Enduring
an hour-long commute to work every morning would be an absolute
nightmare. The monotony of the highway, the too-slow passage of time ...
heck, even talk radio would get old after an hour. By my second week on
the job, I’d be at the library, checking out audiobooks on the history
of fertilizer, just to keep my road-addled mind occupied on the daily
slog. That would be my life: Work and poop.
Well,
I’ve got a friend in pretty much that exact situation. An hour to work,
an hour back, day after day, week after week. It’s a testament to her
will power that she hasn’t snapped and drop-kicked a family of beavers
to vent her frustration. It’s also fortunate for the beavers.
I’d
like to think I help her out in this regard. Every once in a while I’ll
root through my substantial collection of music and make her a mix CD,
usually a winding romp through myriad genres of rock – some classics, a
few comedy tunes, and a dose of heavy metal to add a little punch to her
coma-inducing journeys. If there’s anything that can keep you awake on
the turnpike at 5 in the evening, it’s a squealing guitar solo that
could melt the eyes of a south African meerkat.
(In
case you’re thinking it, no, I don’t have it in for the entire animal
kingdom. Just wallabies. Those kangaroo-wannabe bastards.)
There
are two reasons I make her these CDs. The first and most obvious reason
is that I’m a completely awesome friend in every way, minus my tendency
to eat all of her York Peppermint Paddies. The second is simple. I like
making mix CDs. It’s a fun hobby.
Only this hobby is quickly vanishing.
Every
generation goes through this to some extent – the hobbies and pastimes
that define an age eventually give way to new technologies, new ways of
doing things. Making a mix CD – indeed, listening to a CD at all – is an
activity that’s quickly going the route of stamp collecting and model
shipbuilding. It’s passé, and it’s dating me. Living history museums
employ actors to fill the roles of bygone artisans, such as butter
churners with their musty barrels and oar-like stirring plungers; in
another 30 years, these characters will be replaced by a guy sitting at a
laptop, trying to find just the right song to transition between Dire
Straits’ “Sultans of Swing” and Van Halen’s “Run With the Devil.” People
will take photos of this antiquated endeavor, because by that point
laptops will be replaced by brain chips and we’ll all be cyborgs eating
old engine parts for sustenance.
Those
in my parents’ generation already have much to lament. My own were a
bit nervous buying me my first Nintendo Entertainment System when I was a
kid, thinking that perhaps I’d spend all my time indoors, eschewing the
outside world in favor of shooting fireballs at spike-shelled turtles
and monsters that looked like Ed McMahon. Their fears were partially
grounded. I didn’t avoid outdoor play entirely, but I did spend an
inordinate amount of time with an electronic laser gun in my hand,
shooting computer ducks and bad-boy desperadoes with the twitchy
nostrils of coke fiends. That I turned out the way I did is perhaps
unsurprising. If there’d been mutant killer turtles at the playground, I
might have gone out more, weighed less than a Buick filled with sand
bags, and grown up to be a Major League pitcher. This is clearly what
would have happened.
As
things turned out, I became more fully integrated into an age group
that was fast adopting video games as a lifestyle – a lifestyle many of
us continue to this day. (Though not me; I’m too busy writing screeds
about flatulence.) What’s a little off-putting is that the generation
below mine – the so-called “Millennials” – have taken preoccupation with
screens to another dimension. Twenty years ago, if you wanted to guide
Mario through a go-kart course littered with banana peels, you had to
actually sit down in front of a wired television, turn on a machine, and
play at a fixed location. But everything’s portable now. The lines have
blurred. Gaming is no longer an activity for which you set aside a
specific time; you do it on the subway, you do it in class, you do it at
Denny’s to take your mind off the fact that you’re at Denny’s. The old
gives way to the new, and those in the old-school lament the change,
believing – perhaps rightly, perhaps wrongly – that their way was
better. It’s the same ol’ song and dance, repeating endlessly through
time.
Phones
have replaced CDs as the music platform of choice. Tracklists are now
playlists. And the hobbies that once defined my youth now place me
firmly in a specific historical period – the period of neon
slap-bracelets and headbands, of waiting for a song to come on the radio
so it can be recorded on a warbly cassette tape. Yeesh. Someone hand be
a butter churn.
Could
these generational divisions have always been so drastic? Doubtful.
Youths always break from the traditions of their forebears, but the
accelerated pace of technological innovation has an amplifying effect,
compartmentalizing each generation into their own distinct eras: The era
of the 8-track, the era of the VCR, the era of nudie pictures on
phones. (This last era isn’t so bad.) These things no longer evolve.
They just change, suddenly and without warning, and one day you’re
making a mix CD and wondering why everyone’s lookin’ at you funny.
Like
many who are faced with this sort of thing, I’m sticking to what feels
right. That means sitting down and selecting, song by song, a tracklist –
not a playlist – to ease the psychic burden of my commuter friend’s
daily pilgrimage. This either means I’m steadfast in my commitment to an
era-specific hobby, or I need to join some kind of club. Probably both.
And
for the record, the song that should fit between “Sultans of Swing” and
“Runnin’ With the Devil?” “Still of the Night” by Whitesnake.
Like I said. I’m an awesome friend.
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