The first Walkman I ever saw was worn by a sleek woman walking along Fifth Avenue in New York City in December 1981. I understood it immediately. The ability to have music surround me and no one else, to be able to have music for what ever I was seeing, where ever I happened to be; it was a cinema-lover’s dream come true. Now I could have a soundtrack.
Over the decades I have had several Walkmans and then many subsequent portable tune machines as they evolved.
But now I have an iPod as a birthday gift and with a gift certificate from Max, I started purchasing and downloading music.
There must be some reasoning or pattern to the initial dozen songs I captured and can now hold in the palm of my hand. None are new in any sense of the word: the most recent is 34 years old; the oldest 44.
Perhaps the link between them is a link only I could ever discern. Certainly each one places me in a place and time that is not here or now. Each places me in a place and time that may have involved a turning point, not a rapid one, but rather as a large ship turns, slowly and deliberately. So maybe these are markers in my own timeline:
• Three Dan Fogelberg songs: To the Morning (1972), Souvenirs (1974) and There’s a Place in the World for a Gambler (1974);
• Two from Elton John: Where to Now St. Peter? (1970) and Madman Across the Water (1971);
• Two from Jimmy Buffett: A Pirate Looks at Forty (1974) and Trying to Reason with Hurricane Season (1974);
• One from Crosby Stills & Nash: Wooden Ships (1969);
• One from John Denver: Annie’s Song (1974); and
• Three from Simon and Garfunkel: Bleeker Sreet (1964), Scarborough Fair/ Canicle (1966), and The Dangling Conversation (1966).