#51: The Headphones
What are you listening to in your headphones as you walk to work? What do you play on your car radio, or on the sound system set up in your kitchen to inspire you to cook amazing meals? (Because let’s face it, every meal tastes better when cooked to awesome music).
Headphones are a pretty standard commodity now, almost everyone has them. With phones that are made to be a 100 gadgets in one, we can all easily listen to music on the go.
Gosh, I remember the days when I listened to my Walkman, playing only one CD at a time. When I was given my first ever iPod it was pretty exciting, and I soon filled up all the space on it with my eclectic collection of music.
Yet I often didn’t have far to walk, not until university, so I didn’t have much occasion to use my headphones outside of the house. It’s only now, as I trek up and down the Durham hills, that I pull out my headphones which live in my coat pocket, and stick on some inspirational tunes to spur me up the hill homewards after a particularly tiring class.
They’re a pretty wonderful invention, remarkable in their own way. As with much of our tech, it existed in sci-fi first: Ray Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451 predicted them, but they weren’t called headphones, they were called ‘Seashells’:
In her ears [there were] the little Seashells, the thimble radios tamped tight, and an electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talk coming in […]
His depiction of them is apocalyptic, in a world where they stop people from listening to others, so much so that they resort to lip-reading. They aren’t exactly painted in the most positive of lights.
Yet everyone uses them now. Sometimes, with this passage in mind, I do purposefully walk without my headphones it, taking in the sounds of the world around me. But other times you just need that push up the hill, that persistent drum beat to energise you. You need the imaginary world of sound that headphones hold.
Listening to music is a unique experience, just as with reading or watching a film. With music, you listen, you are told things, but you also imagine a scene to go with the sounds, whether it’s pop music, classical, or an audio book. Headphones aren’t like speakers — they drown out all other sounds in the world so that you are lost in another, one only you can hear.
So what world am I currently lost in? For the past three or four weeks, I have been lost in the world of Hamilton, that famous musical that has sold out its first hit on the West End up until June 2018. It’s one hell of a phenomenon, and I can totally understand why. It is such an incredible musical, an awe-inspiring combination of music, rap, rhythm, harmonies, drama, emotion, history, legacy, and the wide open, hopeful feeling of America. It’s incredible. When I finished listening to it all the way through (on my headphones, for the full effect), I cried.
The power of Hamilton is the world it creates through such brilliant rhythms and sound, through the overlaying of phrases and tunes, the use of motifs that run through it, the use of different music genres for different characters (‘Farmer Refuted’ running into ‘You’ll Be Back’ are my favourites when it comes to style). And there are the harmonies — oh my gosh, the The Schuyler Sisters are incredible, with their harmonies and their sass:
I’ve been reading “Common Sense” by Thomas Paine.
So men say that I’m intense or I’m insane.
You want a revolution? I wanna revelation
So listen to my declaration:
‘We hold these truths to be self-evident
That all men are created equal.’
And when I meet Thomas Jefferson,
I’m ’a compel him to include women in the sequel!
And it is this inclusion of women as well as men that makes this a modern history, one that I love for the different layers and perspectives it offers, for both men and women. The original actresses of The Schuyler Sisters even upheld this in their performance at the Super Bowl:
I am strongly attached to this musical and its characters, and this has been the only thing playing in my headphones for the last few weeks. I know it deeply, I sing it as I go around the house, little snippets stuck in my head. For my 21st birthday last week I was given this incredible book, which contains notes on the making of the musical, as well as a full libretto. It is beautiful and fascinating, as well as being perfect to help me sing along.
Yet I have never seen Hamilton, I have only heard it, and I wonder what will happen if I ever get to see the show for real. All I have to go on are the sounds, and now the brilliant photographs in this book. If (I hope when) I go to see it, will it fit my imagination?
I’m ’a compel all of you to listen to it. Even if you don’t think you’re a fan of rap, you’ll be a fan of this rap. Just listen to ‘Cabinet Battle’, numbers 1 and 2, for some epic historical political rap battles on the formation of America as it is today. And looking for something to inspire you to live your life to who you are? Just listen to ‘My Shot’. This is one powerful musical (and not just in terms of helping me power up the hill as I blast it through my headphones). It covers so many important and relevant issues that still affect us today, and asks some pretty striking questions:
If you stand for nothing, Burr, what’ll you fall for?
Hamilton embodies so many ideas of America, so many hopes and plans and sounds. I’m pretty sure it’ll be the one thing to play through my headphones for a long while yet.
