♫ Words Cannot Describe (Mirah)

Some people experience shortness of breath, nausea, dizziness, and a tingling sensation up and down their left arm for days before they finally concede — after waking up, on the floor, in the recovery position, surrounded by the concerned faces of Costco employees and fellow customers — that, yeah, it’s probably time to see a doctor or something.

It was in this same spirit that I began a comprehensive campaign of housecleaning last month. Even the opossums who’d taken up residence in the linen closet back in February were complaining that it was impossible to walk anywhere in the house without having to step over a pile of stuff. Fine. I bought a box of trash bags and a rake and got to work.

I’m practically done. I’ve reached that curious stage: “Lost Stuff Equilibrium.” It’s that thing where I've rediscovered loads of things that got misplaced, but it’s nearly offset by the quantity of things that I can no longer find because I moved them. If I’d left my can of WD-40 on top of the NAS unit in my office, where it’s been for the past four years, I wouldn’t have had to go buy a new one this weekend.

That’s fine. My iPods were among the cool stuff that got Found. I dropped what I was doing, fetched a USB-A to 30-pin cable from a recently-filled box labeled “Ancient Data/Charge Cables,” hooked it up to one of the chargers on my desk, and my iPod Classic 5 lit right up.

Judging from the dates on the podcasts I found on the device, this iPod has been in stasis since September 2008. Episode 44 of “The Bugle” is their Republican National Convention special. John Oliver, who had been delivering convention coverage to “The Daily Show” nonstop for two weeks, is participating from his hotel room. He assures his podcasting partner Andy Zaltzman that he is (1) a thoroughly broken man and (2) completely naked.

(John Oliver was connected to the studio via telephone. Only my fellow podcasters can understand the amount of envy I felt at that moment. I couldn’t help but think about every time I’d contributed to a podcast while I was traveling. Every element of my packing and planning was influenced by my non-negotiable need for professional recording equipment and a fast, stable Internet connection. It’s like traveling with one of those high-strung teacup poodles (and imagine that the dog had a host of medical issues). And yet, in 2008, someone told a pre-“keeping HBO afloat”-era John Oliver “No, honestly, the quality of your audio is secondary to your presence and your contribution.” I wrote those words a moment ago, and yet they make no sense.)

This device’s hard drive — when I fired up a playlist, I had to remind myself that the vibrations I felt weren’t haptics — is a 30-gigabyte snapshot of stuff I was keen to keep in my pocket. It might turn out that the only way to ensure that your playlists survive into the far future it to just hang on to your iPods.

I threw out my mixtapes ages ago. And some quick math says that it’s going to cost me $2592 to maintain my Spotify playlists until 2043; screw that. So, three cheers to Apple engineering and maintaining control over your own media library!

I’ve been listening to music from this iPod Classic for a few hours today. I’m a little disappointed: I’m familiar with nearly every track.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. I threw out my mixtapes and mix CDs because I no longer had any machines that could play them. There’s never a reason to throw out digital music. Routine backups (including to the cloud) mean that they never get lost.

This iPod was fed from a library that existed since 1999 or thereabouts. My library in 2008 seeded (through a couple of intermediary steps) the current 300-gigabyte library on my NAS (the same one that kept my can of WD-40 handy, before I went and screwed up a perfect system).

Thus, my music library can only ever get larger, never smaller. It’s 100% defined by my instinct for acquisition and an “if it exists, it’s worth keeping” attitude.

Yes: I can see now that my brain was setting me up for a breakthrough about my problems with physical household clutter. My brain can be such a manipulative jerk.

Well, “brain,” if it wasn’t for my “no reason to ever throw anything away” mindset, we wouldn’t be enjoying this music and writing this blog post now, would we?

(I’m maintaining a façade of steely bravado about this. Even though two weeks ago I looked inside a box I’d stashed high on a shelf, asked myself “What on earth possessed me to buy a dozen Power Mac G4 front faceplates? What could I possibly ever use them for?”…and then I closed the box and put it back.)

No, for the most part, the only nostalgia-triggers to be found here are the playlists themselves. I remember that I created “Juicy Fruit Selection” when I was trying out the 3rd-gen iPod Shuffle. Apple never advertised it as “an iPod you can easily shove up your nose,” but they could’ve. It resembled a stick of Dentyne gum in size and shape…so of course I entitled its bespoke playlist “Juicy Fruit.”

As I scroll up and down, I see multiple playlists whose names claim that each is the sole repository of favorite, must-have tracks: “Must-Haves,” “Best of the Best,” “Keepers.” A few playlists that were created for specific road trips. I’m left to wonder if “Rhodetryppe” involved a drive to/through Rhode Island, or if I was just trying to be clever with homonymn-driven nomenclature.

I’ll probably succumb to the natural inclination to Do Something with this functioning piece of vintage tech. A sophisticated iPod hacking community has evolved. I can dual-boot this device with either the classic Apple firmware, or a new one that adds support for FLAC files and other modern goodies. A fresh battery would be a good idea, and while I’ve got the thing disassembled, why not replace its spinny-whirly storage with an internal microSD card that could hold my entire library?

I’m going to try to resist the urge for a while. At minimum, I’m going to make sure I keep some of these iPods as-is. When I die, I’ll be beyond caring what happens to any of my stuff. While I’m living, I kind of like to imagine a niece or a nephew wanting to have one. It’s a fine artifact of what my tastes were like just before the Obama administration, as well as testimony to the fact that I clearly didn’t keep anything in a case or something.

I wanted this week’s music pick to be a that that made me think “Yay! I love this song! Why did I forget about it?”

And Mirah’s “Words Cannot Describe.” It’s one of the few tracks on this iPod that either somehow never got copied into a later music library or else it melted into the crowd of 12,000+ tracks and simply vanished, like Rose DeWitt Bukater wrapping a blanket around herself at the end of “Titanic” and anonymously joining the general crowd of survivors, so she could start a new life.

Gee. I was about to search for “Words Cannot Describe” inside my current library and add it to my ‘Pulserate Neutral’ playlist. Now, I’m not sure. What if this track chose to disappear? Thrusting it into one of my center-stage playlists would be a real Cal Hockley kind of move.

Well, I hope “Words Cannot Describe” knows that if it ever chooses to step forward during a Shuffle Play session, I’ll welcom it back warmly. It’s a terrific song. The lyrics are light and sweet and bubbly, like prosecco:

This lazy afternoon
Will find me in my room
Plucking petals one by one
Oh my heart will come undone
Wondering if my wishes will come true

I'm waiting for the day you'll let me love you
I'm like a flower swooning for the sun
Shine on me so tenderly, my love
And say that you will be my only one

“Words Cannot Describe” escaped my modern playlists. But it never left my head. I bet I’ve sung those lyrics around the house at least once a month since 2008. ⓘ