Having spent 10 days in Chicago and with two weeks more off from the day job, I decided to play tourist in Toronto. So I took a double-decker bus tour.
I am as interested in music as the next person — possibly more so, since I used to be a semi-professional musician in another life — but I've never felt the need to be, literally, constantly plugged into the soundtrack of my life. (Neither have I felt the need to be constantly on the phone, but that's a post for another day.)
Anyway, as I was saying before I interrupted myself, I believe in having a life to which the music that I hear forms the soundtrack instead of all-soundtrack-all-the-time.
When I took the coach tour, this girl who sat ahead of me clearly favoured the latter. She generously plugged one ear bud into her own ear, and the second into her mother's ear — rendering them unable to hear the surprisingly informed and witty commentary of the tour guide.
That was their loss, and didn't interfere with my enjoyment of the trip... although I did wonder what the point was of paying nearly $40 and then shutting out the tour guide. (I recognize that language may have been a factor in this case.)
But then the child apparently tired of her iPod — and began serenading us a series of random notes on a blue plastic harmonica, and my mood returned to that one of my stone friends in Chicago:
I agree. Just as the unexamined life is not worth living, the unlived life is not worth examining. Similarly, the music-less life may not be worth living, but the unlived life can have no soundtrack.
ReplyDeletePull the plugs from your ears, people!