Has this happened to you?
So, this morning, like most mornings, I get in the car and plug in my iPod. I've had it for a few years. It's a "classic" series iPod, back when they made them with sufficient storage space. Mine holds 120G and is nearly full. I've got 15,937 tracks on it. Many of those, maybe as many as half, are things I'm "hoarding" - stuff I got for free that I don't really know yet. But a lot of them are "my" songs, stuff I know and love.
This is a good segue to why I noticed what I noticed. I'm making a "playlist" for Flipside. I've done this a few times before. Sometimes I don't actually end up listening to it any, but it's kind of fun to put together. In a sense, what I'd most like to do is just put the sucker on "shuffle" and kick back. I have a sort of vain "fantasy" about people hearing my selections and being struck with my eclectic range of styles as well as depth in some genres they probably didn't know I even liked.
"Fantasy" is in quotes because there's not much more to it than that, I don't suddenly get a triple blowjob because of my musical tastes. Frankly I'm not even sure what that is. Three times as good? Three in a row? Three women and me? Me and two dudes and some woman? Four dudes? Whatever the hell it is, I'm really not sure I'm into that, especially at Flipside all outdoors and crowded and dirty. Beside that, I'm rather suspicious if anyone claimed that it was in any way inspired by having a Tuvan throat-singing ditty come on the heels of some Latino-Jewish rap followed by some baroque harpsichord number.
But I digress.
As I alluded above, a significant proportion of the songs on my iPod are not really "my" music. Some of it is stuff I've pirated from cow-orkers. Some of it is stuff that my wife collects that I'm less fond of. Some of it is stuff I bought thinking it would be great, and it turns out I don't actually like, but I'm still loathe to delete it, in case I later get into it, or in case a friend of mine suddenly wants to hear some particular track and I happen to have it.
So I make playlists.
Some of you may be wondering why I don't just put the iPod on shuffle-all and just skip songs that I don't like or I'm not in the mood for. I know myself too well to attempt that. For one thing, I pay too much attention to the musical selection and not enough to the whatever else is going on. For another, once I start putting too fine a point on it, I start to get really "precious" with my mood (in a particular British sense of the word "precious"). Like, sure, I love this song, it's great, I'd love to play it for you, but it reminded me of an even better song that I now want to take time away from everything else to get playing you. And really, if I'm so intentionally playing YOU music, now I'm getting self-conscious about what to play you, or even the fact that I'm focussing so much on you.
I worry that you're sitting there thinking "Why is this guy so precious about what songs he's playing? Is he angling for a triple blowjob or something? I should probably leave before those other dudes show up." Or at the very least, I'm boring you, because you want to tell me some awesome story about something you saw over at some other camp, and I just want to fidget with the damn iPod.
So I make playlists. More than that, I try to make a single mixed playlist for a given year. I have multiple mood-oriented playlists, but I'd rather let my mood swing with the music instead of trying vice versa, for reasons similar to what I outline above.
In years past, I've put the iPod on shuffle and flipped through until I found a song I thought was AWESOME and put it on a list. In fact, I've sometimes imagined a particular scenario (like the Big Belgian Beer Breakfast) and tried to put on songs appropriate for that range of moods. A wide enough range that I'm not going to get precious with it, but enough to give me some selection criteria.
This year, after giving it more thought, I decided what I really wanted was a playlist that seemed a lot like my iPod on shuffle - just without all the filler that I always skip anyway. So when my 3rd favorite song off some album comes on, instead of flipping around for my number one favorite and putting that on the list, I just click in the song that's playing. I might also flip around to the number one, but one day I realized that my random shuffle would often pick 8 or 10 songs in a row that I liked enough not to skip.
In fact, the more open I was to getting several things in a row on shuffle, the more it would happen, to the point where I started picturing this playlist NOT as something to put on shuffle, but as an ordered playlist to stop and resume later, and to delight once more in the weird transitions. Or to ignore them in favor of whatever is happening around me. It's like a series of snapshots of my iPod behaving randomly, but I've cleaned up the filler in between beforehand.
Even if I never play a single track at Flipside, I still like what I've got here. And I'm really noticing more the various ways I can connect randomly chosen songs in my head. At least I think they're random.
Now we're almost to the weird part.
So a few days ago, I think Thursday, I was driving home and put it the iPod on random shuffle, and a few tracks came on. One I know I already had on that playlist, but it was so darn good I let it play through. And then another that went really well with it, so I marked that for later adding to the playlist, and continued. Something I skipped. Then something I had never really listened to before but now realize is awesome, so I added that.
And then I got home and proceeded with my weekend. Any iPod playing I did over the weekend was with the kids in the car, and they requested a particular compilation CD from a friend and that's what we heard. In fact, I liked it so much I listened to another track on it this morning, before switching back to "shuffle all".
And that's when it got weird.
At first, I was like "Oh, isn't that neat, that's one of the songs I heard the other day. And then another, and I'm like "Jeez, two in a row, maybe this 'shuffle' isn't so random." And then another. And then one I didn't recognize, but would have skipped anyway. And then two, in a row, that I swear were in a row before. And then one that I remember being really torn about whether or not to add to that playlist. (Last week, I had decided not to, but changed my mind this time.)
All told, shuffle pulled up 12 songs (so far) in a row, that it pulled up the last time I shuffled. More than that, it seems to have pulled them up in the same order, including the first one I started with. It's possible I'm remembering that detail wrong, or maybe some of these are out of order, but if it's not exact, it's awfully damn close. Far closer than is warranted from a random selection of nearly 16K tracks.
I'm not sure what to make of it. Another playlist I suppose. Maybe somehow I accidentally selected something that made it not reshuffle. Maybe that's an easy thing to do and I've always somehow not done that.
That's why my subject line: Is this something your iPod has ever done?
Oh shit. I was just about to put the tracklist here, and accidentally hit the "back" button one too many times, and now they're gone. I can still remember many of them. I just hit "shuffle" and now it reshuffled. Dammit, I was really excited about sharing this list.
1. Italian Children's Rhyme from some World Music compilation.
2. Hip Hug-Her by Booker T. and the MGs
3. Some Mozart Cello thing.
5. Day Tripper by the Beatles
6. Father and Son by Cat Stevens
7 or 8. Motivator by T-Rex
8 or 9. Some spoken word track.
12. Yours is No Disgrace by Yes
Dammit. Those first two are already in the new playlist in order, they were very clearly the order that it played on Thursday. I don't know why I wish I had the rest, many of the songs weren't that interesting to me. I remember 12 was when I kinda freaked out about it, and decided to keep listening until I got to the office, and also changed my mind about including it.
Bah, that's frustrating. The whole thing has a dreamlike quality to it. Like when you've got to search for something or construct something, and that's your "goal" in the dream, and you may not even be aware of why that's your goal, but it is. And weird things happen that make your goal start to come together for no particular reason. But then you make one little slip-up and the whole thing falls apart. And now you're frustrated with yourself. And maybe scared that it will have bad consequences in the dream, but not always. Certainly not with this situation.
This is a good segue to why I noticed what I noticed. I'm making a "playlist" for Flipside. I've done this a few times before. Sometimes I don't actually end up listening to it any, but it's kind of fun to put together. In a sense, what I'd most like to do is just put the sucker on "shuffle" and kick back. I have a sort of vain "fantasy" about people hearing my selections and being struck with my eclectic range of styles as well as depth in some genres they probably didn't know I even liked.
"Fantasy" is in quotes because there's not much more to it than that, I don't suddenly get a triple blowjob because of my musical tastes. Frankly I'm not even sure what that is. Three times as good? Three in a row? Three women and me? Me and two dudes and some woman? Four dudes? Whatever the hell it is, I'm really not sure I'm into that, especially at Flipside all outdoors and crowded and dirty. Beside that, I'm rather suspicious if anyone claimed that it was in any way inspired by having a Tuvan throat-singing ditty come on the heels of some Latino-Jewish rap followed by some baroque harpsichord number.
But I digress.
As I alluded above, a significant proportion of the songs on my iPod are not really "my" music. Some of it is stuff I've pirated from cow-orkers. Some of it is stuff that my wife collects that I'm less fond of. Some of it is stuff I bought thinking it would be great, and it turns out I don't actually like, but I'm still loathe to delete it, in case I later get into it, or in case a friend of mine suddenly wants to hear some particular track and I happen to have it.
So I make playlists.
Some of you may be wondering why I don't just put the iPod on shuffle-all and just skip songs that I don't like or I'm not in the mood for. I know myself too well to attempt that. For one thing, I pay too much attention to the musical selection and not enough to the whatever else is going on. For another, once I start putting too fine a point on it, I start to get really "precious" with my mood (in a particular British sense of the word "precious"). Like, sure, I love this song, it's great, I'd love to play it for you, but it reminded me of an even better song that I now want to take time away from everything else to get playing you. And really, if I'm so intentionally playing YOU music, now I'm getting self-conscious about what to play you, or even the fact that I'm focussing so much on you.
I worry that you're sitting there thinking "Why is this guy so precious about what songs he's playing? Is he angling for a triple blowjob or something? I should probably leave before those other dudes show up." Or at the very least, I'm boring you, because you want to tell me some awesome story about something you saw over at some other camp, and I just want to fidget with the damn iPod.
So I make playlists. More than that, I try to make a single mixed playlist for a given year. I have multiple mood-oriented playlists, but I'd rather let my mood swing with the music instead of trying vice versa, for reasons similar to what I outline above.
In years past, I've put the iPod on shuffle and flipped through until I found a song I thought was AWESOME and put it on a list. In fact, I've sometimes imagined a particular scenario (like the Big Belgian Beer Breakfast) and tried to put on songs appropriate for that range of moods. A wide enough range that I'm not going to get precious with it, but enough to give me some selection criteria.
This year, after giving it more thought, I decided what I really wanted was a playlist that seemed a lot like my iPod on shuffle - just without all the filler that I always skip anyway. So when my 3rd favorite song off some album comes on, instead of flipping around for my number one favorite and putting that on the list, I just click in the song that's playing. I might also flip around to the number one, but one day I realized that my random shuffle would often pick 8 or 10 songs in a row that I liked enough not to skip.
In fact, the more open I was to getting several things in a row on shuffle, the more it would happen, to the point where I started picturing this playlist NOT as something to put on shuffle, but as an ordered playlist to stop and resume later, and to delight once more in the weird transitions. Or to ignore them in favor of whatever is happening around me. It's like a series of snapshots of my iPod behaving randomly, but I've cleaned up the filler in between beforehand.
Even if I never play a single track at Flipside, I still like what I've got here. And I'm really noticing more the various ways I can connect randomly chosen songs in my head. At least I think they're random.
Now we're almost to the weird part.
So a few days ago, I think Thursday, I was driving home and put it the iPod on random shuffle, and a few tracks came on. One I know I already had on that playlist, but it was so darn good I let it play through. And then another that went really well with it, so I marked that for later adding to the playlist, and continued. Something I skipped. Then something I had never really listened to before but now realize is awesome, so I added that.
And then I got home and proceeded with my weekend. Any iPod playing I did over the weekend was with the kids in the car, and they requested a particular compilation CD from a friend and that's what we heard. In fact, I liked it so much I listened to another track on it this morning, before switching back to "shuffle all".
And that's when it got weird.
At first, I was like "Oh, isn't that neat, that's one of the songs I heard the other day. And then another, and I'm like "Jeez, two in a row, maybe this 'shuffle' isn't so random." And then another. And then one I didn't recognize, but would have skipped anyway. And then two, in a row, that I swear were in a row before. And then one that I remember being really torn about whether or not to add to that playlist. (Last week, I had decided not to, but changed my mind this time.)
All told, shuffle pulled up 12 songs (so far) in a row, that it pulled up the last time I shuffled. More than that, it seems to have pulled them up in the same order, including the first one I started with. It's possible I'm remembering that detail wrong, or maybe some of these are out of order, but if it's not exact, it's awfully damn close. Far closer than is warranted from a random selection of nearly 16K tracks.
I'm not sure what to make of it. Another playlist I suppose. Maybe somehow I accidentally selected something that made it not reshuffle. Maybe that's an easy thing to do and I've always somehow not done that.
That's why my subject line: Is this something your iPod has ever done?
Oh shit. I was just about to put the tracklist here, and accidentally hit the "back" button one too many times, and now they're gone. I can still remember many of them. I just hit "shuffle" and now it reshuffled. Dammit, I was really excited about sharing this list.
1. Italian Children's Rhyme from some World Music compilation.
2. Hip Hug-Her by Booker T. and the MGs
3. Some Mozart Cello thing.
5. Day Tripper by the Beatles
6. Father and Son by Cat Stevens
7 or 8. Motivator by T-Rex
8 or 9. Some spoken word track.
12. Yours is No Disgrace by Yes
Dammit. Those first two are already in the new playlist in order, they were very clearly the order that it played on Thursday. I don't know why I wish I had the rest, many of the songs weren't that interesting to me. I remember 12 was when I kinda freaked out about it, and decided to keep listening until I got to the office, and also changed my mind about including it.
Bah, that's frustrating. The whole thing has a dreamlike quality to it. Like when you've got to search for something or construct something, and that's your "goal" in the dream, and you may not even be aware of why that's your goal, but it is. And weird things happen that make your goal start to come together for no particular reason. But then you make one little slip-up and the whole thing falls apart. And now you're frustrated with yourself. And maybe scared that it will have bad consequences in the dream, but not always. Certainly not with this situation.