El rastre digital de la Flaneuse

My friend has just his PC wired for broadband” writes the poet Don Paterson. “I met him in the café; he looks terrible -his face puffy and pale, his eyes bloodshot… He tells me he is now detained, night and day, in downloading every album he ever owned, lost, desired, or casually intrigued by; he has now stopped even listening to them, and spends his time sleeplessly monitoring a progress bar… He says it’s like all my birthdays have come at once, by which I can see he means, precisely, that he feels he is going to die”.