Who Needs Alexa? In My Frustrating Quest to Listen to Music, I Forgot My Youth

My car won’t talk to my phone. My phone won’t talk to my computer. And nothing, including me, can talk to Alexa.

I have two Apple IDs

Don’t bother telling me that’s impossible, because I have them. Digital gateways which have become locked doors for me.

I blame it on the Apple Genius Bar, from many years ago. When I couldn’t remember my Apple ID password, the “genius” simply made me another Apple ID. That was the last time anything was simple.

These difficulties have nothing to do with my age, or gender, or even technological semiliteracy. Even

Andrew Rodwin

, the smartest, most technologically gifted man I know, couldn’t fix it for me.

He threw up his hands and said, “All you have to do is maybe just switch back and forth depending on what is stored where?” Or something to that effect. I stopped listening after “All you have to do is…”

Technology across state lines

Since I moved to a New Mexico, it’s only gotten worse. Before the move, my car would still talk to my phone. Now, nothing. Not even static. I can play radio stations as long as I’m in range, but that’s it.

Three people have attempted to reconnect my Echo Dots since the move — another reason I know this isn’t just my ineptitude with technical stuff. Granted, I didn’t ask my son for help when he visited for the holidays, but that’s because he disapproves of my having Alexa, as “she” listens in to everything. He worries, as I am not shy about exclaiming my contempt for the current administration. I digress.

I’ve tried finding music on my television. Looking for jazz on Xumo leads to mind-numbing so-called smooth jazz, which to me is not jazz at all. I’m afraid to ask for reggae. And whoever heard of smooth rap? Somebody somewhere is likely developing such a monstrosity.

I had accepted my fate as a music-less person in my own home. Silence lends itself to writing. No?

A neighbor invited me for wine and, as she calls leftovers, “bits and bobs”. It’s snowing here, I have a bum leg, and cabin fever was strong in the Force. Sitting in one place, leg brace on and leg propped up, in silence, for too long, is less than optimal for an extrovert. If I could have run across to her home, I would have.

We’re having delightful conversation and a lovely organic wine from Sicily, as far from our snow laden mountains as possible, when I hear the most beautiful sound.

Music, sweet music

Jazz. Not smooth jazz, but Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane style jazz. As I listened, the jazz morphs to jazz classics, then back to improvisational. I am enthralled.

I don’t see an Alexa anywhere. “Where is that wonderful jazz coming from?” I ask my hostess and host. I need it, and I need it now.

Sweet Lily, my savior from more than cabin fever, casually answers, “Oh, it’s the radio.”

I couldn’t be more gobsmacked if she said there’s a bundled up jazz band playing in the snow in her backyard. I have to see this miracle of music and technology for myself.

In the kitchen, on the counter, sits a Sony radio with a CD player. I didn’t know anybody in first world countries had CD players anymore. I don’t own a single CD. Financial or otherwise. I digress again.

The miracle was an actual radio, sitting inconspicuously on a counter, tuned to the best jazz station. And they inform me there are two more jazz stations in the area. It doesn’t get any better, unless I’m listening to live jazz in an obscure basement jazz club, with red lamp shades on brass lamps on each table.

All I need is a radio — like the ones from my youth — to hear all the jazz, reggae and hip-hop I desire. With the simple turn of a knob. What an invention! What a convenience.

No more shouting into the void, requesting specific music, only to be met with the pablum of “smooth jazz” or with some semblance of a “station” that plays all varieties of country music when all I want is Willie Nelson. Yes, I know that’s what I would get on a radio, too, but at least the music would meet my expectations, and without me shouting into thin air, only to be misunderstood.

Also, as far as I know, radios don’t listen in on our ramblings. Yet.

Here’s the icing on the cake, the turn of the knob, the mellow notes of it all. My son works for iHeartMedia. You probably know it as iHeartRadio. As in radio stations. That I can listen to. On my radio.

As soon as I buy one.

Meanwhile, I’ll download the iHeartRadio app on my phone to listen to in my car as I drive to buy a radio for the house. If I can figure out which Apple ID to use for downloading.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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