2017-07-03
Only a handful of songs are on my phone
When i was young, i liked country and pop music a lot. It gave me comfort and hope, when i was sad and lost. But when i got older, i realized there is nothing new coming anymore. Sometimes there is a song popping up i find interesting enough to play it on repeat for a while, and let it absorb all the feelings and thoughts i have at the moment, like a temporary distraction. But at the end, i still have the same music on my "smart" phone. Some of them are with me since many years, because it's familiar and soothing:
- Song "On the Nature of Daylight" by Max Richter, 2004
- Song "Ashes Of My Paradise" by Kelly Sweet, 2012
- Song "I Was a Fool" by Tegan and Sara, 2013
- Songs "That would be enough" & "Burn" by Phillipa Soo, 2015
- Album "The Corrs Unplugged" by The Corrs, 1999
- Album "Vivaldi: The Four Seasons" by Janine Jansen, 2005
- Album "Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto" by Janine Jansen, 2008
The first time i heard "I Was a Fool" by Tegan and Sara was in London, while i was eating breakfast at McDonalds. When i noticed the music from their speakers, i immediately took my phone out to record a piece of it, so i could download the song later. The first time i heard "Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto" was in the movie "Le Concert" with actress Mélanie Laurent as violinist Anne-Marie Jacquet. I really liked that movie and it made me cry a little too.
Around 1998, i got my first "mobile" phone, a Siemens E10. I remember how friend Luis Diaz from school called me, after the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center got hit by planes in 2001. We both were sitting in front of our TVs and talking to each other via phones to make sure it wasn't a bad dream. Back then, they weren't capable of a lot of things, because making a call almost everywhere was enough. And the mobile phones couldn't play music either, but getting custom ringtones was a thing.
In November 2003, i got a iPAQ H2210, and a little later as backup, a iPAQ H1930 Pocket PC by Hewlett-Packard. The most annoying thing about them was their volatile memory. This was long before i got my first Apple iPod in 2005. At some point in between, i even had a Palm PDA, but i just couldn't go back to a monochrome display. In October 2007, i got my first smartphone with a physical keyboard, the Nokia E61i. My first iPhone was a white 3GS with 16 GB in 2009. After three years, in May 2012, i got my first Android, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. And over the years, i have seen fewer phone booths being around, till they were basically gone.