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This morning's pique

Technology, as regular readers will have noticed by now, is not necessarily my friend. And, as previously noted, I am perhaps overly fond of my modest component stereo. I do not like to be tethered to headphones, and I do not believe -- still -- that it is the job of my computer to play music.

In these ways, and others, I reveal myself to be old-fashioned.

Forward-thinking though I imagine myself to be, I can live with that. Ideas still count more than lines of code, right?

Waiting in the mail was a particular CD I really have to listen to first thing off, one of a handful of releases from an artist who might well be our next cover, or not. And the bloody thing won't play in my CD player, only on this wretched computer. Which I know to try only because it happened with Mary Gauthier's newest album. I complained to Lost Highway, who graciously overnighted a second advance copy of the album, coded with the same limiting attributes.

With the result being that I've spent almost no time with Gauthier's album, and I wrote a rather long piece about her last one.

Doubtless there is some technical reason these two advance CDs (from different labels, both vaguely within the Universal system, as it happens) won't play in an actual CD player, and hopefully it will plague nobody save this middle aged editor. Perhaps even somebody can tell me what to do about it (and, no, buying an iPod is not the answer, at least not for me; and it does seem absurd to copy this to iTunes or whatever is making it play and then burn a CD which my CD player might read). Maybe somebody can recommend quality speakers that I should attach to this poor over-worked computer.

But we appear to be moving more and more toward a technological elite -- this after a long day in airports -- attached in all sorts of ways to gadgets that become landfill and require expensive upgrades every 18 months or so. And, of course, if you don't jump into that stream (really, I don't need a Blackberry, and surely I shouldn't feel inadequate traveling without a laptop, or should I?), the logic will at some point become impenetrable and you will be all but permanently disenfranchised. None of which seems, from this messy desk, on which there is simply no room for speakers (my coffee cup is in the way, and that's far more vital to the creative process!), to aid in the art and science of communication.

To which end, something like 400 e-mails await my return. Ah, well. 500 e-mails. Whatever.

Posted by grant on August 22, 2007 8:47 AM | Permalink