Headphones

Occasionally, you see some trend in society, in the culture, and you think, “If only I had seen that coming, I could have made a fortune!”  Well, someone clearly is getting rich selling…

… headphones!

Everywhere I go in Kharkov, I see people walking, riding and sitting with headphones on.  I see them walking on the streets.  I see them on buses and on the metro.  I see them in cafes and parks.  I see them on bicycles and roller blades (it’s not smart, but they do it).   

People who drive nice cars don’t need headphones; they can just turn up the volume on their 25-speaker car audio systems.  But those in Ladas or Zhigulis probably use headphones to feel like they have a 25-speaker system (and to feel like they are not driving a Lada or Zhiguli).

I am convinced that no one under the age of 22 can go out in public without wearing headphones.  It’s like going out without pants.  And probably 90 percent of those between 22 and 25 feel incomplete without something electronic in or covering their ears.  My extensive personal research indicates that 80 percent of all people under 30 are compelled to sport headphones in public, and a great many under 40 do the same.  I wish I had just one Swiss franc for every set of headphones in this city.

Editorial comment: I prefer the Swiss franc because of its relative stability - and because the name sounds cool.  I mean "Swiss franc"!  It sounds like the kind of money Mitt Romney would have in his wallet.  The Ukrainian hryvnia has been losing value of late, and most people here are worried that after the election, it will take a big drop.  There is no way I would take a chance on the euro right now, and the way the U.S. Federal Reserve is printing dollars, it may soon be worth less than the hryvnia, especially if the current administration remains in the White House while the rest of the country falls off that famous "financial cliff."  So sign me up for those cool Swiss francs.

But I digress.

Headphones allow people to feel alone and isolated while navigating the swarms of people in the city.  They let you shut out the world while you are out in the world.  It gives the users an excuse to ignore what goes on around them – not a good excuse, but an excuse nonetheless.  This is especially useful for young guys who don’t want to give up their seats on crowded buses to women or old people. 

In a time and place where personal privacy is hard to find, headphones give people a false sense of that privacy. 

Sometimes headphones are the “earbud” variety: tiny little speakers that you stick into your ear canals.  I don’t like these because they always fall out.  I guess this means I have the wrong sized ears or too much wax for the buds to stay in place.  An alternative is a “sport” headset, which is like earbuds attached to a thin frame that goes over your head or around the back and over your ears.  That’s what I have: the behind-the-head thingy.  No matter how much wax I produce, the little speakers don’t fall out.

Of course there are those who prefer to carry some heavy-duty, eardrum-busting megaheadphones.  These are the kind that look like they are for professional music producers or helicopter pilots.  I don’t mind these when I fly, but for just walking around town, they take up too much space in my bag.  Besides, I don’t really feel like I need to have concert-hall-quality sound when I’m just going for a short bus ride or walk.

Most people listen to music, of course.  And some people who are averse to real music listen to “rap” instead.  The proliferation of digital music devices the size of a matchbox that can hold a million songs makes it easy.  But there are others who listen to pod casts, audio books or foreign language lessons.  So in this way, they can be quite useful.

I don’t object to this trend, really.  Sometimes I do the same.  I carry a tiny iPod Nano with 16 gigs of memory, and there are occasions when I feel like shutting out the world too.  But more often, the bus trip is too short to enjoy the music, and when I walk, I prefer the safety of being able to hear what is going on around me.  Call me old fashioned, but I like to take advantage of my good hearing and give myself plenty of advanced warning that I’m about to be run over by a garbage truck.

That would be an awful way to go out… with the garbage.

Aside from the fact that I didn’t see the trend coming and get in early to make gobs of money, there is only one problem I see with all these headphones everywhere: not only can I see them, but too often I can HEAR them too!

This is where I part company with roughly half the headphone users around here.  The point of wearing headphones is so that you can listen to your sound without inflicting it on others around you.  But more and more, I find that I have no choice but to hear some insidious “rap” or other vile crap that some moron is serenading himself with in the seat behind me on a bus.

Perhaps these are just poor quality headphones that don’t seal well around the ears.  Or maybe – just maybe – the user has the volume up so loud that the sound has no choice but to migrate out the top of his head.  In that case, I can take some solace from the knowledge that he will be deaf in five years and his brain will turn to jelly within 10. 

Perhaps soon, someone will invent the next phase of personal listening, which would bypass actual sound all together and transmit the audio directly into the person’s brain cells.  That would be great, because while the “listener” is slowly destroying his noggin, I can relax in peace to the soothing sounds of car horns, poorly tuned engines, screeching brakes and screaming babushkas.

So… I wonder how I can get in on this direct audio-to-brain thing?