holly's archive :-)

reuniting with old technologies

When I was back in my hometown over Christmas, my parents cleaned my father’s office. What emerged, I found quite interesting: a blue iPod Shuffle, second generation. Here’s a photo of it from (my favourite website) Wikimedia Commons:

It’s a tiny bit more scuffed than this, but generally in a very good condition. Immediately when I saw it I was intrigued, and before long I had asked to take it back with me, found the charger, and packed it in my suitcase.

About a month after I arrived back, I dug it out and charged it up. I was thinking about what I would buy (/torrent) to put on it… maybe just jazz standards, or maybe just My Chemical Romance songs (as this is largely all I’ve listened to in the past year…). But first, I dug out the cable for my bluetooth headphones, plugged it in, and pressed that big play/pause button. And I was greeted with my mum’s music.

It just reminded me how much the music that I’d listened to in my childhood has impacted not only the music I listen to today (a lot of it still the same as on the iPod. Think Killers, Sufjan Stevens, Lily Allen…) but also who I am as a person today!

I’m super excited to have this and use it now. It excites me to be able to take something away from companies like Spotify, which I tend to use all of the time, and have some music that’s mine, and not being looked at. :)