Disciplined nonlistening

Not too long ago (four or five years), I had a bad habit that’s probably familiar to most people my age. I would sit down at my laptop having made the decision that it was time to listen to music. The only problem was that I didn’t actually want to listen to anything. Nothing sounded good, but I wouldn’t let that dissuade me from the decision I had made. I would scroll down through the artists in my iTunes library. Then I would scroll back up. Then down again. Finally I would find an album that seemed adequate, and I’d press play.

I would usually only half-listen to the music while I did something else. I would take little joy from what I was hearing, because I had no real desire for it. It was just there. I wouldn’t sing along (or even lip sync), I wouldn’t do little spontaneous dances, I wouldn’t even smile. Sometimes I would wonder why I was listening to it, but I maintained the habit nevertheless.

Eventually I noticed the music for the pointless distraction that it was. What was it that I was trying to avoid? Silence, obviously. A silent room can be a scary place. It can also be a highly productive place. All the music was crowding out the thoughts that can only come in moments of lonely quiet, when uninterrupted monologues flow through your head. So I switched the music off. I told myself that I would only put music on when I wanted to listen to something specific. When a song had been running through my head all day at work or school, I would play it when I got home. When it spontaneously occurred to me that I hadn’t listened to a certain album in a while, I would play it. But I wouldn’t first make the choice to listen to music and then force myself to decide what it was going to be.

I’ve more or less stuck with this resolution since making it a few years ago. I now listen to a fraction of the music I did beforehand, but I enjoy it far more. I dance and sing along more often, because I actually had a bit of anticipation for it. It feels sort of special. I also think more. When no particular tunes strike my fancy, I’ll go about my business of cooking or cleaning (or even just sitting with a cup of tea) in thoughtful silence. And it’s okay.

As revelations go, this one wasn’t particularly huge. Cutting out a bit of the distraction in my life felt good, but it wasn’t revolutionary. I didn’t start making more money or attracting more women, and I didn’t regain the parts of my hairline that have receded. Still, it has larger implications for other parts of our lives. How much time do we spend consuming things we don’t really want? How much time do we spend absorbing trivia that hardly interests us? How much time do we spend with people we don’t really care to see? Most of the distractions in our lives, like music, are basically harmless. They don’t subtract from our character. But they don’t add, either. They stand out as a fat zero in the sum of our existence. For all the time I spent in my younger years constantly listening to music or aimlessly playing videogames or hanging out with poorly chosen friends, I don’t feel especially damaged. But I do feel a sense of lost opportunity. 

Town mice, country mice

I drove home to Spokane for Thanksgiving this year. On the way back over to the Puget Sound region, the girl hitching a ride with me plugged her iPod into my stereo and put on The Arcade Fire’s new album The Suburbs, which I hadn’t heard yet. The second-to-last track, “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains),” is like many Arcade Fire tracks beautiful, angry, sad, and exhilarating all at once. Part of the refrain goes:

            Sometimes I wonder if the world’s so small
            that we can never get away from the sprawl.

Under ordinary circumstances, I would probably have found myself identifying with this sentiment. As it happened, though, I was driving through central Washington state, a vast reach of utter nothingness stretching to the horizon in all directions. Scab rock gorges give way to farms give way to scab rock give way to one-horse towns give way to forests give way to farms. For over 200 miles. I wanted to pull Régine out of the speakers by her beautiful voice and have her take a look around. You want to escape from the sprawl? Move to Waterville, WA.

Or if the emptiness of central Washington doesn’t appeal to you, try Oregon. Idaho. Montana. Wyoming. Nevada. New Mexico. British Columbia. Alberta. Saskatchewan. Manitoba. Most of North America is empty. Of course, nearly all city folk (dissatisfied Arcade Fire–types included) would instantly balk at the suggestion that they actually move out to the quiet stillness of any of these places. We would regard it as impracticable and offer excuses to that effect. How could we make money? Where would we buy groceries? How would we even start?

Plenty of country dwellers have figured out the answers to these questions, so when a frustrated city dweller asks them it must really just be an evasion from the larger issue, which is that most us would find ourselves terribly bored living in the country. This is surely our greatest fear when contemplating such a move. The distractions and superfluities of town life comfort us and define us. We may claim to hate much of our surroundings, but we all rely at least once in a while on movies, shopping, bars, restaurants, or other entertainments to spice up our otherwise dull evenings and weekends. To move to a prairie in North Dakota would be to rely on oneself for entertainment. It would mean sitting alone with one’s thoughts.


The juxtaposition of poetic urbanite’s lament and near-uninhabited countryside made me think that it’s more our own weaknesses that constrain our lives than it is any external circumstances. Our personal freedom may be out there, but it would require more courage than we possess to actually achieve it. Can we ever get away from the sprawl? Not us, no. Because we depend on it.