Does that sound like a rhetorical question? One that I've asked to be polite, even though I can guarantee that whatever you're listening to is nowhere near as fucking awesome as what I'm listening to? I think many of us think of it like that sometimes. After all, a person's choice in music (what type you prefer/how much variation you appreciate/how intense is your internal flame/etc.) says a lot about their identity. Wouldn't you agree?
Like that little blue-haired kid, who could be goth (but who knows with kids today?), wearing jeans so fucking tight it looks like he's gonna sterilize himself and essentially shoot blanks for the rest of his life; what is he listening to? Or that twenty-something female walking down State St. with arms full of bags, sassed out to the max with her fine self, looking like she just did the shopping version of a city-wide pub-crawl; what the fuck is she listening to? I'd really like to know...
In that way, I kind of envy people who read books a lot in public. A book is somewhat similar to a song/album in the sense that it is a snapshot of a person's artistic idiosyncrasies, perfectly packaged for individual consumer purchase. The major difference: you can't hold the idea of the song in your hand, but a book makes people aware of what you choose to fill your head with. To me, (although I love my ipod obsessively and could never imagine my life without its glorious presence providing me real instant happiness whenever I fucking please), we are cheating ourselves by imbibing such a publicly invisible art form.
What's that you've got there, 1984 by George Orwell? Well now, that is one of my favorite books of all time. How do you like it? Yeah, my sentiments exactly. Oh, me? I'm flicking through Bertrand Russel's The History of Western Philosophy. Yeah, its boring and a bit daunting, but I'm into that sort of weird shit. Sorry. Looks like you have the cooler book.
See how much fun that was????? So in the future, since none of us are likely to start picking up leisure reading any time soon (excluding all my nerd homies), and we're definitely going to insist on our little bubbles of personal auditory heaven, why not share what you're bumping? Don't worry, even if you listening to shitty techno or 80's pop, we won't judge you... promise. :)
(Here's what I've been listening to... how about you?)
This is a great piece. Very insightful and thought provoking. It seems as though people in my circle of work do not want to have a random conversation. Four people sat at my table during lunch yesterday and at no point acknowledged my existence. Are ipods the cause or the symptom? I dare you to start a conversation based on the mere fact that someone else is listening to music as well. You both already have something in common; you'd rather listen to music than eavesdrop on all the snippets of conversation that pass you by. I can't blame you--I just don't like the earphones in my ear, thus I hardly ever listen to music on an ipod.
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