Traveling Music

It’s a Thursday. I’m nearly set to leave for the night, meeting my brother for dinner before joining his friends that are in town for Cubs opening day. I walk up to my dresser, grab enough cash for the night despite using plastic whenever possible, detach my apartment keys from my car keys to minimize pocket space, mist one spray of cologne at my chest, and head for the door. Halfway down the steps of my porch, I halt. No headphones. Problem remedied, I’m on the Brown Line within minutes, audio-occupied, and seamlessly blended into the rest of the traveling masses.

With the emergence and eventual dependency on phones containing music playing devices, in addition to the newest models of iPods getting small enough to pass through a keyhole, it’s actually challenging to spot a solo commuter without some form of audio pumping directly into their eardrums. That train that I got on… didn’t have one person without something jammed into an ear. It’s something so habitual for me, whether I’m taking the ‘L,’ riding a morning bus, sailing on the Metra, or just walking around the city, I can’t think of a time that I don’t have music playing. In the morning, I might be listening to some acoustic stuff, say, Colin Hay. If I’m coming home from work, I usually put on some rock, like KoRn (yes I still listen to KoRn). The most common scenario, I’m heading out for the night, I’m on a long stretch of putting all my David Guetta on random. I’ve even popped my headphones in, thinking I was walking home, got tired, hopped in a cab, and didn’t even take them out. I rode five minutes in a cab with headphones in knowing all well that whatever I was listening to would be better than my driver’s music preference.

I might be pretty far into the forest, but not too far to see the trees. My abuse of music while traveling has made it nearly impossible to establish even a passing connection with any of my fellow train riders. Not that I can’t lock eyes with someone sitting across from me, but, there’s just an alarmingly and disproportionately high probability that I’m not removing my headphones to strike up a conversation. I bet that number is similarly high for the object of my connection. Even with an opening line gift (are you listening to what I’m listening to?), it’s usually considered a nuisance to have to pause your music, remove one or both headphone, and engage a stranger in conversation. Don’t get me wrong, I can confidently say I have never struck up a witty exchange (or any other exchange, for that matter) with anyone seated or standing around me while I travel, so the additional of a little background music is welcomed, trumping the exceedingly pointless and annoying conversations that pollute the vessel of public transit.

But the idea of meeting someone on a train has always been in my head. Whether it be the young professional that takes the same Milwaukee North Metra line to work in the morning (a fantasy I get to enjoy only while my car is being worked on), or the flirtatious cutie that got on at the same brown line stop, the romantic in me would have loved for that to be the ‘how I met your mother’ story.

Instead, all I’m left with is another form of social isolation, another way to limit the person-to-person interaction along with cell phones, expansive cable, social networking, online dating, etc. Don’t get me wrong, I firmly believe that many of these popularity increases in the last 20 years, when used normally and properly, should enhance the amount of face to face contact we have, but the reality is that we have begun to substitute real life for a digital life, we’ve become so occupied with staying connected that we can’t drive to the store without a cell phone glued to our ear, we’ve become so dependent on constant stimulation that we can’t stand to sit in silence, and we’ve become so disconnected in a time when it should be easier than ever.

I’m not sure it always makes sense to do so, but I know that I’m going to try to leave my headphones on my dresser a little more frequently, choosing instead to be aware of my surroundings, listen to the sounds of the city, the people, life, and who knows, maybe even strike up a conversation with someone who shares nothing more than the choice to ride the train.