What I Wish I Knew Before I Had A Walkman
Reading time: 9 minutes
Image: Walkman illustration: davidswidjaja. Jolly Equilibrium logo & composition: Erik Stout.
I love music. I love community. Going to concerts with fellow fans were highlights from the moment my dad took me to see Iron Maiden live in 1986. I’ll never forget the look on his face when he saw beer being poured in bulk through a garden hose, how a fellow rocker was carried away by four others as a result of too many garden hose content, and how he rose a few inches off the ground as he was at some point surrounded by a group of young ladies who thought he was the coolest dad in the universe for taking his 12-year old kid to a rock concert.
The love for music began in 1979, when I got into Kiss. At the time, Batman was already a hero, and to me Kiss was Batman on rock ‘n roll steroids. Thanks to the few bucks I made from odd jobs like washing cars and walking dogs, I was soon able to buy my first Kiss LP. It was the best thing ever.
Drum lessons started at age 8, and marked the beginning of a long journey in music. The joy of playing in a band cannot be compared with anything else I’ve ever experienced. And when the play includes an audience with which there is active interaction, that’s as if you’ve grown wings and are able to fly with the clouds.
Imagine my ecstasy when I got my very first Walkman for my 10th birthday in 1984: a Philips Skyliner Mark II Cassette/FM radio player. As a rapidly growing music lover, I was naturally over the moon with this most precious of prizes, not least because it had dual jack inputs with which I could share whatever I was listening to with someone else. Yet, what I didn’t know, was how this ‘gift’ carried the potential to alienate us from our family, friends, and, paradoxically, from ourselves.
Image: Philips Skyliner Mark II (D6638) Walkman. Image taken from a Philips different models Walkman brochure.
Of the five senses, sound is the only one that comes continuously at us, 24/7, from every direction. We can shut off sight and taste by closing our eyes and mouth. We can turn away from nasty smells or uncomfortable tangibles. But it’s virtually impossible to shut out sound completely, mainly because of its vibratory nature: sound, by means of its soundwaves, has the ability to touch and affect us much deeper than any of the other senses, both literally and figuratively. Therefore, sound — and music in particular — can be very effective in attuning our minds, bodies, hearts, and souls. It’s not for nothing that many cultures still use sound as a device for healing and profound spiritual practices, in which the communal aspect plays an important part.
Communal sounds have an egalitarian effect. When fingernails scratch over a blackboard, who doesn’t suffer from the high pitch? When someone plays Louis Armstrong’s What A Wonderful World, how many do not spontaneously sing along? And when thunder announces a storm, who doesn’t look for shelter? Communal sounds therefore create a bond, which becomes even more evident when we make music together.
The communal making of music, be it in a choir, ensemble, drum circle, band, or a singalong around a camp fire, actually enhances a sense of community by bringing a group of people in a different dimension. An important aspect thereof is the ability, for everyone involved, to actively participate in the endeavour. For no matter the individual skills, the act of creating music with others brings about feelings of belonging and companionship, enhances self-esteem and self-confidence, and adds value and meaning to one’s life by means of a sense of responsibility for one’s part in the endeavour.
Image: Caption from the Sevendust Music Video for the song Angel’s Son.
However, the majority of us were robbed from the ability to actively participate in the musical process with the arrival of recorded music.
Together with the act of broadcasting recorded music on radio and TV arose an inevitable afterbirth: the single charts, which carried the implicit idea that anything not on those charts was basically not worth listening to. A direct consequence thereof was the overt competition between professional musicians competing for favours of record companies and executives. Less visible, yet undeniably more divisive, was that anyone outside of the so called music professionals began to believe more and more that their musical skills were sub-par and did not deserve to be heard, and thus performed. They became, what we now call, music consumers, who were tricked into the belief that they ought to be seen, but not heard.
Nevertheless, even those passivity inducing technological inventions like recorded music, radio, and TV, at least still harboured some kind of community feeling as their content could be consumed by multiple people at the same time. We could still sing along together with songs in the privacy of our own homes or share emotional experiences from TV or radio programmes. But that all changed with the advent of the Walkman, which effectively robbed us of our feeling of community, and thus of belonging.
When we’re making music together, we not only have to take responsibility for our own active part, but also listen to what’s going on around us. By taking others into consideration, we come to understand our own role according to our capabilities, and thereby learn how to act accordingly. Thus we learn to communicate and cooperate in a playful manner, where everyone’s musical abilities will be appreciated, making the whole endeavour into a meaningful, cathartic, and joyous experience.
Yet as soon as we massively began to consume music via headphones and earbuds, we effectively closed ourselves off from the external world, which is where we need to go if we want to meet each other. And as it looks that particularly young people prefer to communicate electronically rather than face to face, the privatisation of music and sound effectively robbed us of our ability to communicate and cooperate directly with one another — and thus of our sense of community.
Lady closing herself off from her extarnal and internal world. Image: Surprising_Media
Under the guise of creating a soundtrack of one’s life, the actual losing touch with others and our environment breeds nothing but anxiety for which we need soothing. What better way to numb our own thoughts and emotions by plugging in to private music, podcasts, or any audio content imaginable? Because contrary to alcohol or drugs for instance, the Walkman, IPod, and social media, as divisive as they can be, have not only become socially acceptable, but by distracting us from our incessant anxiety, even highly desirable. Divide et impera in perfection, for we’re not merely being cut off from life in general, but from each other, and, most disturbingly: from ourselves.
Therefore, besides the obvious potential harmful physical side-effects of excessive headphone-use,[1] in the long term it can also become psychologically, emotionally, and socially harmful, which Psychology Today’s Jim Taylor hypothesizes in the following way:
“Perhaps the most concerning aspect of the constant use of earbuds is the purgatory in which our minds reside. We are caught in a limbo between being connected with the outside world through some sort of social interaction and being connected with our internal world of thoughts and emotions.”
To get out of this limbo, I believe three factors can play an important part:
The acceptance and embracing of headphones, earbuds, recorded music, etc.;
Creating a healthy balance between communal and private musical activities;
Music as a metaphor for life.
As with any widely embraced inventions, headphones etc. are here to stay and it’s up to us to determine how we use them.
For instance, when it comes to the art of listening to music, headphones offer the opportunity to immerse ourselves into it as if it were a hot bath; the clarity with which every instrument can be distinguished and the experience of floating in the music is unsurpassed. Moreover, many benefit from the possibility of temporarily muting the outside world during concentrated school or other work. And for any musician who wants to learn how to play certain songs, headphones are an indispensable tool.
Yet, if we use them to distract and numb ourselves from our external and internal worlds, they can create a zombiefying effect. Therefore a healthy balance between private and communal musical activities is not just advisable, but sensible, as Talking Heads main-man David Byrne concurs:
“The act of making music, clothes, art, or even food has a very different, and possibly more beneficial effect on us than simply consuming those things.”[2]
Image: joaquinmaizon
He then proceeds to criticize, and rightfully so in my opinion, the sad fact that in most so called civilized societies, there has been a steady decline in teaching and funding the arts for at least the last four decades:
“It can often seem that those in power don’t want us to enjoy making things for ourselves – they’d prefer to establish a cultural hierarchy that devalues our amateur efforts and encourages consumption rather than creation.”[3]
He then proceeds to criticize, and rightly so in my opinion, the sad fact that in most so called civilized societies, there has been a steady decline in teaching and funding the arts for at least the last four decades:
“It can often seem that those in power don’t want us to enjoy making things for ourselves — they’d prefer to establish a cultural hierarchy that devalues our amateur efforts and encourages consumption rather than creation.”[3]
To emphasize the power of communal music making, Byrne goes on to cite how the Brazilian musician Carlinhos Brown established several music and culture centres in formerly dangerous neighbourhoods in Salvador de Bahia:
“In Candeal, where Brown was born, local kids were encouraged to join drum groups, sing, and compose songs and stage performances in homemade costumes.”[4]
Obviously these kids enjoyed being musicians and playing music together much more than dealing drugs. So, as the dealers began to leave due to their recruits being too busy making music, the crime rate dropped little by little in these neighbourhoods, and hope returned. Music, therefore, can be an emotional, intellectual, moral, and social power, provided it is part of the warp and woof of an entire community — both when it comes to the act of making music, as well as educating one another on the possible beneficial and pathogenic effects of headphone / earbud use.
Finally, for those who are spiritually inclined; the phenomenon of recorded music (or anything on record, really) insinuates the erroneous idea of permanency. But even if we can play our favourite songs over and over again through LP’s, CD’s, or digital playlists, they never last forever. Every note, once played, has vanished into the abyss of the past, and since our bodies and minds change endlessly, we can by definition never hear the same note twice.
Music, therefore, by its evanescent nature, makes us experience directly that the only permanent factor in life is change, just like the moon makes us directly experience the same thing by its continuously changing form. Music and moon thus teach us that liberation means to be freed from the rigid belief — and often wish — for things and people to stay the same forever. Once the fallacy thereof is realized and fully accepted, there is the end of suffering.
Jolly greetings,
Erik Stout
Note & Resource
[1] Due to my ignorance, I developed a mild tinnitus and hyperacusis. Thankfully I managed to change my perspective on the tinnitus from annoying to my personal form of Tao – meaning that whenever I am not aware of the ringing, I am not present in the here and now.
[2] Byrne, D. (2012). How Music Works. San Francisco, CA: McSweeneys.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
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This article was published earlier on Medium.com