I had a comically bad day yesterday, like dropping things, almost lost my keys down the drain on the sidewalk, spilled soup at the store near a makeup section, almost tore my pants, got back from the store only to find out I was out of TP, etc.
It was more funny than anything else, like so much random trivial bad luck in one day is like something out of some 90s Tom Hanks comedy.
But there was one thing that actually annoyed me - on my way back from the store on my grocery trip, my phone suddenly went from a healthy 7% to 0% and died. I was stuck with no music for the remainder of the walk back.
Soooo I was forced to listen to the sound of well - nothing at all basically.
Just birds chirping, wind blowing, leaves rustling, all as I walked the same path I walk all the time and see the same things I’ve seen hundreds of times, just waiting to get home.
Don’t get me wrong I love where I live and everything, it’s a really cool city with good pedestrian infrastructure, I almost never even get close to a car and it’s not some smelly euro village either, but seeing the same things I’ve already seen and having no stimuli at all, it wasn’t that big a deal but it was unpleasant.
That got me thinking - I sometimes see folks not wearing earphones outside, and I’ve heard on more than one occasion from some acquaintances that they don’t listen to music outside, and I wonder - why’s that?
Why would you choose to do that?
And, what do y’all like, do, exactly? How do you deal with the monotony of your grocery trips or things like that when you don’t even have music on? Do you just never get bored of walking the same roads/neighborhoods w/e day after day?
There’s a passage in the book Fahrenheit 451 where the author talks about people keeping themselves distracted with music 24/7. Instead of listening respectfully to great music with great attention, they listen to silly songs.
Also, I remember all the stories I’ve read about people who were mugged because they weren’t paying attention.
Bit of a subjective take there honestly. Music doesn’t distract me, it keeps the distractions out so I can stay in my head.
This resonates with me. If I’m listening to music, I want to do it with intention. Pop music is made to be background noise in an already noisy environment. Just sit down and listen for a change. The whole album. Used to be that artists wrote with a theme in mind; now they write to be the next TikTok viral song.
Could never do full albums outside of special occasions honestly.
So glad that whole thing is over and artists just post single songs now without it being some whole hour long thing.
I do make my own playlists though and I will organise them quite meticulously, and I will listen to those linearly well enough.
Someone downvoted you, which is ridiculous.
I respect your opinion.