On Ambient Sound

What a month without it revealed

It’s the crack of dawn. The alarm goes off. Eyes closed I roll over searching the sheets for the source of the noise, I open my eyes only faintly to distinguish between the stop, and the snooze button, before pushing the right one to shut the thing off.

It’s one of those mornings, I’m feeling rather melancholic. Still between sheets, I reach back for my phone, open Spotify, and just before I press play… I put the phone down. I let the feeling sit on the tip of my tongue, moving its melancholic taste from side to side, trying to decipher its ingredients. I mull over it for a while, ever so often shifting to a different side of the bed, as though each side revealed a little something different, adding to my understanding.

Understanding did little to regulate how I felt. And for no particular reason at all, I chose not to do the one thing that usually helped: playing music. I was, as some might say, rawdogging my emotions.

On Emotions

It’s rather fascinating how much of our emotions are dependent, or regulated by music. The calming sounds of a meditative playlist to alleviate anxiety, uncertainty, and ward off melancholy; just enough to stay focused on a task.

Or the bolstering sounds of an Afrobeat playlist, used to prime oneself before heading out to a social event—to make a person feel indulgent, when they’d rather be left alone on a couch.

It’s fascinating, but not surprising.

After all, long before I was born, King Saul’s rage was said to be tempered by the sounds that reverberated from David’s Harp.

But it begs the question. Have we grown dependent on music? Unable to function properly without it?

And so each morning after the first, I’d reach for my phone like a recently sober alcoholic swinging open the refrigerator, only to be reminded by its empty shelves that all the booze had been thrown out. The first thing I noticed was how long I sat with my thoughts, especially the ones that bothered me. Unable to drown them out, I’m forced to pay attention, choosing whether or not to address them. And for anything I chose not to address, its neglect was more conscious. And so I was rarely in doubt about what plagued me, because I could hear how often I spoke about these things, both in my head and out loud.

Soothing alone isn’t what we use music for. Even in moments of excitement, we reach for it. You catch a little crush and you suddenly have Ayra Star and Kotrell on repeat. You need a little push, and you turn to Watch The Throne for the extra boost during a workout.

But what if we all simply stayed whelmed, not going over, or under?

When you’re happy, be happy. Be as happy as your natural state allows, and when you’re sad, be as sad as you can be, and then keep it moving. No need to fuel things beyond their natural state.

My main problem with this though, is that it inches way too close to stoicism for my comfort. And it downplays the role of music to a mere catalyst, when often it doesn’t heighten an emotion, but guides it instead. It’s why we find solace in sad songs, when we’re sad.

On Space

While the day had started out without music, I also chose not to have any sort of sounds in the background as well, meaning no podcasts, TV, Youtube and so on. Everything came through with a piercing kind of clarity and force. The sounds of my heavy steps as I walked around, the thundering rush of tap water as I filled the kettle, the snap of the toothpaste cap as I opened and closed it, and the shower, like a marching band as its members drummed against my skin. It was a bit odd.

The amplified sounds that now filled my apartment only emphasized its emptiness, making me keenly aware of my aloneness. Not loneliness, but rather a stronger awareness that I was the only one here—as though sound had been an evicted roommate whose absence now glared back at me.

The same awareness carried on to third spaces like the gym, sidewalks, and coffee shops. This wasn’t particularly jarring: the grunting of the guy trying to crush his PR, the side conversations of the gym influencers, the clanking of equipment, or the waking sounds of Toronto as she starts her day. What I however found curious, was my keen sense of self in these spaces and how I interact with them.

No longer mindlessly lost in a podcast or playlist, new thoughts begin to break through. Thoughts like, When was the last time you tried this workout?, Maybe let’s take a different walking path today or Isn’t that the guy you saw the other day? We should say hi—questioning established patterns and proposing new ones.

On Attention

At the corner of one of the walls in my living room, leans an art print. The illustration is of a man with a gun and an aesthetic similar to that of a Niger Delta militant. The curious thing about this man, is that he has no pupils. A third eye rests on his forehead instead. On this particular morning, unencumbered by the ambience of my now evicted roommate, I was drawn to it. And upon closer inspection, I noticed that the spot where his pupils were meant to be, was a different shade of white than the rest of his eyes. I had always thought the whole thing was just white. Am I just noticing this?

Needless to say, I noticed a lot more about myself and my environment, as they no longer had to fight too hard to garner my attention. But what I found more interesting, is how much my mind needed to latch on to something else. This was most evident while I worked, as I oscillated between doing a task and jumping on Instagram. It’s not that I didn’t do this before, but I believe its frequency had increased, as though it were methadone and I needed to temper my withdrawal.

Away from the methadone, I found my mind had no choice but to make whatever I focused on more engaging, pulling me in and propping up ideas like: What if we try this new thing? Or that? Or maybe we should reach out to that team? and so on.

Perhaps ambient sound is better suited to mindless work, not in a bad way, but in a way that allows you to do repetitive tasks with focus. You’re locked in. But this focus could stop you from pivoting to something else of equal importance, or taking a pause to ponder a different idea. For instance, I might be halfway through a task when the thought hits: Wait—maybe there’s a better way to do this? Or worse, maybe I shouldn’t be doing this at all. It’s a different kind of attention to detail, the sort I might have blown past before, fueled by the dopamine hum of ambient sound.

On Time

As hours turned into days and days into weeks, I found that time stretched further. Often I caught myself thinking, Isn’t today Thursday?—when in fact it was still Wednesday. Time moved a bit slower. This meant I had a little more time to get through daily tasks and commitments. But also, when I was bored, I was bored.

In periods of inactivity my mind scrambled frantically for something to do:

Let’s watch TV.

No! I don’t want to start a new show.

Let’s go for a walk.

How about a book?

Let’s do something, anything!

Music, perhaps to some extent, had suppressed this hunger. And these moments seemed to stretch on forever.

Did my perception of time change? Or did the absence of ambient sound change my pace in the world? The answer likely lies somewhere in between.

On Randoms

Some things couldn’t quite fit neatly into a box, like how I felt a bit lighter mentally after work—having more bandwidth for social activities than before. Who knew playing lofi-girl in the background for eight hours could take a mental toll? Clearly not me.

I also wonder how the lack of ambient sound affects other activities. Take sex for instance. When you have sex, are you lost in the euphoria of the music, or your lover? When the record stops, and all you have are sounds of heavy breathing, wet kisses, and ta-ta-tas, do you find you’re still into them, repulsed by them, or worse, indifferent?

Conclusion

It’s been about a month since that faithful morning. Save for social gatherings and situations beyond my control, I’ve gone without having podcasts, TV, or music playing in the background, while I did something else. This is not to say I haven’t listened to music, I have. If I really wanted to check out a music video, I turned on the TV and gave it my full attention. But the moment it was done, I stopped it before Youtube went on a never ending playlist.

So is this my life now? A man who rawdoggs his emotions, is always attentive, moves through life with time to spare, and possibly has coitus without a playlist on.

No. I happen to like nice things.

That said, I’d be remiss if I didn’t recognize the benefits that came from this experiment—and to some degree, to hold on to them. I’m now a bit more aware of my reliance on ambient sound, and so perhaps a reasonable solution is to form habits that strike a balance between indulgence and auditory solitude.

So how about you? How much do you rely on background sound—and how long do you think you could go without it?