The Black Circle Spins On

Musical choices define who we are as individuals — and the ways we listen to music can help define society

That hiss when the needle connects with the vinyl, pregnant with static and anticipation. The mechanical whirling of a compact disc coming to life, it’s secrets laying within. The clicks and whirls of a walkman as it powers on.

We have become too accustomed to instant gratification, and are missing out on those moments where everything is on pause. The real world and our internal world as a machine kicks in. And those mechanical sounds, those very same sounds were that moment, a blink of an eye in length that I would have to decide if I wanted to be a part of the world I disdained, or be free to live in my head.

Music, to me, was always an escape — a way to get out of having to be forcibly social, or have to be a part of uncomfortable silences presented on long train rides, or worse yet, having to listen to the same Disney soundtrack over and over again because your youngest sibling was obsessed. Even in college, I would often find myself with a pair of headphones over my ears and music playing in study rooms, while people were chattering away, piping in only if something relevant could be heard.

As Fiona Apple once said, “I’d rather be in my own head than to deal with people not taking me seriously”.

There are some benefits, of course, to the modern way we consume music: we can fit more songs on the device that delivers music to us; we can put on hours upon hours of music, or different genres onto one simple looking piece of plastic, then we can select further which songs will play and only those songs. It is beautiful and satisfying not having to carry around extra tapes or discs everywhere we go (one of the reasons I got addicted to wearing cargo shorts in my early twenties was because I could store CDs in them; it was the same with my trench coats before that).

Then again there was a joy related to having to warm AA batteries up on camping trips in order to make the Walkman work when the temperature dipped below 50. We can now share instantly a comedy bit or routine with friends instead of having to sit intimately and listen to the horrible plug in speakers the devices of…

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