Listening to iPod
How I wish I could do that, screen out the world, exit into the sound of music.
Andrew Sullivan has written about a world where everyone worship the little white box, and how quieter New York is. Everyone, in his or her own world, is listening to music of all kinds, from rock to classical, and you would never know. But in doing that, you have given up the natural rhythm the world is already subject to.
My hearing aids give me my own rhythm, because it can hear the winds blowing on the microphones. I cannot hear birds chirp unfortunately, but I can hear the cars roar by, and the bus making that vhroom sound when it speeds up, and whine when it stops.
Midway into the article about atomization of living, before I read the ending, I was instantly reminded of that book that I did not read, Fahrenheit 451. I only know that it was about a fireman who starts fire and burn books. The culture at that time was against learning and education, so people are encouraged not to read Shakespeare or Milton but to try to name popular showtunes and popular songs.
Eventually the fireman discovered a new world of books, that though dwelling on the nature of existence must make you doubt God or ponder on the meaning of life, and he escaped from society to join a class of secret society that, like the monks in old monastery preserving classical Greeks and Latin literature, preserves books in hope that society, waking up from its Dark Age, will break off its slumber of complacency and turn to books of Cicero, Plato, Dickinson, and classical works of arts again.
I continued reading, and he talked about how he accidentally left his iPod at home and rediscovered the sounds of airplanes, rhythms of people walking, and people having loud conversations easily overheard.
The world is a beautiful place. And I am exuberant now.
Andrew Sullivan has written about a world where everyone worship the little white box, and how quieter New York is. Everyone, in his or her own world, is listening to music of all kinds, from rock to classical, and you would never know. But in doing that, you have given up the natural rhythm the world is already subject to.
My hearing aids give me my own rhythm, because it can hear the winds blowing on the microphones. I cannot hear birds chirp unfortunately, but I can hear the cars roar by, and the bus making that vhroom sound when it speeds up, and whine when it stops.
Midway into the article about atomization of living, before I read the ending, I was instantly reminded of that book that I did not read, Fahrenheit 451. I only know that it was about a fireman who starts fire and burn books. The culture at that time was against learning and education, so people are encouraged not to read Shakespeare or Milton but to try to name popular showtunes and popular songs.
Eventually the fireman discovered a new world of books, that though dwelling on the nature of existence must make you doubt God or ponder on the meaning of life, and he escaped from society to join a class of secret society that, like the monks in old monastery preserving classical Greeks and Latin literature, preserves books in hope that society, waking up from its Dark Age, will break off its slumber of complacency and turn to books of Cicero, Plato, Dickinson, and classical works of arts again.
I continued reading, and he talked about how he accidentally left his iPod at home and rediscovered the sounds of airplanes, rhythms of people walking, and people having loud conversations easily overheard.
The world is a beautiful place. And I am exuberant now.
posted by Alan at February 21, 2005
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