From Mouth To Ear: Each Generation Has Its Addictions
By Robert Klein Engler (03/21/05)
When I was a young man I used to smoke cigarettes. I remember quitting the habit when cigarettes were $1.25 a pack. Now, they cost more than $5 a pack some places. What I remember most about smoking is how it required not only money, but rituals as well. Before I left the house for work, I'd have to check to see if I had my cigarettes, matches or lighter. At the college where I taught we even had to bring our own ashtrays to some meetings. After a while I began to feel bogged down by all the paraphernalia and rituals of smoking.
When I quit smoking, my pockets were no longer stuffed with all the extra baggage of matches, lighter and cigarettes. I did not have to worry about forgetting my smokes, either, or what to do with the butts and cleaning the ashtrays. I had more spare change to spend at the end of the week, too.
I recall this now, because the other day I saw a young woman bogged down by her MP3 player and thought that listening to music and smoking cigarettes were indeed similar addictions. I noticed the woman ahead of me because she was jogging down the sidewalk. She had headphones on, and an MP3 player attached by a band to her arm.
Something must have happened, because the MP3 player slipped off and began to dangle in front of her as she ran. She was forced to stop, adjust her headphones, reattach the MP3 player and try to resume her stride. It didn't work. The MP3 player fell off again. This time it crashed to the sidewalk, dragging her headphones after it. I thought, then, she might be better off without all that paraphernalia, just as I was better off without my cigarettes. I realized, too, that over the course of a generation, our national craving has moved from mouth to ear.
That jogger was not the first person I saw leaving the house wired up and caring all the paraphernalia of playing and listening to music. Many of my students come to class wired. People who ride the subway are often listening to something on headphones big and small. White buds are in many ears, and two white cords trail down to an iPod in their coat pocket or briefcase. Like the sacred threads of the twice-born castes in India, these white cords tell us who worships at music's altar.
Some fiddle with their CD players, and end up dropping a disk in the crowded isle of the subway car. Often in winter, the CDs fall into the salt and muck of melting snow brought into the car by numberless feet. Once in a while, someone interrupts their MP3 to answer a cellphone. Thankfully, there is no cigarette smoking on the subway, but there is a lot of music listening.
An addiction to popular music is not cheap, either. A good MP3 player costs hundreds of dollars. Once, you could download songs for free. Now, it is 99 cents a song. If your MP3 player holds 10,000 songs, then it could have $9,900 worth of music on it. I remember how disappointed I felt when I left my cigarettes at a bar by mistake. Imagine the disappointment nowadays when someone loses all that music.
I used to joke that people seen walking down the street wearing headphones and listing to who knows what, were in fact being broadcast instructions on where to go. They were the lost souls of commercialism and in need of direction, incapable of thinking for themselves. Instead of music, they were being told what to do. "Stop here. Wait for the green light. Turn left. Open the door. Buy a soft drink."
I was being facetious when I said that, but now I'm not so sure. After writing an article on Michael Jackson's trial in California, I received more e-mails from his loyal followers than I ever imagined I would get. I realized then, that Michael's music and the music of many other performers is indeed something like an addiction, perhaps even similar to a religious cult. Like followers of a cult, many people get very defensive when you question their irrational habits or beliefs about popular music.
I suppose that young people in this generation need to listen to their CDs and MP3s the way members of my generation needed cigarettes. Of course, I can hear critics say that there is a big difference between cigarettes and music. "Cigarettes have been shown to be harmful to our health and even deadly," the critics say, "while music is not harmful nor does it kill people."
This is a statement about which I am not so sure. It took a while to realize the harmful nature of cigarettes. In some cases it took 25 years for lung cancers to show up. A person who started smoking at age 18 and didn't quit until 50 may have done irreversible damage to his health. Perhaps an addiction to music works the same way over time.
It is possible that today's 18 year old who listens to Rap, R and B, House, Country, Heavy Metal or whatever on his MP3 player is not only doing damage to his ears but to his spirit as well. What need is it that sends him out of the house wired for sound? Why is it not enough just to walk down the street and listen to the symphony of the city? What will this young man be thinking and believing 25 years from now? Will his thoughts be so molded by the rhythms of what he had listened to while young that he will be incapable in the future of being a free citizen?
Today, it's cool to have an iPod and be wired for sound, while many of the baby-boomer generation are tired of the boom-boom-boom. The ear has taken the place of the mouth for the present generation. What may be next, the eye? Will the next generation move from music to pornography for their addiction? Can you imagine someone at a futuristic mall listening to an MP3 player, smoking a cigarette and watching images on a personal video screen worn like a pair of glasses? With his eyes, ears and mouth covered, this will be truly a man without a face.
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