My Ring a Ling

 My ringtone has changed few times over the years and has had its current iteration for longer than I can remember (which tops out at about 14 years). I use "The Orangutan Gang (Strikes Back)" by Shadowfax. I picked up on Shadowfax by accident on an overnight shift on the campus radio station in college. The format of my show was "just show up so we have someone at the console for when the cops show up." So I filled time with records pulled at random.

Maybe I was in a mood of relative largesse, a time when I appreciate my family, but I happened to pick through the stacks and found an album by Shadowfax with the track "Song for my Brother." As a believer in the spooky power of confluence, I snagged the record, wheeled over to the turn table and cued the disc up. The music was great and from then, I was hooked.

I try to set my notifications to be quiet and unobtrusive, short and to the point. A click or a pop -- a sound that I will recognize but others won't be sure that they actually heard. My ringtones also have rules: no words, nothing too jarring and nothing others would know (yes, I'm being pompous. Hell, I was self-aggrandizing from way back, when it was still just pompo-me). The Orangutan Gang (Strikes Back) worked perfectly. I had it on mp3 in my collection of songs currently housed at Youtube along with 5000 or more other songs I have collected, imported, ripped, stolen or otherwise uploaded to "my library" which has been part of "my music" on 4 different computers and countless services.

Last night I dcided to have a "music evening." On a "music evening" I log in to youtube through my television, put my entire library on shuffle and lean back and listen to the randome selection of songs. I mean, I really LISTEN and I fall into a trancelike state, neither awake nor asleep. I relax in a meditative mode, deconstructing musc -- appearing fully immersed and chill but with senses heightened, sensitive to everything I hear. Suddenly I shot up. I heard "The Orangutan Gang (Strikes Back)" and grabbed my phone. But the screen was black and I still heard the ringtone. I glanced at the TV and saw (after a few moments' adjustment) that the song was what youtube had randomly chosen to play for me. Out of the thousands of songs, it chose my ringtone source file and it freaked me out. Crazy but it could happen. I smiled and put my phone down.

And then I heard Shadowfax AGAIN.

Seventeen seconds into the TV's song and 2 seconds after I sighed and put my phone down, it rang, playing the same song and, again, freaking me out.

My daughter was calling and I appreciated the conversation but it was a crazy coincidence that I wanted to share. [later that same day, the news was covering some story and as I reached into the dryer to pull out the clothes I was to fold, the news story recounted that the violent attack it was covering happened "as the victim reached his hand into the dryer." At the same exact time as I was reaching into the dryer. God and his mysterious ways for the win, again.]