Listening and Hearing

I love music. I love listening to it and I love singing it. I consider my IPod one of the great inventions and use it every day. But surely, there’s a time and a place for it. I think that listening to music while driving is wonderful, enhancing both experiences at the same time. I think that listening while walking is also quite nice depending on where you’re walking and what you are listening to. Live concerts can be great place to hear your favorite singers. But must we endure it while on hold or much worse while listening to someone speaking on T.V.?

I must disclose that I am a bit hard of hearing. I’m usually fine on the phone or when talking with someone who is articulate and whose mouth I can see making the sounds. My hearing, like that of many of my contemporaries, starts failing when there is a bit of background noise. I can’t hear in a noisy restaurant or at a semi-wild party. Sometimes, this cannot be avoided. But then there’s television.

I resent background music on T.V. while someone is talking. I makes it almost impossible to make out the words in the midst of this unnecessary musical noise. I find it very frustrating. I don’t need music to have a reaction to the words the character is speaking, the ones I can’t hear. The words and the speaker’s presentation of them in context should suffice. I am hard of hearing, but I am not stupid or without the ability to react to verbal and non-verbal stimuli.

At this point some might be thinking, “why not use closed captioning to see the words you can’t hear?” Have you seen it lately? Sometimes it is so delayed that you have forgotten what the scene was. Sometimes when there are just one or two words you can’t quite hear, it turns out that whoever is typing the closed captions didn’t hear it either. Sometimes it seems like the transcriber just gave up. Being so much behind, the caption writer just says “the hell with it” and stops writing and we stop knowing what was being said. Why can’t whatever is not scripted be taped and then transcribed so when it airs we can see the words as they are spoken and not several minutes later? Those already scripted should have simultaneous subtitles. And it would be great if the words could be spelled closer to the actual.

And while we’re on the subject of gratuitous background noise, there are the laugh tracks. They do not interfere with my hearing. They interfere with my enjoying. Again, I understand the language well enough and get jokes well enough, as most of us do, to know what is funny and react accordingly. I find it superfluous and insulting to have a laugh track tell me what’s funny and when to laugh along with the make-believe crowd.

While I have a problem of listening but not hearing, there is also the issue of hearing without listening.

What is that noise at eight A.M.? Is it construction? No. Is it tree trimming? No. What is it and when will it stop? It is someone with ears covered using a leaf blower. Next question - why? Why is this person using a gas guzzling, noisy machine to do what a rake and/or broom could do more efficiently, more effectively and much more quietly? Why is the person who hired him letting him, or has the homeowner left for work already or gone deaf? Why is the worker chasing a single leaf out to the street? Why do we even allow noisy leaf blowers?

And what about people talking on the cell phones while in public? Must we hear their innermost thoughts even though we are not listening? What about privacy? Isn’t that the rage nowadays that we are all concerned that the government might have access to our communications? We have otherwise intelligent people acting outraged at the invasion of their privacy because the government has access to all hundreds of billions phone records that do not include the name of the person or what was said - just what number called what number for how long at what time.   Then why are we forced to eavesdrop on our neighbors and fellow customers? And it wouldn’t be so bad if the conversations we were subjected to were interesting. It might not be so bad if there was any humor or gossip or metaphysical speculation. But it is usually so boring you almost want to interject something to raise the level of discourse. I sometimes start singing real loud or I shout at my dog even if she isn’t with me at the time. If I have to listen to them, let them have to listen to me.

Then there are those who want to share their rap music with us. They drive worthless cars with state-of-the-art sound systems and they want the world to know.  The base is usually overwhelming making it impossible to hear the moronic lyrics. It’s like going to a restaurant where the service is so bad you forget about the terrible food.

It is now late at night and the only sound I hear is that of my steam heat radiator sizzling. It is one of my favorite sounds - the sound of warmth. This sound is being interrupted by the sound of my fingers touching the various keys to form the words I am writing. I’m going to stop now so to better hear the sound of soothing warmth.