A unique form of torment reserved exclusively for the early hours of the day. Where you are confined, side by side, with a gentleman whose favorite meal appears to be a garlic and onion sandwich and a teen who’s prerequisite to intimacy is the width of her shoulders. Or maybe a few centimeters past that.
And you can feel and anticipate it with every push from the rough crowd into the subway: the more pleasant kind, the one with the terrible fighting sounds. Because in music as in everything else, there is always the clash of two types: those that do not feel obliged to impose their crude and barbaric musical taste upon everyone else, and those absolutely sure that their withering, extraordinarily refined taste—quite possibly of an extremely loud volume— is, to put it lightly, presented as a gift and made out of mercy for the entire civilization. Only yesterday, while stepping into my regularly occupied seat at 7:45 train, I was forced to partake in a private recital that I did not wish to attend.
I wouldn’t even think about joining the club if I hadn’t noticed a young dude, not older than twenty-five, fixated across from me. This man had earbuds stuffed in his ears while rocking his head to a rhythm escaping his devices at a volume that could mean one of two things: repugnant hearing disability or something I would dread hearing by thirty. The distorted bass and drummy sound overflowing were akin to poor plumbing and had the same maddening effects as the pop-sung, luxury-car, awful dwarf mug with romantic subtext shopping list. Even at 177 steps away from the house where I was currently reading the local section, it was impossible to not hear the morning paper soundtrack.
Everyone has seen and heard low-quality earbuds spewing audio and I can guarantee that each one of you has a story to tell about it. These scenarios are not exclusive to one another. Low-quality sound spilling out of one’s earbuds always has many explanations. Let’s just say this is one example of something humans do that’s out of the ordinary like styling hair with Elmer’s glue.
With respect to the many ways people have devised to show off, it is peculiarly of spilling sound from earbuds. What do we want to tell the world with that? Also, what kind of aberrant reasoning allows us to think it is cooler to expose one’s ears to sound rather than wearing a beanie?
Is it the TikTok generation? It is ironic that DJs never intended to perform get almost no validation for their work. What they mostly earn is the collective quiet anger of those made to suffer the harsh echo of their outdated music.
Such suppressed anger sometimes publishes itself in the form of angry glares or heavy sighs that are loud and clear and meant to be overheard. The unwitting DJ is out of touch with just about everything else if because everyone else isn’t sure is clearly tuned to the signals he is bone blind to. He, in fact, looks to be in a kind of pace that suggests he cranks up the volume when listening through earbuds.
Things get even worse when some moronic idiot considers earbuds an unnecessary impediment disguised as a middle step. I once witnessed a man in his forties (which is old enough to know better) blast what I can only describe as 80’s rock ballads on the his phone’s speakers.
I might’ve reminsced on this under different situations, but at 8:15 AM, I found myself stuck in the middle of a packed subway car. Coupled with the fact that my morning psyche was desperately looking for some form of peace, or at the very least, some bland, instrumental background music, made it very clear to me that what I was experiencing was one more piece of a puzzle coming together. The antics, the tune and the setting are what confound me the most; it’s the sheer juxtaposition of it all.
Would these same people walk into an empty library and tailor appraisal their volume to be loud? Would they ransack a funeral service, and in a twist of irony blast some heartfelt tunes? These days, it feels like public transport has somehow claimed the title of place wherein the social contract gets utterly obliterated on a daily basis.
My coping mechanisms have evolved through the years. The necessary sacrifice of my sanity—my noise canceling headphones—my solitude on commutes does not balance the high-pitched whine of screams on the train. My favorite pair of headphones does not block out the passion radiating from the bass-thumping subway DJ who feels that the bass has to be literally felt instead of heard.
One unforgettable morning, I left my earbuds at home. The overwhelming feeling that I get from groping around in an empty pocket is akin to realizing I’ve forgotten to wear one of the layers before leaving the house. I was exposed, forced to endure the grating sounds of the bus without the pillows of silence.
I found myself stuck for far too long listening to a unending shower of sounds. It was borderline tear-inducing for me which I don’t know how. Every now and then, it struck me that I may have actually left my headphones plugged into the laptop which is the laptop.
At times, I consider taking certain offenders of the piece of music I wish to call noise to task personally. I would say to them, quite cordially but of some standing, “I couldn’t help but notice your sound looks to be overflowing everywhere. It’s a real bother. Would you please consider decreasing its volume by a notch?”
Or maybe get a proper pair of earbuds? Or think of, and this is a bold suggestion, that perhaps around 8 a.m. not everyone is really keen on the idea that this one artist plays, even if you do?”
But in any case, none of these folks on public transport ever gets met with direct confrontation from me.
This is so because public transport brawls are rarely entertaining, but I wouldn’t be surprised if confrontation is physically reciprocated and changed. The people who are the most obtuse as regards the discomfort they are creating for those around them are decidedly and overwhelmingly not the very sort to, counter simply annoying and demanding, streamline their response to such a request. All I need to do is sit back and hold on to all that makes life these days increasingly difficult with unrelenting anger.
The world is filled with quiet anger aimed at the creators of portable speakers and their reckless users, and I’m glad to know I’m not the only one giving them grief. Maybe there is a certain beauty in this all encompassing shared suffering, in this endurance of the noise others make. Maybe it is even a metaphor for life: sometimes you are forced to hear a waking nightmare of someone else’s music, and sometimes of your own music that makes everyone around you grimace in the morning.
I wonder if any of the profound philosophers considered the complexities underlying the human condition while listening to ‘tinny hip-hop’ playing at 7:45 AM. Until we as a society come together to mandate better control of public sound systems, or until such time as technology advances perfectly to the point where sound can be enclosed within personal auditory devices, I will rightfully keep putting on my noise-canceling headphones and take the subway which is practically enforced as ‘not polite’ during the hours of rush because I know that the story is the same everywhere else. Personally, if they find the joy of blasting mundane music, I do find solace in the idea that it is not me on level 7 blasting my personal compilation of notorious folk songs to oblivion during the commuting hours to downtown. The reason for this being, I believe, is because I can’t think of a more pointless exercise than proclaiming loudly to a set of strangers whom I have never and will never meet and who I’m almost sure wouldn’t be remotely interested.
And I suppose calling these two categories sophisticated middle-aged men and giggling women would offend the reasoning nature that attempts to grasp and explain epiphany. It finds the joy in physiological sounds of combat and public blast for the faint of heart. I suppose the difference between many people pondering public spaces as individualized stage venues as far as sanity goes is the unapologetic willingness to forgo basic rationale just because a certain type of sound brings you joy and needs to be shared with unprecedently high volumes to everyone around.
