Tag Archives: Listening

Listening to Old Favorites in a New Way

I am absolutely terrible at finding gifts for people. I never really know what they’re going to like, and half the time I end up getting them something they don’t really like, or never end up using. So it was to my great surprise that this year’s big gift to my sixteen-year-old son turned out to be a great gift for the whole family, and one we’ve enjoyed almost daily ever since Christmas Day itself.

My son has, in the past few years, been getting seriously into music, to the extent of teaching himself guitar, writing his own music on the computer, and exploring worlds of sound that are far outside of my own experience – everything from brutal death metal to prog rock and avant-garde jazz. With all this interest in music, I felt it was finally time to get him – and by proxy, myself – into the theoretical best possible sound there is to hear – vinyl records.

So I splurged and ended up getting a decent record player and some serious speakers (within budget and reason), and it’s played at least one record a day ever since we first set it up in the living room (it was originally going to go in the loft). Along with it came Opeth’s In Cauda Venenum, Polygondwanaland by King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, and a whole bunch of old records we got second-hand from someone on Facebook.

And I have to say, both myself, my son and my wife believe it sounds better than anything we’ve ever heard – and I have both studio headphones for music production as well as some very nice consumer-grade headphones for general enjoyment. There’s an almost undefinable richness to the sound, a warmth and detail to the signal that just isn’t there in digital recreations – whether it be CDs or digital streaming.

The biggest problem with having a record player – aside from keeping it clean and dust-free – is that there just aren’t enough records to listen to! In these days of on-demand streaming and the commoditization of music, it’s hard to get used to the idea that you may only have a handful of records to listen to – and you’re going to end up listening to them over and over again. Vinyl’s expensive, too – most places sell records for $20-$25 each, which makes building a library a slow, long-term prospect.

Nonetheless, I’m really glad we have the record player now, even if to some it might seem like a step backwards; the pure audio quality of straight analog audio is incredible, and the whole setup itself is just somehow enjoyable. We sit together and listen to music, which is something we don’t even do with TV shows (everyone’s off in their own rooms binging Netflix and Hulu). It’s almost – I hesitate to say – brought us closer as a family, and that’s something I appreciate to no end.

So as listen to Beethoven and Blackwater Park on vinyl, I’ll continue to appreciate music as a beautiful art form, and as a tool for bringing people closer to each other, and enjoy every single moment of it.

Do you have a record player? If so, what are your favorite albums to listen to? Let me know in the comments!

The Toxicity of Revenge Culture

Every time something tragic happens – particularly when it’s heightened by racial tension, like the murder of George Floyd – it seems the worst of humanity comes out of the woodwork. Alongside news of protests, police brutality and burning buildings are countless streams of people – usually white – caught on camera being aggressively racist, inciting or causing violence, and all-round being essentially despicable pieces of human garbage.

It isn’t clear whether this seems to happen more during times of public outrage because racists are fighting what they see as a threat to their way of life, or if it’s just that the rest of us pay more attention at these times, but from calling cops on non-threatening black men to assualting young girls trying to stand up for Black Lives Matter, there has been no end to the instances of hate directed at the people who are trying desperately to fight for their freedom and equality.

The good news, of course, is that in today’s society of smart phones and everywhere-cameras, it’s become increasingly difficult to act like a bigot in public without being caught. And in the instances where these outrageous performances are recorded and uploaded to the internet, they often go viral – a swift dose of karma to the perpetrators.

And karma feels good. It’s undeniably satisfying to see a racist cut down to size; it feels good to watch as someone unbearably proud of their whiteness is ripped apart on social media.

The problem is that this isn’t an answer to racism. It isn’t an answer to intolerance, or bigotry, because the people who were initially the agressors become victims of hate themselves, and even if it feels like they deserve it, many of these people’s lives are destroyed by their acts of intolerance. What happens then is that these people, who clearly believe in their own superiority, don’t learn not to be a bigot; they learn to hide it. They don’t learn to change; they learn instead that they were right all along, and that the people they hated deserve that hate.

Nearly every one of these stories I’ve seen of people abusing others from a delusional position of authority has ended with them losing their jobs, their homes, and at times even their families. Corporate sponsors cut ties, employers fire them, and they’re left with no means to live – and worse, the stain of being branded forever a racist indelible on their reputation.

Now, I’m not advocating that these people ‘deserve’ better; I don’t believe in judging others without knowing them, and an individual act of racism does not a racist make – just like being wrong once doesn’t make you wrong all the time. But what happens is that the internet allows people, from the relative safety of their online anonymity, to pass judgement nonetheless on people they’ve never met and know nothing about.

But what I do believe is that the answer to racism doesn’t lie in avenging the victims, or in destroying the establishment. By taking everything away from someone who made a racist remark or acted out against another person because of their inherently misplaced beliefs, we’re only reinforcing the notion that the ‘others’ are indeed bad people, and that they’ll be punished for speaking out. It fosters a false victim mentality, and breeds a culture that actually causes racism to fester and grow. Rather than looking to themselves to ask why this happened, these people will simply blame the oppressed for oppressing them.

No – the answer to racism lies in education. I believe strongly in the inherent goodness of humanity – the idea that people are good at heart (at least to some degree), and their upbringing and education is what shapes their personalities. As you navigate life, growing older day by day, it’s likely that you’ll end up choosing paths that fit in line with your taught beliefs naturally, which only reinforces those notions and ideas that, for many of us, remain subconscious all our lives. It’s easy to teach a four-year-old to play nice with others; it’s much harder to change the outlook of a forty-year-old.

And some people, of course, are taught so poorly in their childhood, and live a life that so strongly reinforces their negative beliefs, that they quickly become irredeemable. This happens in all walks of life, of course, but since we live in a society that has always favored white men over all others, it allows for those immutable personalities to rise to power more easily than those with more open minds, which allows them to make the rules and define the society we live in to their own liking … leaving room to grow for the systemic racism and misogyny that has rotted the heart of this country for centuries.

But these people – these truly ‘bad apples’ – are generally few and far between. Most people, I think, have the capacity to relearn their world-view in the face of new information, so long as it’s presented in a way that doesn’t uproot everything they’ve ever known. People fear change, and will cling desperately to unfamiliarity. By wreaking revenge on people who are outwardly racist, we’re only causing further damage to the idea of peaceful equality. You can’t build yourself up by tearing others down.

So what I suggest is this: next time you see a story on Facebook or Twitter about a racist being put in their place, ask yourself – am I really so different? Have I never laughed at a racist joke, or worried more about passing through a black neighborhood than a white one? Anyone can say the wrong thing at the wrong time, and whilst many of the acts making the rounds truly are deplorable, who are we to decide their fate? Getting someone fired for poor behavior when they aren’t even working is akin to vigilante justice, which is a dangerous thing to throw around.

I’ve heard it said that racism isn’t black people’s problem – it’s white people’s. In that context, I think it’s as important to listen to the racists as it is to listen to the oppressed. If we actually give everyone a forum to speak intelligently – rather than forcing people into acts of aggression because they feel their voices are unheard – I think there would be a much better opportunity to help those people with racial biases to actually understand themselves better, gain insight, and perhaps – just perhaps – grow and change.

I suppose what I’m really trying to say is that we shouldn’t celebrate vengence on those who would oppress others. That doesn’t make anyone a better person. Instead, we should focus on celebrating those people who are willing and able to change. Celebrate those who can learn to love, not those who have only learned to hate.

Who have you seen grow or change in the past few months? Who can you celebrate?

Sponsored Content

It used to be that if you wanted to know something, you searched for it. Algorithms would determine the best results to show you, based on your query, you’d click on them, find out what you wanted, and the world was a happy place.

Then the algorithms improved. They started being able to guess what you were going to search based on your history, a few words, a cross-comparison with others’ search terms. At first it seemed helpful, because you found you could find things you wanted faster and easier.

But then, people began to be able to pay for their results to show up first. The obvious ones, of course, were labeled as ‘Ads’, but the sneaky ones passed themselves off as information, when in fact they were pushing an agenda, political or otherwise. South Park once did an entire season on this.

Of course, this was all contained within the realm of internet searches. So long as you didn’t search for something, it was unlikely that sponsored content would come your way, and of course if you got lots of porn spam, we all knew why. But then, the smart phone came out. Devices with cameras and microphones that started to listen continuously, waiting for “Hey Siri” or “Alexa”, or whatever other smart assistant you use.

And then, the true genius of the ad came into play. Under the guise of privacy, when an app – say, Facebook – requests access to your microphone, it’s a yes/no decision. If you want to use Facebook to live stream, record little videos, or communicate with people, you have to choose ‘yes’.

But there’s a more sinister side to this. Granting Facebook access to the microphone grants it access at all times – whether you’re using the app or not. And whilst Facebook has gone on record as stating that they don’t use the microphone to inform advertising, it’s entirely possible their hordes of advertisers are not so scrupulous.

I used to not believe this, until I noticed that certain items would show up in my feed, just minutes after discussing them in person with a friend or family member. It’s happened too frequently, and too specifically, to be a coincidence (me thinks).

I doubt that any information gathered via call logs or microphones will be used for malicious intent, and certainly would be inadmissible in the context of crime investigation, but it does get a little scary to think – what if something I say in confidence ends up determining what I see online?

The wider-reaching consequence of this, more likely, is that it supports confirmation bias – the idea that we only seek out information that agrees with our world-view in the first place. The more we talk about things we believe in, the more of that will be shown to us, reinforcing our belief – whether or not it’s misplaced.

And that’s a dangerous thing.