My iPod and my new laptop don’t seem to want to play nice with each other. You really have to work to make them work together. I’ve needed, for a long time, to remove some digital junk from my life (much of which has, in one for or another, found its way onto my iPod) and I’ve taken this opportunity to go through some of this stuff and cull it from my iPod and my life.
Even if I still end up with the same metaphorical amount of baggage, in the end I will be short some of my literal baggage. As it turns out, I am in possession of a number of backup copies of stuff from my latest ex. (“Latest” is perhaps the wrong word to use here, since we and I have not been together now for almost two years.) As it turns out, if you just keep adding things to your disc-space enabled iPod without actually checking to see what is there, this sort of thing happens.
Anyway, I loaded a bunch of my music from my iPod to my computer and then told iTunes genius to make me a playlist based on ‘Joga’ from one of my favorite Björk albums Homogenic. So, it played ‘Joga’ for me. All of Homogenic is complex with techno beats and strings and eerie and excellent Brörk vocals and lyrics that resonated with me when it came out in 1997 and that recently have come to resonate with me again. For example, I’m going hunting/I’m the hunter/I’ll bring back the goods/but I don’t know when from ‘Hunter’ (which it played later down in the list). I’ve been working on my qualifying project (so that I can eventually progress to the dissertating stage of the PhD) these lyrics just seem to fit. I have this idea, this hypothesis. And, from here I have to go hunting. I have to figure out if anyone else has blazed this trail I’d like to be on. I have to collect data and see if it supports my hypothesis. I’m going hunting. I’m the hunter. I will get the goods. But, I don’t really know when.
So, iTunes plays me this song and it follows it immediately with Bill Frissell’s “I am not a farmer” from his album Disfarmer. With no techno beat. With no vocals. Just guitars and some eerie strings at the end. This combination made me smile. I would never have thought to put these two things together. Yet, here they are. Different, yet alike. But, while I would say “I’m a Hunter” of myself, I don’t think I’d ever say, “I’m not a farmer”. In a literal sense, I do grow herbs and orchids in my apartment. And, I’m considering (have been for awhile now) expanding my little venture to include window boxes. (I think I might get enough sun to grow swiss chard, which would be lovely.) It seemed to me, when I first saw this that two things, namely hunters and farmers, were different. But, perhaps not. Perhaps, you would have to specify that you are the kind of hunter that gathers all of the necessities via hunting. I am a hunter and I am not a farmer. The alternative would be to say that I am a hunter and also a farmer, so someone who does a little cultivating and a little hunting. I am now intrigued by this.
Album: Homogenic
Artist: Björk
Song: Hunter
Album: Disfarmer
Artist: Bill Frissell
Song: I Am Not a Farmer
Almost peed my pants when you referred to last relationship as “we and I have not been together” – so appropriate for him at times (when it seems like there’s more than one human living in his head).
That wasn’t intentional! Ha. I probably should have said “they” since I certainly don’t want to include myself in his batshit crazy plural.