iPod City Symphony

I love my iPod. I used to see people with those telltale white earphones standing on the subway platform and think: “They’ll never hear it coming when a lunatic pushes them in front of a speeding train…” But now I’ll gladly be torn to shreds by the grinding wheels of the A train while listening to Jerry Goldsmith’s haunting main theme to Chinatown.

I’ve downloaded only soundtrack CDs onto my iPod. I prefer to wander the city with a movie score in the background. It makes a trip to the market (while listening to the discordant strings of Bernard Herrmann’s score for Vertigo) more adventurous, and the boring waits in line at the post office (while engulfed in the jazzy Aaron Copland soundtrack for the bizarre 1961 Carroll Baker film Something Wild) a thing of the past. So, let’s chart an apocryphal day in the city with an iPod full of soundtracks.

I jaywalk across the street to get the morning paper (my head still spinning from the sultry, sexy, saxophones of Gato Barbieri’s score to Last Tango In Paris). I notice a woman passing me in the bike lane, texting and riding on her “Shit-I” bike (as we call them). Yes, it was a tad satisfying when the Fed-Ex truck plowed into her, but by then my iPod’s “shuffle” had me enjoying the eerie military percussion from the soundtrack for Ravenous, composed by Damon Albarn & Michael Nyman.

 

I pass by numerous “To Rent” properties along the street, that have been proliferating the city for some time. The mournful strings of the Angelo Badalamenti’s main theme to The Comfort Of Strangers reverberating in my ear. It made me sad to think of this once vibrant city a series of pharmacies, banks and Starbucks. But, by then, Arch Hall Jr. popped up on my iPod shuffle with “Vickie” from his movie Wild Guitar, which immediately lifted my mood.

 

Next, I count how many scaffolding tunnels I have to pass under on my way to the bank. There just seem to be millions of them clogging and re-routing sidewalks all over the city. I was pleased to notice a new one on Hudson Street and as I wandered underneath, waiting for the inevitable hammer to hit me on the head, I was listening to the jazzy, playful soundtrack to Betty Blue by Gabriel Yared.

I get onto the subway platform where I stand alongside other bedraggled travelers watching the rats skipping merrily along the tracks. I use my time constructively taking out my notebook and making notations on my work-in-progress children’s book: “Dead Kittens For Madison,” while listening to the pulse-pounding main theme to Not Of This Earth from the CD of The Film Music Of Ronald Stein. This was followed by Elmer Bernstein’s unforgettable main theme from To Kill A Mockingbird, and then the theme song to The Green Slime. “Is it something in your head? Will you believe it when you’re dead? Green slime…green slime…green slime.” Maybe this would be a good day after all.

 

I purchase two ludicrously-priced cupcakes from a bakery and head over to the one fitness center where the treadmills face the front windows and, while people sweat, fume, and run in place, I lovingly eat the crumbling cake in front of them licking my lips while listening the haunting pan flutes chime from Ennio Morricone’s glorious original soundtrack to Once Upon A Time In America.

I wander off to my favorite little book store- oh my God, it’s not there anymore! Another “For Rent” sign in the window. What the hell is happening to this city? Remember going into a book or record or video store and just browsing? Now it’s just left to wandering the aisles of a CVS. Luckily, Marvin Gaye’s soulful soundtrack to Trouble Man just popped up on the iPod.

I spend the afternoon in Central Park rereading Joan Crawford’s My Way Of Life. Squirrels furiously frolic in the trees and a warm summer breeze rustles through my hair while the sumptuous strings of Georges Delerue’s score for The Woman Next Door transport me back to seeing that Francois Truffaut film for the first time.

As I left the park an exceptionally unattractive tourist slid alongside me and suddenly made a grab at my earphones in a vain attempt to jack my iPod. But I remember what an old trick once told me in bed: “If you punch someone in the adam’s apple they don’t get up.” I ram my fist into the neck of the poorly dressed would-be thief and he collapsed choking and writhing in agony to the sidewalk while I strolled off, the sensuously ominous main theme to Dead Ringers by Howard Shore swirling in my head.

The subway ride home was uneventful, that is until the air-conditioning cut off. The look of weary defeat on the commuters’ faces began to depress me. But suddenly the music that shuffled to my ears was the beatific George Duning’s Moonglow/Love Theme from the soundtrack of Picnic. In my mind, the sad, sweaty travelers around me began to slowly disappear as the lyrical symphony danced in my head.

Soundtracks are balm for any frazzled soul.