The city is made of music
A month without my phone is changing how I hear the world
For the past 25 years, I’ve practically always listened to music when going outside. My one-month experiment of leaving my phone at home has put a stop to that.
For a good portion of my teenage years, I carried a discman with me. This was later replaced by a minidisc player, which was eventually replaced by an mp3-player. I remember cycling to my mailroom summer job in the Dutch suburbs being transported away by Mobb Deep’s The Infamous album. I rocked out to Slipknot as I cycled along the dikes on the way to basketball practice. Eventually, I got into DJing and would mentally party to my own drum ’n bass mixes as I took the train to university.
When I moved to Bulgaria in 2007, I forgot my mp3-player on the airplane at a layover stop. If I wanted to get it back, I’d have to travel to Prague. Air travel was expensive, and I was a student, so I cut my losses. That half year, as I interned at the Bulgarian National Radio, was when I opened my ears to the world again. I missed having my music with me on the go, but being more open to what was happening around me helped me to pick up the language. You would hear certain sounds vocalized, spot patterns, and eventually, you’d figure out what that sound means and solve the puzzle.
If we don’t count my first 11 or 12 years in life, then that phase in Bulgaria is the longest I’ve spent outside without music. I’ve taken breaks here and there and have had phases where I would listen to a lot less music, but it was never as absolute as the month I’m doing now.
“I’m going to get an mp3-player”
Before starting my one-month-no-phone-outside-challenge, I had envisioned that at some point I’d cave and get an mp3-player. I even had the story half-written in my head. I’m not much of a planner, but I do try to predict myself and how I’ll handle frustrations and impulses. This time, I was wrong.
It took a little adjusting. As in my teenage years, I do everything by bike, foot, and public transport. I like to transport myself to places mentally, as I move around physically. Like that grittiness of the Mobb Deep album that played out like a movie in my mind as a teen. Or that one time I took some time off to travel around South East Asia and was struggling to keep an anxiety attack under control in the bus from Bangkok to Koh Chang: as Porter Robinson’s Goodbye to a World opened a sense of wonder and adventure in me, as I gazed outside at the tropical landscape, and took me to a better place, without even leaving my seat.
Now, I just have to deal with whatever Berlin throws my way sonically. The terrible elevator music in stores, the sound of someone coughing their lungs out in the next street as I approach the corner, and every word of the conversation of the Dutch tourists sitting near me in the cafe. Surprisingly, I’m loving it.
Why a full month made it easier
If I had forgotten my headphones in a normal month, sounds like that would have driven me up the wall. I’ve occasionally experimented with leaving my phone at home for a bit, but even then it would annoy me.
Committing to a whole month has forced me into acceptance. I can either be annoyed for a whole month, spend money on an mp3-player I might not use much in the future, or I can approach the sounds of the world with curiosity. As I embraced curiosity, the sounds turned into music and the idea of needing to select my own music while outside faded.
Generally, I have found that committing to a longer period for lifestyle changes is easier than shorter periods. I decided not to drink any alcohol this year, except at one particular wedding I’m going to in Italy (because, come on), and after some initial discomfort in certain social settings, all the desire for it just faded. It’s a bit like how I explain not eating meat to people: to me, it’s just something I don’t do at this point; it’s not something I even think about, just like most people don’t think about not eating insects or dogs.
This might work differently for you, so please don’t take my personal experiences as suggestions. Instead, let it tickle your curiosity and experiment with what works for you. Small steps.
A city full of music
After the initial few days, my mind slowed down enough to be able to hear the music of the city. To appreciate it with curiosity.
Some of the musicians who have inspired me the most had already made me appreciative of the sounds around me in the past.
Moondog, an avant-garde composer and musician, lived on the streets of New York City from the late 1940s until the 1970s. He was homeless by choice, but not destitute, choosing to stay connected to the city’s rhythms and making a living busking, selling poems, and receiving support from musicians who admired him. Those musicians weren’t nobodies: he interacted with the likes of Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Charlie Parker, Art Blakey, Julie Andrews, Leonard Bernstein, and Janis Joplin. Since his compositions were made on the streets, he considered the ambience of the city to be part of the music. You can hear that in recordings such as Fog on the Hudson, which incorporates foghorns of ships on New York’s Hudson River.
Possibly the most famous composition to play with this theme is John Cage’s 4’33”. The composition, partly inspired by Zen Buddhism, counts 3 movements filled with silence. It was first performed by the pianist David Tudor in 1953, with the audience considering the piece “either a joke or an affront”. You can view a re-enactment of this performance below.
Responding to the controversy of the original performance, John Cage said:
“There's no such thing as silence. What they thought was silence, because they didn't know how to listen, was full of accidental sounds. You could hear the wind stirring outside during the first movement. During the second, raindrops began pattering the roof, and during the third the people themselves made all kinds of interesting sounds as they talked or walked out.”
One of my favourite recent musical discoveries has been Nigerian sound and installation artist Emeka Ogboh’s album 6°30’33.372”N 3°22’0.66”E. The electronica album fuses musical compositions with recordings of interviews and the hustle and bustle at Lagos’ Ojuelegba bus station and surroundings, which was also a theme for afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti’s one-song album Confusion.
The first week of my phone-stays-home experiment has echoed what these inspirations already communicated:
A train rumbles past.
A bike bell chimes.
A crow caws from a rooftop.
The city is full of music. You don’t need headphones to hear it.
Notes:
in the article voiceover, I mispronounced Emeka Ogboh’s name. Apologies.
the ID for the drum & bass track in the audio version is Bad Company UK - Dogs On The Moon.
please bear with me as I learn more about recording audio •‿•