Remember what it was like to look out the window of a bus, train or car without a voice in your head? What would have Kerouac, London, Steinbeck, Hemingway and others written if they had always walked around listening to a walkman, an ipod, or watching a portable DVD player on those long trips on ships and trains?
How many of us postpone the gratification of our company, the company of our thoughts?
Having asked that, I enjoy supplying the soundtrack to my long bus rides, though.
It puts the landscape on a different plane. I enjoy supplying the landscapes to subway rides in the guise of a book. ( NY subways are so bleak that that must account for all the people reading ). My brother has recently complained that his sanctuary will be ruined once cell phones start functioning in NYC subway tunnels.
Still, there's a certain comfort, a type of meditation that is achieved, and stems from the stimulus received from the motion of the vehicle and the constantly changing or unchanging views. No other stimulus, just the sensation of movement.
Where your thoughts go depend partly on that stimulus.
Many a times I've been on a long bus ride, enjoying music on my headphones, or reading a book, and for a moment, I don't want the journey to end. I don't want traffic jams, and I definetely do not want people talking beside me.
Maybe it's not goodbye, daydreaming, just daydreaming on a different level.
Zaragoza, 11.5.2006
1 comment:
I don't know if in this day and age we can get away from some kind of sound, but it certainly would be nice to do so. We have noise cancelling headphones though, on the other hand I read somewhere that Carlos Fuentes wrote one of his novels with The Beatles as soundtrack... To listen or not to listen...some music I can listen while I am reading, some texts I can read while listening to music, but there are songs and texts that demand full attention (i. e. Bob Dylan...)
Post a Comment