In the Open

A missing headphone set means that when I listen to music through my phone lately, I do it in the open — not through earbuds. This is a strange yet strangely familiar activity.

It's strange because for years now the tunes I listen to are only for my ears. A feedback loop of one, a solitary bubble, like all the solitary bubbles around me.

But it's familiar because I grew up pre i-Pod and pre-Walkman. When I think of summer afternoons at the pool it's not my playlist I remember (there were no personal playlists in those days!), but Top 40 hits piped through someone else's portable radio. You could always hold a transistor up to your ear or use those early earbuds (there was only ever one, which was just fine since these radios produced no stereophonic sound), but for the most part, music was out in the open.

In fact, it was a musical free-for-all, and you heard what you heard. You adjusted. I tapped my feet to soft rock, cringed at country crooners. But I came to enjoy tunes I would never have heard otherwise — and I learned that listening can be a communal experience.

Now when I walk past a neighbor I quickly mute my Bach or Rachmaninoff. I don't want to impose my choices on them. For all I know they wouldn't mind. But it's different now. Dogs don't run free and neither does music. These are small changes, true, but put enough of them together and you have another world.