Little Big Brain
My beloved companion, my iPod, Little Big Brain, is limping along these days like a sad, little, old man. He's got weird lines across his face, and he won't hold a charge. I'm afraid his days are numbered. And now, thanks to some weird disaster bestowed on me by iTunes, I'm afraid I'm going to lose all my playlists. Something happened a few months ago that made all of my songs randomly duplicate themselves, sometimes six or seven times over, so I couldn't synch my iPod because it wouldn't fit all of that excess. I finally bit the bullet and bought a program to delete the duplicate files (it was over 8,000 files--I couldn't do that manually!). But now my playlists are decimated. I think the duplicates that got deleted were actually the older versions, so the ones in the lists. Arrrrrgh.
I'm really attached to my playlists, and to Little Big Brain. I bought Little Big Brain right about five years ago, with the life insurance money from my mom. I bought it in order to have a way to listen to all my music as we traveled from Pensacola to Connecticut for the visit and/or the big move. The purchase was also a major bit of retail therapy; Little Big Brain is the first video version of the iPod, and he's got 30 gigs of alllll my songs and podcasts. I think there was a 60 gig available at that time, but I just got the 30 (hence he's "Little" Big Brain). It wasn't cheap, but it was worth it. My mom would totally have approved of the purchase.
The playlists go back a couple of years farther. I must have started using iTunes while I was in grad school, because I think I made the first of these lists in New Orleans. There are a few I made for specific days I was home cleaning the house, like the inventively titled "Cleaning House" list. There was the "Songs for my Snail" list I made in honor of the apple snail Lee and I bought for our fish tank, and the abridged "Small Snalies," which I created to burn to CD. The snail died shortly after that, and Lee told me he must have had different taste in music than I did.
There are lists I made in Connecticut: "Gonna Be Late," which I think did make me late as I cobbled it together one morning before work. "Cleaning House in the New World," which I made as I prepared to clean our apartment in Connecticut for the first time. "Road Trip with Penelope." "Berfday Festibal Jams," for my 27th birthday. "A Day Without Claims," for a day I had off from work after winning a contest.
There's the "Songs to Make a Turd By" list, which I created while I was staying with my mom after Katrina. Lee had come to visit her with me in the hospital, and it was her dinner time when he left. He told her to enjoy her dinner, and she shrugged and said, "It makes a turd." (She'd been having some indelicate related troubles in the preceding days). I made a list of the songs I had been listening to over and over at that time and gave it that name: "Requiem" by Eliza Gilkyson, "Mary" by Patty Griffin, and Michae Buble's remake of the Spiderman theme. Those are the songs I can't hear without feeling Katrina's breath on my neck.
So it's upsetting to open up these lists and see 80% of the songs missing. I can try to recreate all the lists myself, but Little Big Brain doesn't want to stay on while he's not plugged in for very long, and he doesn't want to give me his screen while he's plugged in. I'm hunting for a freeware that will do what I want, but most of them seem to transfer the actual songs, which is NOT what I want, it's what got me in this mess to begin with.
My playlists may just be gone. It's weird to have this all tangled up with the Katrina business. All we're talking about is a piece of digital information--tangible, but not really--that could be deleted in a second if Little Big Brain got stepped on or dropped in a puddle or something. It's fragile anyway, and it's not going to last forever. But there are a lot of things like that. Like my mom's socks. I took a bunch of her socks after she died, and I wore them. But socks wear out, and in these five years, most of them have worn themselves into the trash. Or like these candles she and I bought in New Orleans, just before Katrina. We each bought one of the same candle, this huge gel-and-wax candle with a scent named something having to do with moonbeams, and when I stayed with her, we burned the candle downstairs while we watched TV. I took hers with me after she died, and I burned it at home over the next couple of years, and then it was burned out. It only took a couple of years, so as a momento, the candle wasn't great since she's going to be dead forever. But... I have the second candle and have never burned it.
I do have some more lasting momentos. Lots of them; more than I probably should. I have too much of my own stuff, let alone stuff of my mom's that isn't particularly meaningful to me except that it was hers. But things like socks and candles and playlists don't have to hold all the weight, because there's also jewelry and books and pictures. Those things won't last forever, either, but I can probably expect to have, for example, the necklace my mother wore to my wedding, for the rest of my life. Unless it is stolen or destroyed in a tragic house fire, or unless I am forced by dire circumstances to sell it, or unless I myself die prematurely--and none of these scenarios are totally outside the realm of possibility!--I can probably expect to tell my grandchildren about it and leave it to one of them when I die. Some things will be with me for many years after my mother's death.
It's just a reminder, whenever one of these things perishes. My mother is gone, and with each tangible thing of hers, or with each tangible thing surrounded by her memory, that perishes, I am reminded.
I'm really attached to my playlists, and to Little Big Brain. I bought Little Big Brain right about five years ago, with the life insurance money from my mom. I bought it in order to have a way to listen to all my music as we traveled from Pensacola to Connecticut for the visit and/or the big move. The purchase was also a major bit of retail therapy; Little Big Brain is the first video version of the iPod, and he's got 30 gigs of alllll my songs and podcasts. I think there was a 60 gig available at that time, but I just got the 30 (hence he's "Little" Big Brain). It wasn't cheap, but it was worth it. My mom would totally have approved of the purchase.
The playlists go back a couple of years farther. I must have started using iTunes while I was in grad school, because I think I made the first of these lists in New Orleans. There are a few I made for specific days I was home cleaning the house, like the inventively titled "Cleaning House" list. There was the "Songs for my Snail" list I made in honor of the apple snail Lee and I bought for our fish tank, and the abridged "Small Snalies," which I created to burn to CD. The snail died shortly after that, and Lee told me he must have had different taste in music than I did.
There are lists I made in Connecticut: "Gonna Be Late," which I think did make me late as I cobbled it together one morning before work. "Cleaning House in the New World," which I made as I prepared to clean our apartment in Connecticut for the first time. "Road Trip with Penelope." "Berfday Festibal Jams," for my 27th birthday. "A Day Without Claims," for a day I had off from work after winning a contest.
There's the "Songs to Make a Turd By" list, which I created while I was staying with my mom after Katrina. Lee had come to visit her with me in the hospital, and it was her dinner time when he left. He told her to enjoy her dinner, and she shrugged and said, "It makes a turd." (She'd been having some indelicate related troubles in the preceding days). I made a list of the songs I had been listening to over and over at that time and gave it that name: "Requiem" by Eliza Gilkyson, "Mary" by Patty Griffin, and Michae Buble's remake of the Spiderman theme. Those are the songs I can't hear without feeling Katrina's breath on my neck.
So it's upsetting to open up these lists and see 80% of the songs missing. I can try to recreate all the lists myself, but Little Big Brain doesn't want to stay on while he's not plugged in for very long, and he doesn't want to give me his screen while he's plugged in. I'm hunting for a freeware that will do what I want, but most of them seem to transfer the actual songs, which is NOT what I want, it's what got me in this mess to begin with.
My playlists may just be gone. It's weird to have this all tangled up with the Katrina business. All we're talking about is a piece of digital information--tangible, but not really--that could be deleted in a second if Little Big Brain got stepped on or dropped in a puddle or something. It's fragile anyway, and it's not going to last forever. But there are a lot of things like that. Like my mom's socks. I took a bunch of her socks after she died, and I wore them. But socks wear out, and in these five years, most of them have worn themselves into the trash. Or like these candles she and I bought in New Orleans, just before Katrina. We each bought one of the same candle, this huge gel-and-wax candle with a scent named something having to do with moonbeams, and when I stayed with her, we burned the candle downstairs while we watched TV. I took hers with me after she died, and I burned it at home over the next couple of years, and then it was burned out. It only took a couple of years, so as a momento, the candle wasn't great since she's going to be dead forever. But... I have the second candle and have never burned it.
I do have some more lasting momentos. Lots of them; more than I probably should. I have too much of my own stuff, let alone stuff of my mom's that isn't particularly meaningful to me except that it was hers. But things like socks and candles and playlists don't have to hold all the weight, because there's also jewelry and books and pictures. Those things won't last forever, either, but I can probably expect to have, for example, the necklace my mother wore to my wedding, for the rest of my life. Unless it is stolen or destroyed in a tragic house fire, or unless I am forced by dire circumstances to sell it, or unless I myself die prematurely--and none of these scenarios are totally outside the realm of possibility!--I can probably expect to tell my grandchildren about it and leave it to one of them when I die. Some things will be with me for many years after my mother's death.
It's just a reminder, whenever one of these things perishes. My mother is gone, and with each tangible thing of hers, or with each tangible thing surrounded by her memory, that perishes, I am reminded.