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February 9, 2011

Elegy for my MacBook

Early last month, I was updating some software on my 17-inch MacBook Pro. I hit restart; the familiar reboot chimes rang out, a blue screen popped up and then the computer shut right back down. I repeated this process several times before coming to the conclusion that my machine had bit the dust, at which point I flung myself down on the bed and sank into a deep depression.

I bought the computer four and a half years ago, a few days before traveling to LA for my first prolonged stint there. Since then I have edited, by my count, eight feature films and who knows how many shorts, commercials, DIT jobs and so on and so forth. What history has run through its circuits! What flights of fancy its processors have facilitated! It's been all over the world with me (I remember opening it up in Costa Rica two years ago and seeing a swarm of tiny red ants spill from its guts). It's often been my sole creative implement; I had an old PowerMac and an iMac, but I gradually gave those away to friends as I grew closer with the notebook. I preferred working on it to a desktop system. It made me feel closer to whatever I was working on. Through thick and through thin, from the time I sold my first script to when I was living in my car and siphoning wi-fi from strangers' houses at five in the morning, it's always been within my periphery. I've dropped it who knows how many times - the edges are battered and shellshocked, and it won't close completely - but it still worked like a charm.

Which was why the prospect of its absence in my life was so devastating; we'd become so inseparable that suddenly not having this computer was like I was being robbed not just of a tool but of my creativity itself. Twee bonds of connectivity aside, I suddenly realized how utterly dependent on it I was on this device , especially because I was not, at that moment, capable of running to the Apple store and replacing it. Sundance was right around the corner, rent was due right after that, I had to make a quick trip to LA before both of those expenditures; there was no way I could afford a new Mac right then. I felt stranded. All of my life choices suddenly seemed incredibly ill-advised. In too many regards, I still live paycheck to paycheck, and the unexpected prospect of having to replace my computer brought my folly into crystal clear focus: I was not living a sustainable life.

The next morning, the desperate, gnawing sense that my life was a complete failure had dulled; it was time to move on. I borrowed a friend's Mac (the nice thing about having a strong creative infrastructure is that one can often find an abundance of Apple devices to temporarily pilfer) and managed to get mine to mount in hard drive mode. I backed up my essential data, unplugged the firewire cable and - lo and behold, my computer instantly and without provocation booted back up again. I turned it back off, and then back on; the problem seemed to be fixed. It was like a new dawn, with bold new possibilities! I didn't know how much time I had left with my beloved MacBook, but by God I was going to use it. And indeed, this past Friday night, I went to bed happily thinking that I'd already gotten more quality work done in the first two months of 2011 than I had in all of 2010.

So of course, as if on cue, the old workhorse gave up the ghost for good the following afternoon. It wouldn't boot up in hard drive mode; it wouldn't turn on at all. From deep within the recesses of its titanium reliquary came a wheezy clicking sound...and then nothing.

The parting wasn't painful this time; I was grateful for the extra few weeks we'd been given, after I'd already given it up for dead. This time, when I threw myself down on the bed, it was out of frustration for not having backed up the awesome work I'd knocked out in the past few days. Luckily, Toby came to the rescue; he heroically dismantled the body, extracted the hard drive, connected it to some strange, Cronenbergian pod and was able to recover those last few files I needed. That done, the cords were severed and my constant companion was gone for good. I'm replacing it next week; hopefully, by the time that one dies, I'll have gotten my life in order.

Posted by David Lowery at February 9, 2011 1:53 AM