Saturday, August 26, 2006

Life in stereo

I miss listening to stereos. Those bulky boxes that adorn livingrooms and bedrooms. The ones that you see in movies and television shows where they crank up the volume and party the night away while having profound epiphanies which end in disasters. I have one in my room. A stereo/amplifier kind of sorts. But it is all busted up now. No thanks to the house help's clandestine usage of it. Funny enough, we don't even bother having it fixed. Not a care in the world. We just watch it gather dust like a child seeing snow for the first time.

I blame humanity's new found reliance to the wonders of technology. Today, we could always count on our computers and MP3 players (the gorgeous but ghastly IPod) to satisfy any musical cravings that we may have churning our insides. It's like feeding your beloved rabid dog with class A caviar. Even if it is more expensive. We could always buy stereos now anywhere. On the streets of the metro and stalls in Tiangges and flea markets. We could even buy it in groceries in a very cheap price. The same price as buying a bunch of CD's in one go. But we don't buy them. Instead, we rally to the nearest fancy electronics store and complain about the overpriced device but hook up with it anyway, learning the power of credit along with it.

Stereos still has, and will always have this old charm. Listening to it during an afternoon spell or even while it lulls you to sleep at night. Letting the music escape through the circular speakers and fill the room a certain kind of vibe. Letting the music dance around the room as if to celebrate its liberation from an oppressive box. As you get entranced with the dance and let you slip away and dream dreams that you haven't seen before.

I guess music is an experience. Lately we only hear or listen to music, even dance with the beat. But we don't really experience it. I have been told that tracks in a CD is arranged in a certain way because it has to be listened that way. The arrangement maximizes what the musician wants. It was i suppose meant to take us away to someplace else and see visions. Whatever that means. Though i agree. It is nice to listen to CD's from the first to last track. sometimes I come back panting. But now, with a million assorted songs at our disposal, we get shorter attention spans and get bored and move on to the next song we seem to like listening next. We get fragmented and disconnected. We do not have value to anything and anything is subject to disposal at the end of brief lives. Like nothing matters anymore and everything are just mere objects.

And then I am just rambling. I do not know where this is headed. Although, what i know is that if you like the IPod just because it maximizes your cow licks or it really goes well with your bag and you feel you really look happening with headphones placed in your ear eventhough music is not playing, you might as well have just skipped this post and went on with your life. hehehe.

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