On Background Noise

Whenever I walk anywhere I'm inclined to take my music with me. This helps avoid boredom and makes time pass quicker. Alas, last night I left my iPod at work and while I realised almost as soon as I left the office, I couldn't be bothered to walk back up five flights of stairs to get it. After a moment of panic, I decided to continue sans Pod. To soldier on. To bravely go where no member of Generation I has been for a long time. To walk - in silence. For the first few minutes I found myself longing for my trusty portable record collection - I missed how the shuffle feature can make me question my own musical taste. I couldn't decide how fast to walk without the tempo of the song 'now playing' dictating my pace [a slow stroll for a ballad, a power walk for anything more upbeat]. My decision to undergo a whole journey without my protective musical bubble was a rather big one. Had I made a mistake? Should I go back?

Then it hit me. I was reacquainted, all of a sudden, with an old friend; Background Noise. I had feared a silent journey; what I got was anything but. I was surrounded by noise; the briefest snippets of other people's conversations, warnings of [the usual] tube delays, car horns, sirens, white noise from other people's headphones [RAGE]. In short, I could actually hear the city around me - nothing out of the ordinary, nothing you wouldn't hear anywhere else, but a world that has become alien to me since the iPod stole my soul - and I enjoyed it. In particular, I enjoyed eavesdropping, despite the fact that the conversations I overheard all revolved around incredibly mundane topics. "I go away for three weeks. Three weeks. And he's hired some fucking clown to be in my team," said one hard-faced old trout. "I just don't get it though, everything was fine last night but today he's acting like such a moron," whined a chavette into her phone. And they weren't all miserable, I promise - I overheard laughing, joking, reminiscing.

It came as a shock after so long lost in my own little world that you can tune into so much if you're nosey enough. I'd obviously never assumed that the world fell silent the moment I put my earphones in and turned up the volume, but I had forgotten what it's like to listen to the world around me. My Pod-less commute reminded me that there's so much happening here, to so many different people in countless different situations, moods and even languages. I couldn't help but feel dwarfed by the immensity of it and confused by the mind-boggling array of options, choices and possibilities.

And so this evening I tried to resist the temptation to immerse myself in music. As a result, I was able to hear the man with the suitcase shout 'WAIT' as he ran for the tube as the doors were closing. Having heard his cry, I could move out of his way in time. While he did manage to get on, there were a few seconds of acute awkwardness as we waited for the doors that had shut on his leg to open again and let the rest of his body, and suitcase, onto the carriage. It was all a bit Sliding Doors now I come to think of it - perhaps ignoring the world around me allows for as many different possibilities as listening to it.