In What the Dormouse Said, John Markoff tells a story about Steve Jobs showing him iTunes. At one point, Jobs turned on the visualizer, and remarked wryly that "it reminds me of my youth." This then led to a long discussion about LSD and its importance to early computer hackers-- and Markoff's book.
My children have both been iTunes visualizer fans. My daughter finds it entertaining, but my son finds it downright mesmerizing. When he was a baby, and waking up at all hours of the night, the one thing that would invariably get him back to sleep was Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, and the visualizer. He'd see the patterns start in "So What," and get wide-eyed; then after a moment-- maybe once Coltrane's solo started-- he'd put his head down on my shoulder. By "Freddie Freeloader" he was transfixed, and calm; usually he was asleep before "Blue in Green." (If that didn't work, it was into the car for a drive.)
Now, when I'm putting him to bed he sometimes asks to listen to some song, "with the patterns." (He asks for it with the same cadence and tone of voice you'd use to order a mixed drink on the rocks: "I'll have a vodka tonic-- with the patterns.") Usually he falls asleep pretty quickly, the flicker of the visualizer lighting his face. He'll comment on them at first-- "That's bee-ooh-tee-full!"-- but after a couple minutes he'll just watch, then his eyes close....
Tonight he woke up around 11, and after a brief struggle over what kind of drink he could have before going back to sleep, I put him back to bed, with the promise that he could have the patterns. It took longer than usual, but it worked.
Who knows how long it'll help him fall asleep, or what the long-term consequences will be. Maybe I'm creating his generation's William Burroughs, or Paul Kahn. Or maybe when he's older, he'll just look at the visualizer and think, it reminds me of my youth, too.
[To the tune of Warner Brothers Symphony Orchestra, "What's Opera Doc?," from the album "Bugs Bunny On Broadway".]
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