Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 26, 1994 TAG: 9407220008
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: E3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SETH WILLIAMSON
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
For just one lousy Friday night a month, all we want is a quiet watering hole where we can hoist a few and solve the world's problems before heading home - with no screaming music!
I mean, is this so unreasonable?
It seemed like a good idea at the time. Charlie the entomologist, Gibson, Mike and Steve the architects, Dan the philosophy professor, Rick the engineer, John the professor of English, and the occasional media slime like yours truly decided to get together for a little conversation and a few drinks after work on first Fridays.
No big expensive meal. Just 90 minutes or a couple of hours' worth of talk, then down the road and home. Simple, right?
Wrong. So far as we can discover, there is no such thing in the Roanoke Valley as a bar without a jukebox loud enough to sterilize frogs and make your ears bleed. And on Friday nights it's always cranked up to 11. Somehow a conversation about Gertrude Himmelfarb's new collection of essays isn't the same when Travis Tritt's voice is making the Lone Star bottles on the table rattle.
Our most recent attempt led me to wonder: Why do Americans pickle themselves in music no matter where they are? In his great book of apologetics, the Penses, Pascal said that we divert ourselves with any pastime at hand to disguise from ourselves our essential misery.
Is this what's happening with the continual drizzle of forgettable music that bathes us in nearly every public place? Muzak in the supermarket and on the elevator, the radio at work and in the car, MTV in the kids' bedrooms, jukeboxes in restaurants and bars. Are we trying desperately to distract ourselves from ourselves?
One thing is sure. The continual soaking in music guarantees that our appetite for it will never be very good. If you nibble potato chips all day long, you won't be excited by your evening meal, no matter how good it is.
We can no longer summon the appetite for music that our ancestors had centuries ago. In medieval Europe, the chance to hear a band of skilled players came far less than once a year for most people. Our forefathers and mothers would endure great hardship to hear a few fiddlers, pipers and singers, and the memory of such events glowed in the imagination for years afterward.
We, by contrast, live our days continuously serenaded by great symphony orchestras and famous rock and country musicians. The problem nowadays is to find a spot - somewhere, anywhere - where blessed silence reigns. It's no wonder that we can no longer even imagine the fierce relish which our ancestors took in music.
I program classical music on radio for a living, so I'm not suggesting that we listen to music only once every two or three years. But after more than a decade of great music eight hours a day, five days a week, I can testify that constant exposure has a price. For instance, there are some (mainly Romantic era) composers whose music I enjoyed in 1983; a decade later there are days when it seems that if I never hear them again for the rest of my life, it'll be too soon.
A few months ago in Phoenix there was a meeting of public radio music personnel, the great majority of whom play classical music day in and day out. We had a chance to hear the Phoenix Symphony one night. I overheard two colleagues being asked if they were going and - I'm not making this up - the reply was, "Get real. We're gonna go play miniature golf." Two more sad casualties in the world of wall-to-wall music, OD'd on Pachelbel and aesthetically dead on arrival.
Herewith a modest proposal. Would it be such a sacrifice to have a hamburger in a fast-food restaurant without an order of Muzak on the side? Would Saturday morning at the grocery store be any less pleasant without the Living Strings sawing away on every Beatles song ever written? Can't we even be put on hold by local businesses without having to endure '60s oldies on the telephone?
And - especially - aren't there enough people in the Roanoke Valley to support even one jukebox-free, Muzak-free bar? My friend Dan, who teaches philosophy at Radford University, was reminiscing about the workingman's taverns in the urban Northeast of his youth. Their patrons, he said, could be found in one of four places: the mill, home, church, or their neighborhood tavern.
They didn't come to the tavern for noise, which they'd endured all day long in the factory; they came for a few drinks in peace. Conversation? Maybe, maybe not. "The loudest sound you'd hear in a place like that was the click of the pool balls," said Dan wistfully.
It's time we started treating music as it deserves to be treated, as something consequential and full of potential for elevating existence to extraordinary levels. It can't be special if it's impossible to lead your life without a soundtrack provided by somebody else.
At the very least, it should be up to individuals - in most times and places, anyway - as to whether they want to hear music. As a society we've become sensitized to the possible dangers of second-hand smoke; let's do something about the spiritually deadening smog of second-hand music that saturates nearly every public space in America.
Seth Williamson lives in Floyd County.
by CNB