on (not) buying my new iPad

Yesterday my yin and I braved one of those big box retailers in search of a new portable speaker system for her iPod. We had no intention of purchasing it there, but she needed to hear it in person before ordering it online. I wonder how many other people do this – using the brick and mortar stores to test drive the latest gadgets, but making the actual purchase from some unseen retailer in the sky.

This practice has to be one of the most convenient blind spots in my repertoire, pretending to consume less by avoiding physical, tangible corporations, and embracing instead virtual entities that are actually much larger, more dominant, and exert even greater control over the markets. Of course late capitalism, among other things, is unique in its ability to eliminate viable political alternatives while simultaneously creating an illusion of freedom and choice. Part of the above retailer's appeal is that it still feels edgy in someway, as if the brand has been permanently drenched in the utopian digital naiveté of the late Nineties.

But this is beside the point.

The point is that my yin and I found a suitable replacement, came home, and ordered it for thirty dollars less than we could have bought it in the store. It will be here tomorrow without either the burden of taxes or shipping fees. But, if it's really true that you can't get something for nothing, I wonder who's paying the cost.

While we were at that big box retailer, I also scouted out the new iPad. My main interest in it wasn't the cool factor (though it is) or even the numerous conveniences (which are undeniable) that it would allow. I wanted to know one thing: What will the iPad allow me to do that I can't do already?

The BlogPress app made a compelling argument...

The whole experience left me questioning the objects we think we need to realize the dreams of our imaginations. Initially, it seemed that the iPad might allow me to write more on the road, but I'm not so sure that a lack of technology is the problem. Maybe it's just a matter of following through on the ideas and inspirations and ambitions we feel flitting in and out of the mind and swarm around us like gnats in the summer.

These same impulses less frequently find the time to define and align into the signs and symbols and images that might help us make sense of this world around us, and I wonder if some of the so-called conveniences don't sometimes interfere with the creative process itself.

With so many options, sometimes it's hard to focus.

Art and poetry and literature and music were made long before the transistor, long before the integrated circuit, and long before 3G and 4G. Speaking of, I wonder what Martha G would say if she were alive today.

Martha Graham (1894-1991); today is her birthday.

(She would smile, touch my arm with her ancient hand, and speak:)

"There is a wonderful Icelandic term: 'doom eager.' You are doom eager for destiny no matter what it costs you. The ordeal of isolation, the ordeal of loneliness, the ordeal of doubt, the ordeal of vulnerability - which it takes to create in any medium - is hard to face. You know when this thing is coming on you. You know when you walk the streets by the hour. When the restlessness comes, when you are sick with an idea, with something that will not come out."

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The iPad is out (at least for the time being) and I suppose it's just as well...