Soundtracks and water

In my head

There's an endless, restless soundtrack in my head, and always has been. For a while now it's been mostly the Decemberists, but now I've got stuck in the loop a song Nick made up for Holly: not much of a tune but the words go "Holly Holly the big fat Holly." The music kinds of reminds me of the theme from F-Troop. Strange how potent cheap music is, as Noel Coward says. (No Nick -- I'm not calling your songwriting cheap.) Other stuff pops in there too -- themes from TV shows, jingles, bits of guitar music, pure rhythm, things I hear Liv singing in her room. To change it requires consciousness that I'm changing it, which impacts the essential unconsciousness of the internal soundtrack. The soundtrack works best when it isn't manipulated, and the results often surprise me.

As for Nick

He whistles. Never a single song from end to end. He whistles a medley. Just fragments of different songs that have no relationship or internal logic to unite them. One is the tune he thinks of as the theme from the Million Dollar Movie and I think of as the theme from Gone with the Wind. His medley also includes a part from the Sound of Music, which he's never seen, something from West Side Story (we saw the newest production of it with Liv and Jon a few months ago and loved it) and a few others I can't call to mind right now. It's a strange brew. I like it, of course.

The day the music died

All of which reminds me that both our ipods recently passed away. Since when are $249 purchases disposable? They died within a week of each other, which I found poignant. I may have drowned his. When we were in PEI last he lent me his for cycling (mine was already pining for the fjords), though it was starting to fail. I unwisely tucked it inside my cycling shorts which were drenched in sweat. Clear assault by bodily fluids.

Death by water

That's not a new thing. As my kids know I am famous for drowning devices, specifically cordless phones. I can't remember how many perished by water, but it had to be half a dozen. I left them outside in the rain, dropped them in toilets, accidentally knocked them into bathtubs. It was a running joke around here for years. Cell phones aren't safe either; I dropped one into an airplane toilet on a flight to Tucson. Ipods, blackberries, phones -- I need combat-ready, waterproof (not water resistant) ones. My devices live hard lives. Nick treats his with more respect, making it that much more galling that his ipod died in my care (galling to me; he was of course more than great about it.)

For now cordless phones are safe from me. We don't have a landline in the house -- how modern. But we do have one up North. I fear for it.