How We Listen

Wake up in the morning and put on the coffee. Bring your laptop into the kitchen and listen to the Hall & Oats station on Pandora, or maybe it's the Bon Iver station, or Ke$ha- whatever, it changes depending on the morning. When the water's running and you're rinsing out your cereal bowl, you can hardly hear the music. Anyway, it's tinny and strained coming from such tiny speakers. You sing or hum (aloud or in your head) along and are proud when you remember all the words to the second verse.

Carry your laptop around the apartment as you get ready. Put it on your bed as you try on pant and sweater combinations, place it on the edge of the bath tub while you apply your makeup. Your roommate might walk in and ask what you're listening to. She might tell you to turn it up, or maybe to turn it down. Either way, it's barely audible.

You were raised in the kind of home where if music was on, everyone could hear it, could feel it reverberating through their chests. If the music stopped, you half believed your heart had stopped beating, it was that loud. Sometimes neighbors would come over and ask that it be turned down. Your parents would invite them in, offer them a beer, and usually they'd talk about Led Zeppelin or Dylan or Etta James (really, whoever) until the album ended. Your friends thought your parents were simultaneously cool and weird for listening to music so loud, for having speakers that weighed more than a third-grader and stood just about as high.

When you went to college, your dad bought you speakers. "They're good ones," he assured you. They're in a box in the closet- you don't know how to install them and even if you did, your friends would think they're too loud. Instead you use portable computer speakers. At parties, you hook your iPod into them and the people who want to congregate around the music do. Most everyone else couples off into bedrooms, silent, except for their own breathing.

The only time you listen to music really loud is in your car. In fact, it's never silent in your car and the radio is always on. For months you drove without ever noticing the clanking of your broken muffler because of your music. You sing along in your car and at stoplights teenagers make fun of you. You can see their mouths make out the word "Crazy" as they point in your direction through the windows. But sometimes they wink and laugh; they understand and are like you. In the summertime, you're the obnoxious person with the windows down and the music spewing out of the vehicle like a rocking Pied Piper- it's your gift to the world and people follow you with their eyes.

When traveling by public transportation, things are different. Everyone is plugged into their iPods on the T. They listen to music without moving to the beat. Their feet do not tap, their fingers do not drum, and rarely will a head bob to keep time. Only the crazy people sing, and when they do they sound deaf. Their words blend into each other, like they're talking under water. You never interact with anyone on the T- you're alone with your noise.

One day a man steps on the train with a ghetto blaster. He's shuffling around in time to some old Madonna track that came out before you were born. His music is loud and distracting so you take off your headphones. Other people in the car do the same. As you look around, you notice that people are becoming animated, are smiling and interacting as they communicate this man's insanity. Their feet tap along with his shuffle, they give the man encouraging smiles. When he gets off a couple stops later, the train goes into mourning. People mutter and put their headphones back on. They sink back into complacency.

This is how we listen to music.