Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Anything you want.

Wrote this a while ago for another site and, ever the recycler, am now posting it (slightly edited) here.

Walking down the street the other day, plugged into my ipod, I was listening to this trippy remix of MIA’s “10 Dollar” that I downloaded from somewhere at some point over the summer (sorry, can’t remember where, and hence can’t provide a link), and I was reminded of a time when a friend of mine, who had recently become one of the ipod-sporting masses himself, remarked that that little device had revolutionized the way he listened to music. “Suddenly,” he said, “everything has its own soundtrack.”

So as I walked down that particular UWS street that day, MIA’s strangely appealing nasal whine filling my ears, I definitely had one of those life-soundtrack moments. There was this little girl walking along on the sidewalk on the other side of the street, essentially keeping pace with me, and screaming/screeching/shrieking the whole time. And the weird thing was her shrieks fit perfectly with the song I was listening to, as if they were actually part of the mp3, punctuating the lyrics, enhancing the song, and elevating it to something else entirely. When it first started, I actually found myself wondering if the shrieks were a part of the remix that I just had never noticed before.

I want to hear it again, but clearly it’s one of those NYC street moments that can never be repeated. Fleeting. Impossible to reclaim. And it’s especially surprising that I liked it, given that under any other set of circumstances the shrieking of a small child would have done nothing but piss me off. But coupled with the MIA remix, it just worked.

So I strolled along, lost in that sonic landscape wondering to myself, “Hmm, what can I get for ten dolla?” And while I couldn't say that I could have gotten anything I wanted, I realized that I could, in fact, get my dry cleaning.

So with that realization, I turned the corner and headed for the cleaners, leaving behind my little shrieking companion and the sound of our shared creation, forever.

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