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BRAIN TUBA: I Hate What You've Done With Your Air
by Jesse Jarnow - jesse.jarnow@oberlin.eduIn the airport this morning, I passed a book shop. On prominent display in one of the front racks was Our Dumb Century, a book produced by the editors of the Onion, which provides often downright evil parodies of the past one hundred years of news. Somewhere in the section covering the 1980s is the headline - and subsequent article - "Sony Introduces Personal Pacification Devices"; in other words, Walkmen. Leave it to the Onion to make me feel nervously self-conscious.
I'm on an airplane right now. A long flight: New York to Los Angeles; just over five hours of turbulent fun. I'm pacified, too, listening to Soul Coughing and cut off from the world at large -- or small, actually, as the case actually is. I'm sardined into my seat with barely enough room to write without elbowing the bejeezus out of the person next to me (who happens to be my mother so, at the very least, she understands). Getting on an airplane can be a stressful thing, the entire process designed to herd one into seemingly the smallest area possible. One moves from outdoors with its infinite sky into the hugely cavernous and often elegantly designed space of a terminal. From there, one funnels into a more mortal tunnel to the gate, down an even smaller tube onto the plane which, if one can imagine, is even tinier. The whole thing is like a big birth metaphor in reverse and, as should be quite obvious, is abundantly stressful. Enter my CD player.
With my eyes closed, all this cramming crap doesn't matter -- I can enter an area as boundless as I'd like it to be. It's an escape. Around me, stressed faces are connected to contorted bodies which are, in turn, awkwardly thumbing through newspapers manipulated in vein attempts not to impinge on the traveler in the next seat over. None of the people around me know the joy that this music is bringing me. The question, though, is whether or not I am shutting out something important in listening to the music instead of paying attention to the self-perpetuating world of worries that breathes around me. Am I a weaker person for hiding from that reality in the comforting solace of M. Doughty's voice? Or am I a stronger person for tuning to some form of music, some form of art, in the face of utter stupidity?
It's largely a question of judgment, I guess, about the significance of all of this stuff -- not just the things here on the airplane, but the external world to which they belong. Where is the border? It'd be quite easy to give up and declare that I am unconcerned with these things altogether. The fact remains, though, I have to - and will likely always have to - deal with these things in order to function at some level of productivity that is satisfying to myself. In that regard, they are obstacles.
"They" is kind of vague. I have a friend who is working an internship at a consulting firm in Manhattan. He's not too pleased with the job. Every morning, he tells me, he sits on the train with shloads of dead-looking commuters. When he can, he listens to music -- slips on earphones and enters a world of sonic beauty or, at the very least, good grooves. If I were in the same situation, lord only knows, I'd definitely do the same thing. Is it a lie, though, to tune out the world in which he's functioning? Could the same time be spent evaluating what's wrong with the system that supports mongers of imperceptible goods -- consultants, lawyers, bond brokers, insurance salesman... Of course it could be. That's the power of positive thinking...
...shut the fuck up.
The question I'm interested in, I guess, is whether or not there is any responsibility, social or otherwise, that is necessary to guide our actions? Are our actions even remotely important? It gets back to heavy issues... like air. In general, it's pretty stagnant stuff these days. Nevermind the chemicals and gases floating there and shimmying their slimy ways into our nostrils... it just sounds bad. Frank Zappa once said - "a composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air mokecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians" (1). In other words, the job of the composer is to arrange air in new and interesting ways, ways to make the listener think. Art. The air in this airplane (air plain, plain air?) is boring, recycled, stale... you get a thesaurus and come up with more synonyms. The air almost anywhere is like that. And that's why we - or, I, anyway - impose music upon it.
Much of what we do in our daily lives is designed around changing the personal environments in which we live. In our cars and houses we can turn on air conditioning and fans to cool what might be unbearably hot. We can drape tapestries over lamps and light candles to create a relaxed vibe in a room or we can focus white beams brightly in order to help us focus on specific tasks. We hang things on walls to make the sight more pleasing to the eye. Most of these things, however, are done in the privacy of our own home. In many ways, the personal environment doesn't extend beyond the bounds of one's own abode. There are a few things that make it beyond that boundary, though: we can choose to wear warm clothing to retain heat, or light clothing to let in air. This hits a little bit closer to mark.
With clothing, we can shield our nerve endings from different things. Walking down the street, perhaps the only thing we control is our senses, our inputs. If we see something we don't like, we can't necessarily replace it with another image, we can only look away. Likewise, if we hear something bothersome, we don't have to listen. But, we can replace it with something else, via our old buddy the Walkman. And that's where the potential trouble comes in. Where is the line drawn? If one is walking down the street listening to music and encounters a person or group protesting a great injustice, what happens... What does it mean if he turns up the music he is listening to? What does that say?
Are my moments in music an escape from reality or are my moments in reality escapes from music? As with every damn thing, it's probably a lot of both. That's not a very satisfactory answer, though. I do what I do because I want to shape my life in a certain way. It comes down to that basis when answering the above question. That basis, as far as I can tell, isn't a black or white thing. Never is. I can live in happiness and I can live in truthfulness... and I can occasionally live in both. But I can never do both at the same time. Ignorance is bliss, and bliss is music... but is music ignorant? It is the best, undoubtedly.
What happens, though, if one is walking down a street in Manhattan while listening to a recording and one sees a homeless man leaned against a building holding a cup? A Hard Rain Is A-Gonna Fall is on. "[I] heard one person starve, I heard many people laughing". Do you turn up the tape?
(1) Frank Zappa and Peter Occhiogrosso; The Real Frank Zappa Book; Poseidon Press, 1989; p. 162
If Jesse Jarnow a.) enjoyed Choose Your Own Adventure books when he was little, turn to page 4. b.) dances the two step on his hands, turn to page 19. c.) opens up the dark closet in the attic of his house, turn to page 72.
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