As I was walking to class the other day, rockin' out to my jams blasting at full volume through my headphones, in a sudden moment of clarity, I realized that I probably looked like a total moron headbanging, air drumming and mouthing the lyrics to music that only I could hear.
Yes, I was actually doing that in public while walking to class. What can I say, it was a great song.
Anyway, I took my headphones out and looked around to see who had observed my ridiculous jamming. But in doing so, I noticed that almost everyone else who was walking next to me, behind me or around me was also wearing headphones. Now, I've definitely noticed that a lot of people wear headphones before, but that day I considered something.
What if every person in the world, whenever they listened to music through headphones, had a digital display of what they were listening to hovering above their heads?
For example, that day, at that time, the words above my head would have read:
"Ozzy Osbourne, Hellraiser, Diary of a Madman" (Artist, Song, Album).
So then, instead of actually listening to my music, I spent the rest of my walk to class finding people who were wearing headphones and trying to figure out what their displays would say. It wasn't until I decided that this was going to be my blog entry for the week that I realized that I was stereotyping people.
I was stereotyping people based on music. What kind of wacky craziness is that? But then when I thought about it, it actually made a lot of sense. Music is a highly influential factor in the lives of many people. So logic should progress such that if a certain style of music is heavily influential in ones' life, that they would (intentionally or not) begin to embody certain qualities of that music or the musicians who play it.
To use myself as an example, I didn't start wearing a bandanna until I started listening to heavier music (rock, metal, glam etc.). I thought, and still think, it looks awesome, and why do I think that? Because guys like Steven Tyler, Nikki Sixx and Keith Richards were rocking the bandanna look.
But even though it's feasible to think that you can judge the kind of music someone is listening to by the way they look, I decided it's best not to. For me, there are few truer sayings than, "You can't judge a book by its cover." Literally and figuratively, I thought I was going to hate the Lord of the Rings, but today I regard it as one of the best pieces of literature ever written. Similarly, how do I (or anyone else for that matter) know that the tiny little girl wearing a PINK jacket and Uggs isn't listening to some seriously heavy shit? And who's to say that the kid with the leather jacket, tattoos and piercings isn't listening to a Beethoven Sonata, or Taylor Swift for that matter?
What I'm getting at here, is that music is one of those awesome things that transcends everything. Race, gender, ethnicity, creed, religion and so on. It's crazy.
Who would've thought that everyone could be brought together by sounds?
I feel like that last sentence was super hippie... but still it's missing something. I'm gonna try again.
Who would've thought that everyone could be brought together by sounds... man
Whenever I see someone listening to their iPod, I can't help but wonder what song is playing. However, I never thought of this as stereotyping. It's pretty interesting to think about. I agree that music definitely influences peoples' lives, and they do sort of become like the music they listen to. This was a really cool post... man
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