Music is My Boyfriend

Nick Hornby has escaped and is running rough-shod through my head.

His endearingly dysfunctional characters aren’t staying on the pages of his books—they’re starting to make sense to me. I’ve lived in Chicago and as easily as “Hi-Fidelity” made the transatlantic flight, I should be more prepared to find that its idiosyncratic hero has taken up residence with me in Boston. I’m feeling like John Cusack, and from here it’s only a short stumble before I find myself with a boombox and a Peter Gabriel tune. Funny that it’s the boombox I’d have more trouble getting my hands on.

All to say that I’ve lived the past week through pop songs. The reasons are complicated, some personal. I’m feeling emotionally raw. The songs I’m playing – over and over again—are soothing but I’m reminded of this sadistic metaphor: the frog in the pot of water that happily swims as the heat is intensified until only dinner remains. The spice of Calexico’s “Feast of Wire” has flavored the long work hours that have been mine this week. But their mix of horns and blues guitars could just be preparing me for the meat fork that will be the only announcement that “I am DONE.”

And then fate intervened. My iPod showed me the frowny face of death—a cheekiness that until you have seen it its radical inappropriateness cannot be understood. The glib dismissal of a $300 investment is minor. A frowning iPod icon does not begin to address the silence that follows. I’d say my heart feels like it is wrapped in a blanket, so accustomed have I gotten in the past few days to using my iPod as a stylish white and chrome pacemaker.

I’m going to see a Genius at the Apple store in a few hours. I understand what he will say. I remember the night it crashed. It was midnight, I was downloading music from iTunes. I heard a chirping and honestly believed it was a songbird with a radically upset biological clock. I thought it was sweet. “Birds singing at midnight must mean that spring is on its way!” Only after five minutes or so did I realize that the hard drive on my iPod was chirping. Chirping. Hard Drives don’t make noises. Some things aren’t meant to make noises. My cat slaughtered a den of baby rabbits when I was a child. Baby rabbits being skinned and left on my history textbook are one thing no one should have to hear. One’s hard drive is another.

(To A—I hope you are reading this, home and recovering, and that reading updated blogs from friends speeds you along. You’ve my thoughts.)