys walking down the street, I can listen to noise that is familiar to my ears (like Ben Gibbard performance at DC’s 9:30 Club) and set my focus elsewhere. A worthwhile purchase indeed.

Here are two tracks from Ben’s performance at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC. This concert was featured by NPR in their live concert series. As such, the entire concert can be downloaded from their website or from iTunes. These two tracks represent two of my favorite tracks from Ben’s groups The Postal Service and Death Cab for Cutie.

Ben Gibbard from The Postal Service - Such Great Heights
Ben Gibbard from Death Cab for Cutie - I Will Follow You into the Dark