Yesterday was the 57th anniversary of the Day The Music Died when the plane carrying Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson crashed near Clear Lake, Iowa, killing the three rock and rollers and pilot Roger Peterson.
Today my iPod died. Not nearly the same thing but the mind can make strange connections. It’s why people speak in hushed whispers of celebrities dying in threes. Not necessarily because of the day the music died (albeit three celebs did die that day) but because three has always had a nice rhetorical vibe to it. There’s a great deal of debate over the origin of “death comes in threes.” One of the more prevalent origin myths is that of “three on a match” superstition that mainly draws from WWII. Apparently the superstition was the third soldier to light a cigarette from the same match was destined to die, as an enemy sniper would see the first cigarette lit, aim at the second, and squeeze the trigger on the third. Creepy but kinda a nifty etymological discussion point.
The celebrities die in threes is actually a great example of confirmation bias, which I have succinctly seen defined as the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s beliefs or hypotheses, while giving disproportionately less consideration to alternative possibilities. After all, WHEN do we start the count for three celebrities dying? It’s possible to ALWAYS find three celebrities who die in a row because death is all around us, it’s an eventual happening no matter how many times we may cheat it beforehand.
What a dark setup and digression to what was going to be a discussion over music while running. I received my iPod Nano as a gift to replace a generation 1 iPod shuffle I had won at a Vons grocery store way back in the day. The Nano is a generation 3 or 4 I think — color screen, square, has a clip, but no camera. With the advent of the iPhone, iPods fell into declining market share and production; I’m not even sure they make iPods anymore. But this was a handy square to have in my pocket for runs and I wasn’t too worried about it taking a beating — it kept on ticking and got the job done of shuffling songs as I put in the mileage.
I generally listen to music on training runs but rarely if ever wear headphones at races, no matter how remote or spectator free the courses may be. I’d rather listen to the sounds of the course, of the runners, of the land, and the volunteers. I’d rather be in the moment of the run during the race rather than listening to the backbeat rhythm. But training runs are another matter — because I have a tendency to run the same routes over and over again, I like music to break up the monotony of the course. I still love seeing how businesses come and go and the changes and consistencies of various places along the route. But a little rock and roll music doesn’t hurt. Or the odd classical track. Shuffle really does shuffle on my iPod — it’s a varied mix though perhaps not as varied as it should be.
Some people have playlists cued to tempo and beats to help them maintain a pace. My pace no matter what I do is wildly inconsistent. I’m always blown away by pacers who hold up signs and run races guiding people to set times as they are like human metronomes. I’m more of a jazzy, all over the place rhythm and blues runner. Oh, who am I kidding? I’m just all over the place without any of the other cool adjectives attached.
But getting back to the iPod. Today, I tried turning it on and plugging in my headphones and all I had was a solid white screen. I tried pressing and holding the power button. Tried plugging it into the wall outlet using my power adapter. Tried plugging it into my laptop’s USB port and opening iTunes. Nothing. Just a white screen. A mocking white screen illuminated. So there had to be power being consumed. I thought if I left it plugged in maybe it would reboot and recharge. I therefore went for my run sans music.
And ya know? It was a nice change of pace (HA! See what I did there? Running puns!). Similar to the experience of a race event whereby I just enjoy the sounds and natural music of the world, it was nice to run my “usual” route and just hear it for a bit. Sure, sure. There was a lot of construction, honking, traffic, crazed people yelling into their smart phones, the odd Siri providing directions to both pedestrians and through the open car windows, tour guides prattling on about this or that event in Hollywood history. There was profanity and foreign phrases tossed around in a cacophony of tourists and locals. And I heard my feet pounding the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I took great delight in stepping on some undeserving “stars” — seriously, Kaley Cuoco? And yet many tourists were stopping to snap a photo with her star so what do I know? In any case, sometimes no music is okay.
When I returned home, the iPod still had the white screen of death (not to be confused with the Microsoft Blue Screen of Death). But I took out what one analyst critical of Apple’s design and usability calls the help manual: I googled “iPod white screen.” Sure enough, there were several posts and sites detailing suggestions for correcting the problem. Turns out I needed to simultaneously hold down the power and “-” volume button for 8-10 seconds. This did a hard reset/reboot of the iPod and faster than you could say “BIFF” “WHAM” and “TOUCHE” (or any of the other BatFight words from the classic Adam West/Burt Ward era Batman), the thing rebooted and healed itself.
Sometimes turning it off and turning it back on really does the trick. So even though this was the day the music died, it’s also the day the music rose. And it’s also a gentle reminder that it doesn’t hurt to reset how you run and what you do on your training runs from time to time. That’s a terrible closer, but maybe ending on a sour note is the right call.