After having gone through so many terrifically horrible pictures this weekend, I am incredibly appreciative of the camera magically installed within an iPhone.
Once again, thank-you, Steve Jobs. With your mind, you have changed the world.
When I first went to buy a computer I didn't know the difference between a PC and a Mac but there they were and even though Mac, at the time, was sort of a joke because it wasn't STUDLY or something and it was too EASY, like a toy, I went directly towards those non-studly Macs and I wanted one and then I saw the silly Dogcow and I breathed easier and laughed and suddenly, I knew that with my new Mac and my Macs For Dummies I could do this. I could use a computer.
And so I did and so I have and so I do and so I will.
From the first my Macs have been less machine and more extension of my very soul and if that sounds ridiculous well, fuck it, it's true.
I do not know what was in Steve Job's mind when he was inventing the Mac but maybe there was some sliver of how it would be for a non-technologically-minded woman with children who wanted to write and who would some day be able to write about her children and her chickens and her struggles and her joys and her loves and her everything, everything, and post pictures of Sharon and Elvis and Owen and her children dancing in the hallway of a house over 150 years old and how all of that made the woman feel. Maybe. Maybe not. But that's what happened.
I told my husband we should buy Apple stock but he, like every one else, couldn't see it at the time. I had a feeling. An intuition. I would look at the instructions for installing a printer or some software and the PC instructions would have like fourteen steps and the Apple instructions would have like three steps. Didn't take a genius to know that those Mac Guys were on to something. Not everyone who wanted to use a computer wanted to be a geek, fuck that function key.
Then came the iPod. Whoa. Are you kidding me? Then came the iPhone. Still don't have one. Sort of want one. Then came the iPad. Really do want one. Don't even know why.
Here's the thing for me. Not for you, maybe, but for me: Each device from Apple seems to come with a bit of magic. I think that's what Steve Job's main gift to us was. He was somehow able to incorporate magic into his devices, his operating systems. It is like...Beatle magic.
It's like- okay, all you people who just need a computer to do your business, you go ahead and use a PC with Windows but for those of you who want to create, to dream, to make art, to make music...here's your tool. Here is your tool. Open the box. Plug it in. The rest is up to you.
I don't know. Maybe I've just bought the hype. But I don't think so. I think that a man who had a powerful dream created a machine that helped others further their own powerful dreams. Or small dreams.
Steve Jobs was adopted. He didn't finish college. He was a Buddhist. He was known to be profane at times. He wove art and science together and delivered it over and over again.
He created.
He died yesterday but that's not the important part of his story. The important part is that he was born and he lived and he listened to the voices inside of his own head and he created over and over again and he gave wings to so many of us.
Deceptively simple elegant wings.
And a dogcow.
I am so grateful.
Thanks for the magic, Steve Jobs. Thanks for your gifts which you shared.
As Yoko Ono said about John Lennon, "With your mind you changed the world."
Rest in great peace, Steve. You did your job. You were amazing. The world is forever different because of you and there are communities which would never ever have met due to what you have created. I say this with great respect: I have loved you. Thank-you.
I used to have a basic working-knowledge of iTunes. Back in the days when iTunes was like new and bright and shiny. Now iTunes is like rocket surgery. It's like brain science. It's like geek-world. It's like...beyond me.
So anyway, I have an iPod. I have iTunes. I have the recording of Keith Richards' Life. It's on CD. CD's. Twenty of them. And I hate that damn pocket CD player. I'm not sure why. I suppose because I still love my old Sony Walkman that plays tapes. Tapes are cool. You can rewind and fast forward much more accurately than with CD's which start and end and begin again on pre-determined places, requiring you to go back and hear shit you've already heard. I mean, there I am, listening to my book on tape or CD and I get distracted by something or the plug pulls out of the socket because I got it caught on a rose bush or the knob of the knife drawer and I need to stop it all and go back to hear what I missed and if it's a tape, no problem. If it's a CD, well, forget it.
So here I am, a woman who remembers when the highest height of technology was the TRANSISTOR RADIO, (snap your fingers to the grooving sounds of Pat Boone, ya'll!) and man, that was cool. A tiny little radio encased in a clever little leather skin with tiny holes so the sound could come out and two dials you could spin with one finger to find the next station, to turn it up, to turn it down and now here I am with a COMPUTER which only NASA had in those days and Steve Jobs was crawling on the floor and picking up his mama's hair pins and trying to figure out how to turn them into alien-spaceship communication receiver devices after he'd tasted them thoroughly and I have an iPod and wouldn't it make sense to upload/download that book onto it?
Phew. One would think.
Twenty CD's. So in theory I download (upload?) the CD's into my iTunes (easy-peasy) and then plug in the iPod and JUST LIKE MAGIC! the entire book is right there, living in my iPod which is INTUITIVE, RIGHT? and I can spin wheels (I love Steve Jobs for bringing back the dial, the wheel- it's the best and there is no way to improve it and don't give me that shit you have to punch, punch, punch to program) and that will be that. I'll be able to carry that entire book around in my tiniest pocket and life will be grand.
I have a strong feeling, however, that it's not going to be that easy. Right now I am downloading (UPloading?) Disc 5. Only fifteen more to go! And iPod is on the charger. So... I figure by the time the Rapture hits, I will have perhaps accomplished this task. If there isn't something I have forgotten. Like something so vital that all of the time I've spent up-and-down-loading is wasted. I see on iTunes that there are all sorts of fun and hip things you can do with iTunes now and you can sync this and you can sync that but I ain't got nothing to sync and don't even talk to me about pinging. There's even a category called "genius" and god knows I am not qualified to click on THAT.
Here's a funny thing: When Keith Richards first started playing electric guitar, he used his mama's radio as his first amp. "Keith! What did you do to my radio?" And sometimes he wanted a growly funky dirty sound and so he would remove one of the TWO TUBES in the radio and that pushed the little ol' thing to have to work so hard that it gave it that dirty funk and then, when he wanted it to be sweet, he'd put the tube back in, usually forgetting to unplug it before he started messing around in the back and here I am now, writing this story about that story on my beloved Magic Box, my Mac and at the same time, I am transferring that story onto this very Magic Box and if you want to know the truth, I would have no idea how to removed a tube from the back of a radio.
Well, I have wasted half a day, writing this and down-up-loading and I'm only on disc 8 now but I've had a hell of a lot of fun looking at Youtube vids of Start Me Up and yes, yes, YES! once again I am caught up tight in the spider-web-steel-sex-strings of those skinny English boys, now old men, still built like wire and silk, still belting it out, still getting growly, funky, dirty sounds from voice boxes, guitars, still slanky, slangin' rock, don't get me wrong- that is my tribal music.
No. You are NOT done hearing about Keith Richards and it's a beautiful Friday and I have no where on this earth I have to be and this writing, this listening, has done more for my soul than sitting in any cathedral on this earth. And if iTunes and iPods and Youtube foster and allow me to listen, to dance, to get caught up in this type of Pagan Prayer, this sort of soul-restoring gut glory on a Friday morning in Lloyd, Florida right here in my 151 year old house, then god bless 'em and who knows how my grandchildren will be listening to old Keith in another fifty years?
Dear Steve, I love you. Okay? Is that okay? I remember when the word "computer" meant something with which to launch space ships, which meant something housed in a basement under strict temperature controls, which meant punch cards and scientists and geniuses who could figure out how to use such an insanely space-age device. Machine. Hal-Thing. Whatever.
And then, Steve, you came along and you said, "No. A computer is something that people should be able to use in their house." And oh, I don't know. You incorporated the use of the mouse so that to do something on the computer you didn't have to do function 1w2, 4-8, XYZ12. A mouse. Mmmmm... And you called your company McIntosh and those of us who grew up in the olden days remembered Apple Records. And how James Taylor was the first artist to release an album on Apple which was invented, incorporated, visualized by the Beatles. Well. Unless you grew up in the olden days you have no idea what the Beatles meant to a generation or to the world, either one. Let me just say that this video
was the first global television link and if you didn't grow up watching the Viet Nam war on TV and Richard Nixon sweating as he lied and unless you ate a mushroom growing out of a cow field in Central Florida or the chemical equivalent in the late sixties or early seventies, you have no idea the importance of all of this.
All we grew up with was war, war, war and fear, fear, fear.
Castro, Khrushchev, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy assassination, hide-under-the-desk, bomb-shelter, The Red Curtain, Commies, The Red Menace.... It never ended and it was horrible and there was the bomb and we were not the only ones who had it and then suddenly, for no reason, there was the Beatles. Love Me Do. Eight Days A Week. She Loves You, Twist And Shout, and that first song, I Want To Hold Your Hand may have let us breathe a full breath for the first time ever in our lives that we could remember. You can't imagine how long their hair was. You can't imagine how much the world was shocked. You can't imagine how joyful it was to hear their songs.. And so. When Steve Jobs came up with the McIntosh Computer he was a genius. The Beatles had already changed the world and now, Steve Jobs was about to do it again and he was tying it in, somehow (maybe illegally) to John, Paul, George and Ringo.
And I am still waiting for Saint Ringo to be anointed Pope. We've already had John and Paul. George can't be far behind. And Ringo? Oh yes.
I remember when I got my first computer like it was yesterday. An Apple Performa. Oh, Lord. It was probably a piece of shit but I loved it. There was MacWorld and I had an e-mail address that was mgmoon@macworld.com.
Or something like that. And I got a printer and my world did a one-eighty. I learned to use that Performa in a heartbeat and I fell in love with the spinning beach ball and the dogcow and learning to use the computer wasn't scary at all. It was fun. And I felt my mind expand and instead of being a Hal-Like device, my Mac was a friend, an ally, a direct link to the collective unconscious as I realized that the newly born internet was about to become.
I still use a Mac. I've written several novels on Macs and approximately 1,630 blog posts in the last three years and I have thousands of pictures on my iPhotos and I've watched Apple go from a disdained little computer company which had all of its best system features stolen by Microsoft to the company who came up with the iPod and the iPhone and now the iPad and well, creativity will tell and maybe all you need is love and a Mac. Steve Jobs said recently that Bill Gates should have dropped some acid. Not that Bill's done too badly for himself. No. He has not. And he is doing great things for the world with his money but let's face it- Apple's products are cherry and Microsoft's are soft banana and the world needs both but I am SO glad I have a Mac.
Mr. Moon keeps asking me what I want for my birthday and I keep saying, Nothing! Just save our money for when I need a new computer because I'll be wanting a new Mac. I've had this one for over three years and although it works like a champ, a charm, a jewel, a glory, it's a machine. A magic machine, but a machine. And I'll need a new one sooner or later.
I started playing a Beatle's CD when I started writing this and in the time that I have been writing it I've gotten an e-mail from my daughter May about how her brother Hank needs a new computer and another one from an old friend who helped me learn about Macs in the very, very beginning. Look. I do believe in magic. I believe that the forces gather together when need be to change the world. Galileo, Da Vinci, Gutenberg, Shakespeare, Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, Alcott, Leary, Ram Dass, Ginsberg, King Arthur, Nelson Mandela, St. Francis, MLK, Jr., The Virgin of Guadalupe, Socrates, Hippocrates, George Washington Carver, Billy Holiday, B. B. King, Copernicus, Harriet Tubman, John Gorey, Sacajawea, John, Paul, George, Ringo, Jobs....
I have my list. You have yours. Mine is listed on a Mac which is not just a machine to me, but a conduit to my muse.
So Steve. I love you. Whether it's okay or not. I do. And I don't just love you for your mind. I think you're really cute, too. Always and forever....Ms. Moon
P.S. Kathleen's oncologist uses a Mac. A laptop, just like this one. This is one more thing which gives us hope. A doctor whom you want to cure your cancer better be an artist as well as a scientist. And a man who uses a Mac can be both. We believe that. We do.
