99 Cents Worth of Quicksand

I don't know if you'd say I've ever actually had a life. When I was in high school, on Friday nights when my peers were out... I don't know, hanging out at the malt shop or dropping acid or whatever it was the cool kids were doing in those days, I was home. In my bedroom. Watching The Rockford Files, or more precisely counting the moments until The Rockford Files came on. You can have your George Clooney or whoever, there's never been anybody cooler than Jim Rockford.

And don't get me started on the genius of Chico and the Man.

When I started to date the young woman who would later become my wife, it looked like I might have some sort of life; of course, most of our dates consisted of walking around the mall. Every once in awhile we'd really cut loose and I'd take her along when I did my grocery shopping. So let that be an answer to everyone who wonders why she married me.

Nowadays I have a job and 2 kids and plenty of stuff to do around the house, so it's not like I've got lots of time left over to spend at the discos. Generally once the kids are in bed, I can sit down... watch some TV, read a library book or one of the 8000 magazines I subscribe to, surf the web a bit. Once upon a time I even used to write a blog, which you might remember if you've been taking your ginkgo biloba.

So, you know, if it's not exactly a life that's going to be the subject of an Oscar-winning documentary or something, it's a decent semblance at least. Until that fateful email...

I wrote a while back about my experience with emusic.com, an online mp3 store that enticed me in with a lavish introductory offer with a somewhat more complicated reality. At that time it seemed like I might never extricate myself, but I was eventually able to get out with a pretty good haul of songs with regard to quantity, quality, and value.

Since then I've been mostly puttering with my iTunes cards, forever building lists but never buying anything, and also taking advantage of a deal from the library that allows me a small number of free weekly downloads from the Sony music catalog. I was concerned that I was getting a bit over-absorbed with all this music-mining, but I thought I had it relatively under control.

Then those devious folks at emusic sent me another offer: 99 cents for the first month, for credits that ought to allow me about 15 or 16 downloads (and the infamous "cancel at any time"). Less than 7 cents a song is a hard deal to turn down, and I would think it might be even for a person in full control of his faculties.

I jumped on it, and within minutes I had snatched up 9 tracks, many of which were already sitting on my iTunes wishlist. Now, however, I'm stricken once again with the dreaded paralysis by analysis. I've got maybe 6 or 7 bullets left in the gun, about 15 on the contingency list, and an infinite number more that I could add. There's not much logic in sticking around for a full-price month; even though it's not a terrible deal, it doesn't make much sense to pay money when I've still got iTunes credits, so it's this last handful and out. I promise.

So seemingly every day I go into emusic and wander the virtual halls, trying to figure out which of the songs on my list are the top ones -- then stumbling into a half-dozen more that I might enjoy slightly more. Or slightly less; who can say exactly? Music, money, OCD, and decision-making: a very dangerous cocktail for a guy like me.

I've seen this movie before and I already know how it ends: I take this 99-cent month down to the last possible second and click the mouse for the last song just before the clock strikes 12. Till then, you'll find me right here, clicking through the pages...

Tearing Down the MacGuffin

I'm really hoping that I don't meet the clinical standard of OCD, but frankly I wouldn't be surprised if I showed up on the scale somewhere. Recently I've gotten myself hooked into a brand-new obsession. One of our local radio stations has branded itself as "Legends", with the tagline "The Greatest Hits of All Time"... which of course is mainly a candy-coated way to say "oldies". I do appreciate the subterfuge, however; whatever can help me sustain my self-delusions is fine by me.

The first few times I clicked on the station, I was fairly amazed & amused that their playlist looks a great deal like my iPod library, and even the songs I don't have would fit neatly in the spaces between my songs. But instead of switching stations, since this one is almost redundant -- and instead of reflecting deeply upon what it says about me that all my music counts as "oldies" now -- I have, perhaps inevitably, made it a competitive sport.

Each time I listen, I keep score of how many I have already. My baseline is 33%: I estimate that one of every three they play is in my library, and more often than not, I'm right on target. In fact, on my last hour drive I hit 6 for 15... 40%.

I do write a lot in this space (or at least "a high percentage", since it's been years since I wrote "a lot") about the past. At first I thought that was because I'm just sentimental, or obsessed with my personal history, or somehow dissatisfied with my present... but over time I've come to understand that doing so helps me comprehend my past and fully absorb the lessons that maybe I didn't actually get the first time.

This weekend there was an event I've looked forward to, and dreaded a tiny bit, for months: a Gaslight Village reunion. It was a good-sized group of people from different eras, many of whom never knew each other, but all had in common a history at that place (and perhaps their own measure of obsession with the past). In a sense it was like a college Homecoming -- alumni from across the years, tied to the same location but with different experiences. So we tended to drift into our own "class years", creating reunions within the reunion.

I was excited about it, but also a little scared. It's been almost 30 years since we worked together, so we might be very different people; maybe we wouldn't remember it or value it in quite the same way; maybe we wouldn't have much to say to each other. That's a basic part of my nature: I'm always conscious of building something up too high and setting myself up for disappointment.

Imagine my astonishment when The Old Gang reassembled and it was like the years disappeared. I don't mean to say I thought I was 20 again, which God forbid; the talk was of spouses and careers and kids, mixed liberally with the remember-whens. But if you closed your eyes... we were still the same people, enjoying each other's company as much, and in much the same style, as we always did.

Here's how it wasn't like college Homecoming -- our alma mater doesn't exist any more. At one point we all walked onto the grounds, now just a big vacant lot. We did a lot of pointing and figuring out what had been where; we even found a couple of pieces of the Opera House building where we had worked. And it was in some ways a sad moment, remembering what had been and seeing what it was now. Some people were getting quite emotional, almost angry.

Alfred Hitchcock used to have a term for a device he used in his movies -- he called it the MacGuffin. The MacGuffin is a plot device, usually literally an object, that sets the story in motion (for example, the Maltese Falcon in the film of the same name), but it's really just an excuse for the characters to do what they're doing. The essence of the movie, of course, is the interaction among the characters.

So it turns out that while they closed the gates and tore down all the buildings, the buildings were just the MacGuffin, the objects that set that part of my story in motion. I stood there surrounded by Bill and Cindy and Jeff and Kim, and I realized that my Opera House was still standing, right there in that group. I had the memories, and I had the people to help me keep them alive in my heart -- because they helped me make them in the first place.

The physical location is gone, so instead I'll keep the memories, and the friends -- whether by Facebook or email or future face-to-face meetings. And we can cherish and celebrate and preserve the past together... but more importantly, we have the here-and-now together, and you know what? That's pretty cool too.