The Limits Of Technology

Several nights ago I ran up against the limits of technology. I couldn't remember a song. I was in bed with a snatch of lyric stuck in my head, unable to sleep until I figured out what song it was and hear it in my head. All I had was "Crisis of faith and crisis in the Congo" on repeat. I did not have the tune, the notes, the singer,or the rest of the lyrics, and it was driving me mad. Despite the late hour, I pushed the covers back to go get my phone and figure things out. 

I charge my phone in the kitchen so I can sleep instead of looking at the damn thing.  Technology in the bedroom, beyond clock, book, pen and paper, is a mistake. I went down to the phone and typed in the lyric, expecting my answer in a Google micro-second. I got nothing. I typed different combinations, but I had the lyric wrong. Google was no use. 

I returned to bed frustrated but also happy. I was on my own. Just me and my memory. I knew the song was in there and knew I had heard it dozens of times. I played the snippet over and over in my head. It was a male singer with a weird voice. I felt like the next line was, "yeah, we heard that before" but it didn't fit the rhythm. 

My wife asked if I had figured it out. I told her, I was still working on it. She said, thanks for putting it on an endless loop in my head. Marriage is all about giving. We turned out the lights and she rolled over. 

I kept at it. It wasn't the Congo. Crisis of faith, sure, but no crisis in the Congo. I played the line in my head without words hoping to hear where the crisis was. It remained mysterious, but the next line resolved into "Yeah, we'd heard all that before." It didn't come right away but began as a vague feeling of syllables, the sure memory that it began with _Yeah_ and ended with _before_. I tumbled that until the line came clear. 

Then I heard the voice. It was nasally, almost whiny. Later, I'd apologize in my mind to the singer, but he's dead and unlikely to take offense. 

"Crisis of faith and crisis in the hmm-hm, yeah we've heard all that before," I sang in my head, and though I couldn't put the next line together, the band and singer came to me along with the tune. It was as if I had plugged an extension cord from an outlet to the faraway, dark place where the memory lay. The light came on and music played:

“Crisis of faith and crisis in the Kremlin
And yeah we’d heard all of that before
It’s wintertime, the house is solitude with options
And loosening the grip on a fake cold war.”

— "Fireworks" by Tragically Hip (with apologies for my description of Gord Downie's voice) 

Had it been Google's answer, I'd have nodded, felt comforted, and gone to sleep like I had taken a pain reliever. Instead, I put it together slowly, piece by piece, with the possibility I might not figure it out. There's something so much more rewarding about that. 

I'm not about to ditch my phone or Google, but it's good to remember the wonder of depending on my brain while I still have it to use. 

Cell Phone Anonymous

When I got my iPhone in 2008 it was life-changing. I couldn't believe all it could do and I often claimed I could run my life through it. That's just what I set out to do. 

Google Calendar, Drive, Gmail, Maps, Contacts, and every other Google thing became portably integrated into my life. I downloaded apps for to-do lists, project planning, push-ups and planks, running, diet, and whatever else. I used the hell out of iTunes then Google Play Music thinking a subscription was the key to fully enjoying music. I switched to Google Nexus phones and then the Pixel. I lived my life through them. 

But I kept feeling like I was doing it wrong. User error. My therapist waited while I struggled to put in our next appointment. I didn't know what I was doing each day until the phone dinged to tell me. Email overwhelmed me, so I checked it incessantly. I couldn't find my way around the city without the GPS. I was distracted and felt like a mess. What was wrong with me? It had to be my fault, right? 

I chewed through gigabytes of data monthly and more than a battery charge daily. I stopped reading books and writing, stayed in, used the phone when I was out, and lost some touch with family. I felt addicted, like I couldn't stop, and it was then that I started shifting gears.

I stopped streaming music over the data plan. I had given up music while running years ago after stopping a woman from running into 45 mph traffic and I stopped walking with it now. These turned out to be easy changes, though I hadn't expected them to be easy. 

Next, I switched to Google's Project Fi which bills only for data used. This got me looking for ways to cut data usage. My daughter said, "just turn off mobile data" and I went wide-eyed at the simple brilliance as I shut off mobile data. I've left it off. I still pick up the phone when waiting to pick her up from rehearsal, but there's no data, so I read a book. And I don't pay a cent for data.

I deleted most apps and use Twitter, Facebook, and The Washington Post in the browser. It's more difficult, so I use them less. I still use The New York Times app because it works so well, but I may end up dropping it too. I'll let my Post subscription go when it runs out next month. 

And then this week I began powering the phone off for an hour each day. Yesterday, I left it off for two playing at how many hours I can leave it off. 

Of course, you don't need to do any of this. You're not addicted to your phone and missing out on life because of it like I was. You don't use it while you drive or run out of battery each afternoon. You're not paying too much for data. It makes a good story though. I love stories of addiction and recovery, hoping the recovery takes hold. Maybe mine is one of those stories. 

Check back here every so often to see how things turn out. 

On The Shelf

In the mid-nineties I sold my records and turntable at a garage sale for a pittance. I wanted them gone. The record collection was large and heavy and I had almost all of the albums on CDs. The turntable hadn't been hooked up for years. The records were in a closet. I sold them knowing we would be moving soon and not wanting to have to pack them in a truck. 

The CDs made it easy to let go of the records. The turntable had been a Christmas present from Mom and Dad and the records had come from Spectrum Records and Desert Shore as well as Record Theater and all the crappy mall shops, so I was a bit reluctant but not much. I missed the album art and lyric sheets but traded for ease of play, quality of signal, and reduction of noise. I was happy to never hear crackle and pop. 

I moved from analog to digital in a big way and kept going as Napster was born (a gift from the gods) and then died (at the damned hands of Metallica). I ripped my CDs and uploaded them to iTunes. Around then I gave CDs to the library's annual sale. They were taking up space and I hardly ever pulled them down. I hadn't ever loved CDs and so it was easy to let them go. 

This all seemed like an upgrade, but while music was available to me anywhere, my interest was diminished. I still loved music, played it all the time, but I enjoyed it less. There were problems, the was finding something to listen to. 

A record or CD collection is a delight to browse. I get a bang out of flipping through records or running my eyes across a shelf of CDs. At friends' houses, I look at their books, CDs, and records. It helps me feel close to the person. Hey, look, they listen to Steely Dan too. More and more I get to do this less and less because none of us have these things on shelves. 

On the computer and phone I have access to almost every song I could wish to hear, but it's tough to choose. Making a choice out of such a large pool is difficult, but there's just no good way to browse. I can display my music by artist, genre, album, song, or number of plays, but looking at a screen isn't natural or even pleasant. There's no there there. I usually give up and just play what I listened to yesterday.

This bothered me from Napster through iTunes and Google Play Music. No one is interested in making browsing work. It's not part of digital living. The music is arranged for the machine not the listener. I have to know what I want to hear or let the machine pick. It's a bad situation. Still, I've been willing to put up with it because I thought it was just me, that I was the problem. That and the music was so clear, plentiful, and inexpensive I figured there was no point in arguing. This had to be better than records, right?  

Damon Krukowski, in The New Analog, talks about signal and noise. Digital media is pure signal without noise. As a kid I wanted better and better equipment to reduce noise and boost signal. The greatest thing about CDs was the absolute lack of noise. It didn't matter if the sound was colder or whatever complaints audiophiles had. I was grateful not to hear a crackle or a pop. Noise was an enemy and if I had to sacrifice browsing to beat it, I was happy to give up records. 

It turns out that noise is more than crackle and pop. The digital stream the bad noise as well as the noise of album covers, personnel, liner notes, and so on. It takes away the noise of physical media on the shelf and the noise of shopping for music in a store. It strips away the noise of the friend who went with me to the record store and the person there who said, "you should hear this" before playing something cool. The digital stream is pure signal compressed for earbuds. I miss the noise. Even the crackle and pop.

David Sax, author of The Revenge Of Analog, put it this way:

“my roommate and I decided to upload our entire collection of 600 CDs to iTunes and get rid of the CDs. Our interest in music nearly disappeared overnight — because everything was out of sight, out of mind, on a hard drive. It just stopped being interesting. ”

— https://garage.ext.hp.com/us/en/modern-life/david-sax-interview-revenge-of-analog.html

They lost the noise and signal alone turns out to be less than enough. 

I didn't know how much I wanted back into music, signal and noise, until a friend invited me to a vinyl party. He said, "bring an album and play a song for us." Not having a record, I went shopping for one with the friend who had been with me for most of my music shopping over decades. Searching for an album was a revolutionary experience: I came home with a record and an understanding of all I was missing in my music life. It all became clear. 

This should have happened sooner. It took only six months to realize my Kindle was garbage. I couldn't use it on the plane until after take off. I had to buy books instead of using the library. No one knew what I was reading so they didn't talk with me about it. I didn't even know what I was reading because I never saw the cover. I couldn't tell how far into the book I was. It didn't fit in my hand how a book does. And I loved how books looked on our shelves. I gave the Kindle away and kept the books. 

Last year, after the party, I bought a turntable and began buying records. There are over a hundred on the shelf now. The last few days I've listened to over a dozen records, some with more crackle and pop than others, all picked from the shelf, set on the platter, and spun at 33-1/3 rpm. I have reunited the signal and noise. I have begun to amass the bulk that I shed. I have found, once again, the interest in music I had as a kid. And the happiness too. 

Borrowed Amplification

A friend asked me to write this. I'm a sucker for requests. He meant for me to send an email, but I bet this will do. It begins with my amplifier breaking down.

Writing yesterday about how I want things to last, my amplifier drastically lost volume in the right channel and cranked the left to distortion. This is what it did shortly after I bought it in 2015 when it was already forty years old. The Kenwood KA-5500 has beautiful power meters, more power than I'll ever need, a silver front panel, and a huge volume knob. I just loved the thing right away. I took it back the day after I bought it and the shop guy needed two different tries to sort the problem out. Turns out, he's a nice guy but can't fix hi-fi equipment. When the problem came back yesterday, I knew I couldn't take it back to him but didn't have a clue where else to go. Then I remembered: David will know a place.

David has a bunch of vintage hi-fi. He got me back into records by inviting me to his vinyl party a little over a year ago. He's been my friend for a dozen years and we have a lot in common: writing, teaching, records, and hi-fi equipment. I figured he would know a good shop and I was set to see him this morning. Sure enough, he had recommendations. Then he did me a favor, something I'm pretty used to from him. 

"I have a few extra amps if you want to borrow one."

My first thought was to thank him but decline. I have another amp hooked to speakers in the kitchen. I can get by until the Kenwood is repaired. I had "no, I'm good" ready to say when I remembered how alike we are. Situation reversed, I would like nothing more than to lend him something of mine. I heard myself say, "that would be great!"

That's David's 1975 Onkyo TX-670 above. It is a beast and a half and just too damn pretty. Check out that illuminated tuner scale, those knobs, the buttons. That's classic design right down to the woodgrain top. It weighs thirty pounds. The sound is good. A bit of crackle when changing volume or balance, but that settles down and there are fixes for that. It can handle three sets of speakers, two turntables, two tape decks, and an auxiliary device. There's even a bypass for using a power amp instead of the 56-watt internal amplifier. Like I said, a beast. 

I cleaned it and got set to hook things up. There are few tasks I enjoy more than hooking up stereo equipment. I pulled the Kenwood out and rested on the arm of the couch, all wires still in place. (This is why I leave slack in the wires.) I lifted the Onkyo onto the shelf and turned it ninety degrees so the connections were easy to see. One by one, I transferred each wire and line from the Kenwood to the Onkyo. Simple work done right, methodically and with care. I rotated the Onkyo into place and powered it on. I dropped the needle on a record and there was music. It sounded just right.

This whole thing has me thinking again about self reliance which doesn't mean going completely alone like Chris McCandless heading into the wild. Self reliance is about taking care of myself and knowing when to rely on others. I knew David would have a repair shop and knew also that when he offered an amplifier, he wanted me to borrow one. He knows I'm a good caretaker. He knows I'm grateful for the loan and for our friendship. 

I'll call the shop Monday and see about getting my Kenwood fixed. I appreciate David's loan but want my Kenwood working. Until it is, the Onkyo sounds just right, looks beautiful, and reminds me that I have good friends. 

Thanks, David. This is great.