The loneliness of the headphoned man
“Happy New Year, all the best to you.”
“I’m sorry, are you Lithuanian? Lithuanians are always polite, that’s how I know. I stopped drinking and smoking twenty-six years ago. Now, I have Alzheimer’s, and my wife says that maybe I shouldn’t have stopped. But when we lived in London with my daughter…”
“Happy New Year to Hansa, my wife and I love watching her roll in the snow. She’s sort of a celebrity around the block, you know.”
“So, does that cat actually live in your office? What does he like to eat? We’ve got some real nice cuts at the restaurant. Are there any visiting hours to see him?”
“What kind of dog is that? A rare breed, you say. Yeah, don’t see them around that much these days.”
These are just some snippets of short conversations I had the past week. Neighbours, strangers, passers-by, dog-lovers, people who work in the same building. Some initiated by me, some by others, but all of these exchanges would not have happened had I been wearing headphones.
Listening to something on the go has become a great way to add more colour to the day. A three-hour podcast taking down someone I don’t like? Yes, please. An unfiltered conversation with my favourite comedian interrupted only by ad reads for mattresses, VPN providers and hair loss prevention? Perfect for my morning walk. And of course I need to hear the latest take on a culture war issue that doesn’t affect me in any way. Sounds familiar? And I bet you heavy podcast listeners pride themselves on not watching TV and enjoying long walks not mediated by a screen.
I’m not talking about productivity junkies who listen to stuff on 1.5x speed, trying to squeeze value out of every recorded second. You don’t have to be one to occasionally spend 2 hours outdoors without hearing any outside sound, because your noise-cancelling earphones mute everything. Note how everything not coming from the tiny speakers pressed against your auricles or inserted into your external auditory canal is suddenly categorised as mere noise. Every birdsong, every rustle of leaves, every gust of wind becomes noise in the eyes (or ears) of the wearer.
And as you concentrate on making sense of all the hundreds of words hitting you every minute, sounds are not the only thing you fail to notice. That funny graffiti by the tattoo parlour inviting you to LeArN how 2 InK. The gigantic bear someone made of snow. The gang of street pigeons hiding in the underground crossing cause it’s cold as hell. Missed and ignored. I’m sure all of these don’t compare to seeing “attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion” or watching “C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate” but all these moments too end up lost in time, like tears in the rain.
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Yes! There's definitely so much to be said for choosing to look approachable and "talk-to-able". Headphones have become visual shorthand for "don't interrupt me" - but what about shorthand for "hey, say hello!"? We need both. But I think, after these last few years of being wary or even afraid of strangers, we need to say hi more often.
(This is a really interesting topic. How can you help generate enough curiosity in a stranger that they make the effort to say hi? One trick I learned as a travel writer in new places: hold up a paper map in the middle of the street and look really confused. Bonus points awarded if you're obviously holding it the wrong way round. You will be virtually guaranteed to have someone approach you and offer to help, which is a great way to break the ice!)
Darn it, great 'Blade Runner' ending there!
You made a nice firm snowball of this important thing that is... ruining us all.
I think about this a lot. How things are speeding up, and we humans somehow must keep the pace.
The machines are able to move fast, so we must increase our slow walk into a jog and perhaps a sprint. Preferably while adding more weight into our backpacks, and as you say, more sounds in our ears.