ROCKUS INTERRUPTUS

Anything like this ever happen to you?

After a rough week, my wife and I had just spent a surprisingly enjoyable day distributing flyers in downtown Taos for an upcoming concert. There was nothing particularly uplifting about posting the flyers, but doing so turned out to involve quite a bit of walking around the older part of town. Seeing the many quiet hidden courtyards and private green oases raised my spirits and even caused me to imagine the joys of living in one of the tucked-away adobe cubbies within walking distance of the shops and galleries. Away from the street it felt like Italy or Mexico, and in that context the din and bustle of tourist traffic seemed not so irritating.

How nice it would be, too, to find whatever you needed close by, so long as what you wanted had nothing to do with utility or everyday requirements of life (while attractive, everything downtown is tourist bait). The restaurants, bars, bookstores, and coffee shops would be fun to visit, of course. I thought of what it would be like in the winter, walking through the little streets late at night, peering into cozy curtained windows in the frosty air, but then I caught myself. Hah! -- dodging furtive figures in hooded sweatshirts busting out the glass in skiers' fancy SUVs would be more like it. This realization, plus the knowledge that we could pay for a home back East with what a monthly rental here would cost, gave me a headache. The scene still charmed., of course. We completed our rounds, walked back to the truck, and headed out of town on the only road, passing close by the same neighborhoods we had just traversed on foot. All of a sudden, I was not having fun any more. Being in a vehicle made all the difference! My aggravation increased as we slowly crawled along:

"The light is green, why isn't anybody moving?"

Yes, the place simply oozes appeal if you can afford to stay in one of the inns, B&B's, or rent a hard-to-find place nearby. There is in fact nothing as rich and fascinating as the interior of a well-kept old adobe building, and the older part of town is full of them. You can have a great time here, so long as your car is safe (or beat-up!) and you avoid the drug dealers in the park. But for the peons driving through, the charm is muted, to say the least. Most locals seem to accept it all with grace and gritted teeth, however. I know a woman who only makes right turns: "My husband believes in gutting it out, but I always go around!" [The picture below is not the street I'm talking about!]

We somehow reached the outskirts of town and accelerated north over the mesa. The mountains to the east were stunning as usual and begged for accompaniment, so I turned on the radio. Oho, my favorite local disk jockey starting the last song from the Who's "Tommy," an old favorite of mine -- well all right, things were looking up! (Somewhere deep within our rented storage unit is a cardboard box with the battered blue album inside.) I turned the radio up a notch. "See me, hear me, touch me, heal me. . ." And then the worry: would she fade the song out before the climax as so many other DJs do? I drove on, mentally crossing my fingers. There it was, the drum and rhythm guitar bridge of doom, but she passed it! "Oh wow, Jennie's playing the whole thing!" I yelled to my puzzled wife as I cranked the volume up to the level of dashboard-shaking thunder. "Listening to you, I hear the music, gazing at you, I feel the heat. . ." THUDDING drums, POUNDING rhythm, a rising ANTHEM of GLORY, SPLENDOR , and YEARNING, followed immediately by:

"Turn it down, it's WAY too loud!"

(POOF! Crash, tinkle, gibber, freep) Aaaaghh! I complied, of course (married men will understand), though not without declaring that it wasn't nearly loud enough! [insert muted manly snarl here] I would pay a few miles penance for this, I knew, but we would surely both survive and prosper. And so it went. . .

You have to understand that my wife is a very hip and free-spirited lady. She also happens to come from a really quiet family. In all the years I've known them, I've never heard anyone raise a voice except in joy or surprise, and how many of us can say that about our own relatives? The only downside to this is that from my point of view, all the volume controls on their TVs, stereos, and car radios are spring-loaded or at least seem to function that way.

But she loves a good time, you understand. As I've mentioned once before, we saw the Sex Pistols live in San Antonio many moons ago, although I suspect her participation was more anthropological in nature than devotion to the God of Throb. That was incidently the loudest music I've ever heard, and I'm certain they intended sonic damage! It was glorious, too. Funny how she can still hear and I can't, though.

At any rate: rock & roll, as anyone who's lived it appreciates, needs to come charging out of the speakers like a GIANT, THROBBING, PRIMEVAL BEAST! Without that heavenly roar, without the thick guitar chords you can feel in your solar plexus, it's just wizened static not fit to be heard (might as well turn the damn thing off until the coast is clear). Joyful abandon and disruption is part of the game. You aren't supposed to be able to talk over it.

Music has the ability to lift us up and over the gnarly moods and slime of everyday existence, as do many other things, of course (but let's stay on topic). The Apple angle here would naturally be that Macs can do the same thing for your computing experience, but of course you have to feel it. You may even have to grow up with it in a sense, which is why it's hard to argue with PC users who've never used Macs. If this seems a shallow analogy I'm sorry, but the truth is that lots of things about the way my computer operates give me that happy little kick in the head, that intrinsic unspoken "yeah!" that makes things seem worthwhile. The rest of the time is taken up with the same old boring crap, so those little moments are important.

That's why I'm a little worried about OS X. I understand all the good points about it's being a "modern" operating system with protected memory, groovy graphics, blah blah blah. It may even appeal to the other side, but it's based on Unix. UNIX! That's like making rock & rock out of a giant metronome: sure, it would be reliable and predictable, but so what?! I have met people who love OS X beta and they are not Sex Pistols, although some of them could pass for Beach Boys in their wilder moments. You can, however, talk over them, which is why I'm saving my Mac OS 8.6 disk images:

If they turn me down, I'm fightin' back!

John H. Farr edits the news for Applelinks.com with a PowerMac 8600 that goes up to "11," and he invites your comments. The Farr Site Archives will take you to the past two years' worth of columns. John also writes a monthly op-ed page column called "El Emigrante" for Horse Fly in Taos, NM and has an ongoing project called Zoozone News (if you're lucky you'll find a different photo of New Mexico there every day).

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