On this morning’s walk I was listening to my iPod when The Steve Miller Band’s Abracadabra came up on the playlist. Without conscious thought, a big smile broke across my face as I listened to the silly lyrics — which are not exactly like poetry. (“Abra, Abracadabra . . . I want to reach out and grab ya.“)
A stranger happened to be walking by in the opposite direction, and when he saw my grin he smiled right back. His reaction, in turn, made my smile a bit wider.
Genuine smiles are contagious. We all know that from personal experience, and scientific studies of the phenomenon prove its existence. Whether it is due to the existence of “mirror neurons” in our brains, or social conditioning, or a combination of factors, humans are programmed to meet a smile with a smile. And when we provoke that expression of delight, and see the face of a loved one turn sunny as a result of our comment or conduct, it is a wonderful thing.
I don’t know if Steve Miller anticipated all of this when he wrote Abracadabra — but he worked a little bit of magic on a New Albany walking path this morning.
Thirty years later, music still sets my mood. I’ll thumb the iPod menu down to the Shuffle Songs setting for my morning walk, and the randomly selected songs I hear will stick in my head for hours, playing in a continuous loop during mental down time moments until a new song pushes them aside. And I can help that process by selecting songs to match my appointments for the day. If I’m going to be doing some careful analytical thinking, nothing can prime that high-end mental pump like the intricate melodies of J.S. Bach and his baroque music buddies. If I’ve got a deposition that might be contentious, I’ll try to soothe things in advance with some Coltrane. If I will be writing, I’ll look for something upbeat and flowing. And if I ever needed to storm the barricades, I’d play Rage Against The Machine’s The Battle Of Los Angeles.
Getting the Beatles on iTunes apparently was a big deal for Apple’s Steve Jobs, who is a Beatles fan. Others, however, have questioned whether having the Beatles on iTunes will make much of a difference. They reason that people who like the Beatles (like me) already have their songs on their iPods and won’t need iTunes to get them, and that younger people want new music, not music that was first recorded in their grandparents’ day.
After a while, you notice that you’ve got a lot of songs on the Ipod, and the remaining space is getting limited. You decide that you need to get rid of some of the stuff on the Ipod, and think that perhaps you were a bit too accepting of mediocrity in loading songs in the first place. At that point, you face the interesting challenge of culling the Ipod.
I think more people would be in better shape if they just did the basic chores around the house the old-fashioned way. Rake the leaves with a rake, instead of using a leaf blower. Mow the lawn and weed the flowerbeds, rather than hiring a service. And, when it snows, shovel your driveway and walkways instead of hiring a guy with a snowblower.
