If you've ever wondered when precisely it was the world changed and you became an old fogey then you'll know what I mean when I say that one of the most irritating things in the world is to find, for the second time, doddering-old-fool-like, you'd forgotten that you need a bloody iPod to play music through the dinner-plate sized speakers you discovered in the living room ceiling one late night after a long drive through another rainy georgia night.
I drove home late this sodden afternoon listening to Monteverdi's Vespro Della Beata Vergine - this being what I wanted to listen to again at home - and wondering, crossly, what it is about rain that makes Georgia drivers throw on the brakes when the first drop hits the windshield. Answer comes there not.
The rhubarb pie I'd discovered at the back of the freezer went into oven, the CD - I still call 'em LPs in moments of inattention to the great amusement of the my other half - went into what I'd forgotten was the DVD player and would not play music. Simply-would-not-play-the-damned-music! One tantrum later - not quite throwing myself kicking and screaming to the floor but could have at a moment's further provocation - the Celt arrived home in a stinking mood (clients) to find the rhubarb pie lovingly thrown into the Miele had fossilized - if rubber can be said to fossilize - me clutching a glass of whine trying to write about the connection between Monteverdi and our library, a photo which you will not find below.
The room you see here is a library, dearth of books notwithstanding, and one of the most beautiful rooms I've ever had the pleasure to be aspirational about - the perfect room in which to listen to a scratchy vinyl 45 of Brook Benton singing A Rainy Night in Georgia.
Photographs by Henry Bourne for an article written by Carol Prisant about an interior by William Diamond and Anthony Baratta published in The World of Interiors, January 1994.
P. S. Just learned I could have used my iPhone to connect to the sound system (are they still called that?)
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Blue --
ReplyDeleteI have these problems ever damn day.
But remember, you're not really dead until you stick the rhubarb pie into the DVD player.
Best, etc.
This fogey has no iPhone, no iPod, no fossilized pie but is still way cooler than my kids who do. I'm very much enjoying a taste of "Vespro Della Beata Vergine" on Youtube (performed Basilica di San Marco) and looking at the green library. They'd need to call the police to get me out of there. Anyway, my evening is more pleasant thanks to your bumpy evening.
ReplyDeleteAncient, thank you for putting the pie in the right place - it was good to laugh out loud at 6 in the morning!
ReplyDeleteTerry, glad you like the Vespers. Mine, by the Monteverdi choir and orchestra with John Elliot Gardiner, is from originally from 1972. I'll be listening again in the car on the way to work - amazing how 65 miles can seem so short when there's something interesting, and I don't mean radio, to listen to.
I used to be so with it. Now content to be without it. Love the memory of scratchy vinyl sounds. Would love to hear again music on the old gramaphones. I bought an ipod two years ago...still in its box. I know, I must summon up the courage and grow new worlds. Maybe tomorrow. Happy driving on air.
ReplyDeleteI bought an iPod, then gave it away. Too much technology.
ReplyDeleteThose green chairs are divine.
Under normal circumstances, Brook Benton singing "A Rainy Night in Georgia" and a rhubarb pie would be bliss...what a shame technology has to insert its ugly head into that scenario! I don't have an i-anything and the worst day of my life was the discovery that Borders no longer sells CDs...so I listen to my dead tenors.
ReplyDeleteThey don't sell CDs anymore? The Celt remarked this morning when I read your comment, smilla4blogs, that there are people in his office who probably have never bought a CD!
ReplyDeletehome before dark, when I buy anything there is always a period immediately afterwards in which I circle around, come at it crab-wise, before I use or wear the object. I fully understand how the iPod might still be in its box.
What also happens for me is that if the manual or instructions need me to take out my reading glasses I tend to not bother. On the subject of reading glasses, last weekend I had to use reading glasses and a magnifying glass to read some text on a package.
Your story resonates well in this household. Like some of your other commentators, we too don't posess an i-anything [e]i-ther, although I always think I should, but then I would need one of our younger friends to come and explain it all to us. They always seem very bemused when I ask then about certain aspects of new technology, as though my inquiries were the most silly they'd ever heard. Maybe they are!
ReplyDeleteI actually love the technological age, and the convenience it brings (I want a piece of obscure music? Got it from the internet in minutes to my I-Pod--and yes, I also still use my TURNTABLE at other times), but I find my impatience with things that don't do as they are supposed to grows along with my waist as I age. Last night, an old BF called, and as I mentioned having watched a movie on my phone, he asked "Remember when we thought it was amazing that we could see television in color?" To which I had to admit that I could even remember when we thought it was amazing that we could see televsion at all... sic transit, and all that...
ReplyDeleteDilettante, I remember when radio was called "the wireless." - God help me, I remember Eisenhower playing golf.
ReplyDeleteColumnist, young friends? Imagine what it's like with a studio of 20-year olds. I don't facebook, I don't tweet, I'm not loopt or foursquare and there's nowhere I call myspace. I am, however, linkedin.
ReplyDeleteBlue, I've heard of facebook, (nay, even was "on" it until I was bored - very quickly - with what my contacts had for breakfast, when they last sneezed etc). I only just fully understood what twits tweet, but I have no idea was loop and foursquare are, and is my life any less fulfilled? Grumpy old men are we.
ReplyDeleteBlue, darling, I've fantasised about your tantrums.. xx Rosie
ReplyDeletePS. Listen to the wireless instead, like I do.