Tuesday, September 09, 2008

earshot

I just posted this to fieldreport.com, too.  Can’t spread it too thin, am I right people?

It being a Friday morning, I take the 38 bus to work.  Since lately I’m usually riding the Presidio shuttle, it’s often a bracing invigorant to board that behemoth on Geary Boulevard and see what happens on board as I head downtown.  This particular day I find a seat where I like to sit, get out my notebook, pop in my earbuds, and start in on a bit of writing.  I’m wearing my nice blue jeans, a snappy shirt, and a little straw fedora; with my shades and my iPod I am well-cocooned and ready to indulge in some literary pretensions.  The music rises up in my ears and I let it shrug its way down my back, up my fingertips, out my toenails.  It’s loud music with an undulating beat.  Unconsciously I sway along with it as I start to write.

The bus is getting crowded.  At Fillmore a striking young couple enters.  She’s tall, solidly built but very elegant looking, dressed in khakis and a white business shirt that looks great against her dark skin.  With her is a tall, well-built young man in a wifebeater and jeans.  He wears stylish sunglasses and a white bandana around his head; a small moustache and goatee give his face ambiguous character.  He looks smart and tough.  And he and his girlfriend are hanging on the bar over my head, glancing coolly around.  I notice that he has gothic letters tattooed up the inside of his meaty upper arms; white ‘pod cords curl down from his ears to his beltline.  I glance up, as is my wont; he glances down and we exchange a curt, infinitesimal nod.  I go back to my book and he to his windowgazing.  A few minutes later my peripatetic glance lands again on him and we reiterate the miniature nod. 

Shortly thereafter the crowd shifts and he and his girlfriend move further back on the bus.  She gets a seat and he stands beside her, by the rear exit.  As I write and keep my eyes open for what’s going on around me, I watch him nodding his head to his music much as I am nodding mine to mine at times.  I wonder sometimes, as I watch him, if he is watching me, too, with cool calculation behind those Gucci sunglasses.  It sort of feels like he is.

The bus rumbles forward to its destination.  I stay on till the last stop, but most everybody is gone well before that.  The girlfriend with the white shirt has left the bus; I didn’t notice where.  Her boyfriend is still riding, getting off at a Market Street stop.  We’re almost alone on the bus.  As the bus comes to a halt and the doors accordion apart, he does not leave by the open exit next to him.  Instead, with calm purposeful strides he comes up the aisle.  As he walks past me, a hand flashes out, holding a square of orange plastic.  A CD case.  My hand rises and I palm the disk; my eyes inquire of my benefactor, whence the magnanimity.  He has not stopped moving, his parting glance is another little nod, but this one with the trace of a smile on his broad clenched jaws.  We share an appreciation for music, so he’s sharing the music itself.

So many times I’ve wanted to ask someone on the bus what he’s listening to, what she’s singing with her eyes closed, music echoing in her ears alone.  I’ve always wondered about the songs I couldn’t hear but that were moving my neighbors to the dregs of their euphonious souls. I never actually did ask any of them of course.  That would be invasive, uncomfortable; it would have demanded some exertion on my part.  But now someone way too cool for me ever to have inquired as to his choice of music, was dropping tunes right on me.  I tried to stay in character as I realized what he’d done, but I’m pretty sure my answer to his streetwise goodbye nod was a big broad smile full of grateful happy teeth. 

Once I get to work I load in his disk, reading over the photocopied insert that identified the tracks.  Twenty-four cuts, with names like “International Rock Stars” and “blackbradpitt” and “R8ted Gorgeous.” Several of the songs are identified mostly by number - “My Song 2,” “My Song 7.” It takes a long time to load but eventually I get the familiar media player screen and the music begins. I want to immerse myself in it, to participate to the utmost in the musical reality that this stranger has chosen to share with me, so I pull out my earbuds and pipe the beat directly into my brains.  Let’s see what the bus has brought me, music-wise.

It’s hip-hop, rough, crude, raw.  It is home-made - much of the back tracking sounds as if it were recorded from a tape player, or off a television.  The NFL theme, commercial jingles, all kinds of idiosyncratic sounds come up behind the relentless rumbling rap of the singer.  I try to listen to the whole thing, but I just can’t.  It’s not my cup of tea in the first place - hip-hop and rap play a very small part in the pantheon of my musical tastes.  Then, the execution is… underwhelming.  The lead and backup singer stumble over each other and the non-vocal tracks sound like cheap video games and cell-phone ring tones.  The lyrics, to the extent I can understand them, don’t tell me anything, and the whole thing feels repetitive and self-indulgent. 

But I don’t really care about any of that.  The thing that drives me to remove the headphones is that I can’t work while I’m listening to it.  There’s something personal and direct happening in this music, regardless of any issues I may be having with it on a technical level.  Whatever I’m hearing, it is true in a way that very little I hear really is.  It captures my concentration and I can’t think of anything else when it’s playing.  If I am going to get my work done, I can’t listen to it.  I have to shut it off. 

Since then I have not gone back to hear the last half-dozen tracks remaining.  However, I have paid much closer attention to the people on my bus who listen with particular enthusiasm to the music in their headphones, and I’ve wondered even more than usual to what insidious beat are they snapping their fingers.  There is clearly a lot of music going on just outside my perception of it, and I don’t think that I’m supposed to like all of it - but I do intend to hear as much of it as I can.  Whether it’s my style or not, it is going to tell me something worth knowing.