Advertisement No, I haven’t been watching too many old horror movies. I’m talking about the otherwise normal, garden-variety human beings wandering around with thin, white wires growing out of their ears — the iPod people. Look around you, they’re everywhere. They’re at the airport, on the bike trail. They’re at the gym, in the checkout line. They’re puttering in the yard, being walked by their dogs, standing on the corner, waiting for the green light to change to red — going through a life played out to a private soundtrack.
I can’t help but wonder what it is they’re listening to. I sometimes watch for a while, looking for a tapping toe, slight nodding of the head or lips all but imperceptibly joining in a familiar chorus. The Beatles? Gangsta rap? Handel or the Beer Barrel Polka? From where I sit, it all sounds the same.
I wonder if it doesn’t all sound about the same to them as well. That may well be worth a worry, or at least a bit of thought.
It’s hard for us to imagine, but less than two lifetimes ago, music was a rare and extraordinary thing — ephemeral and fleeting as a springtime breeze. Before Thomas Edison’s hissing, scratching rendition of Mary had a Little Lamb was captured on a foil-covered cylinder the sounds of music lasted no longer than the final lingering echo. Unless you could play the fiddle or bang out a tune on the piano, music was an event, a special treat, and even for the talented, a guy alone out in the middle of nowhere longing for a tune had the choice of hum, sing or whistle.
And hearing anything much more complicated than a fiddle tune or hymns on the church organ was a thing reserved for the few and fortunate. A fellow with a notion to hear one of Beethoven’s greatest hits first had to find an orchestra to play it for him — and, unless your name was Bonaparte, Hapsburg or Romanov, that’s not the sort of thing done either on a whim or short notice.
It only stands to reason then, that, when there was music to be heard, people stopped to listen — closely, in wonder.
In 1920, KDKA changed all that. The ability to pluck music out of thin air made radio an instant success. A flick of a switch and twist of a knob turned any living room into a box seat at the Metropolitan Opera or the stage of the Grand Ole Opry — folks didn’t even have to crank the gramophone — and in no time, what had been a wonder became the stuff of the ordinary.
But if it was a radio behind the counter at the local diner, in the hotel lobby or next to the open window in the neighbor’s kitchen, anyone wandering within earshot shared in the experience — whether it was to their taste or not. Music was essentially a public experience and, on occasion, the public demanded a little privacy, a bit of peace and quiet. Music had become Muzak, and soon we ceased to listen.
Walk into any mall in October and the harking angels and incessant rumpa-pum-pumming briefly forces the aural background radiation into awareness if only by the jarring juxtaposition of Halloween ghouls, the heavenly host and the last of the back-to-school clearance. It’s there — want to hear it or not. Hold your nose, close your eyes, but the ears are always open.
So perhaps they’re driven to it in self defense, all these folks with their heads wired for sound. That’s the generous view. Fighting fire with fire — or — Bob Dylan blocking out another instrumental cover of Barry Manilow’s greatest hits.
But that’s too generous, I think. There’s no Muzak piped through the branches of the trees in the park, no pop-schlock lyrics to accompany the waves on a beach. Phil Spector never arranged a birdsong, and the sounds of silence were played before Simon or Garfunkel — but too softly to be heard over the mp3 rattling through the ever-present earbuds.
Is anybody listening?
Contact Jerome Christenson at (507) 453-3500 or jchristenson@winonadailynews.com.
