Schizophonic Thrills

From ratsinthebelfry

Last night, on Rachel Maddow, I heard Larry Flynt gasp out that old chestnut, "Next to survival, humans are driven by sexual needs." I would put the drive to learn higher, just beneath survival; we can't seem to help doing it and, universally, we really seem to get off on it. Very little tops the bang I get out of a new idea and, these days, thanks to the blessings of the technological age, I can arrange it so my little head explodes as often as I can stand. You could say I'm idea addicted.



I have no Android or iPad or iPhone primarily because I'm afraid I'd overdose. It's that serious. But my family knows to step away from the laptop and never, ever get between me and my dearly beloved iPod, a first generation model of astounding elegance and some enduring, probably baked-on, chocolate smears. Long may it afford me endless harmless pleasure.

Nothing, however, as it turns out, not even an addiction to superbly read and recorded literature and non-fiction, is without its unintended side effects. In addition to the impact of ear buds on hearing, there's something called schizophonia. And, now that I know about it, it could explain a lot about what's wrong with me.

Schizophonia is the term R. Murray Schafer, Canadian composer and acoustic ecologist, has given to the disconnect created in our reality when what we hear and what we see, touch, and do are unrelated to each other. Julian Treasure, who blogs at Sound Business and wrote a book by the same name and who helps client sound brand their products (oh, what next!?), gave a TED talk in which he referred to schizophonia, but it left me looking for more. Google lead me on with a link to Steven Feld's unreadable essay entitled "From Schizophonia to Schizomogenesis" in The Traffic In Culture: Refiguring Art and Anthropology, which primarily argues that World Music displaces one from their local context of sound and music culture. And Randolph Jordan, PhD, made a study of sound/image disconnect in film, but I couldn't follow that, either.

From there, my Google search on the term schizophonia just fell apart into the assumption that I can't spell "schizophrenia." So I'm going to have to make up my own concept for schizophonia and you can help.

The kind of schizophonic disconnect that interests me is the one that happens when I'm doing some mundane household chore (why don't they refer to yardhold chores?) while listening to audiobooks or radio podcasts on my iPod. This is such a chronic occurrence in my world, this boring-task/fabulous-audio-universe experience, it's got to be having an effect on my brain. I'm smarter, you may rest assured and just ask me, but am I not also somehow dumber, less attuned to the sounds made when, for example, my pruning shears clip away at privet or I squirt cleaning fluid onto my shower door one more idiotic, eternal, stupifying, repetitive, monotonous, godIcan'ttakeanymore time? Who'd want to miss those?

What if, by immersing myself in the unbelievably beautiful language of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series as enacted by Patrick Tull while chopping onions, I lose my land legs and nick my index finger? Suppose that I'm entirely enthralled, as I have been this past week, in the author-read audio version of Mitchell Zukov's Lost in Shangri-La: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and The Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II  (do yourself a favor and get the book, too, for the pictures) while I'm mopping the floor. Will I somehow fail to relate properly to said floor? Will my floor feel mopped?

I'll never forget my first Walkman experience. I was taking the same, perfectly flat, perfectly predictable walk in my neighborhood that I took every morning before work, except that, on this memorable morning, Annie Lennox was trilling through the opening bars of "There Must Be An Angel" and I was nearly raptured up on the spot. My entire walking experience had reached a new level, enriched immeasurably thereafter by Bonnie Raitt, Sting, and Don Henley...not to date myself too much, I hope.

So, if I'm listening to Tom Ashbrook's "On Point" podcast from NPR or catching up on the Maddow broadcast I missed last night while I do my stability ball exercises, am I in danger of messing up my mirror neurons or, heaven forbid, placating myself with retirement when, without my audio adventures, I'd be out doing something entrepreneurial or, at least, nobly altruistic? Perhaps I've succeeded too admirably in my avoidance of boredom, but look at all I learn.

Just today, I washed, folded, and put away two loads of laundry while toodling along happily to Bill Bryson reading A Short History of Nearly Everything, wherein I learned all manner of lively bits about nineteenth century scientific breakthrough, the horrors of leaded gasoline, and how to construct sentences like the Brits do. (My friend JES at Running After My Hat recently accused me of writing Brysonesque comments on his posts and I'm guilty, guilty, guilty of undue influence and schizophonically charming phraseology.)

More likely, I've just accelerated the well-known aging process where I don't know what the hell I'm doing while I'm doing it. I will admit that I'm increasingly forgetful, in addition to forever begging that the television be turned up. And I sometimes actually ignore my dear husband when he's talking to me, because it's just so much trouble to switch the lock mode off on my iPod and stop the story for a second, so I just nod and smile; I claim that makes me a nicer partner and no man would DARE complain that a woman isn't listening to him. And, of course, there are those abusively relentless reminders of the dangers of talking on cell phones while driving; no one seems to pay the least attention to them, but at least they are inexorable and something in this world should be. Perhaps there's an oblique lesson for iPod-heads in there, too, if I cared to pay attention and wasn't already defensive as hell on this subject.

For a really, really good time, my fellow mp3 addicts, may I recommend that you mix your media: load the first of O'Brian's twenty-novel series, Master and Commander, Zukov's Shangri-La, and Bryson's Short History into your mp3 player and sample between them for an exquisite layering of seductively presented facts, new ideas and superb reading voices.

 I swear, I think I cook better to Patrick O'Brian and mop better to Maddow than I otherwise would do. And you?

Can't Help Myself Addendum, 6/10/2011:

Huge, eternally grateful hat-tip to JES for this video from his RAMH post, "A Conspiracy of Pages." JES, try to think that mimicry is the highest compliment. And this just fits so well here to bookend the Larry Flynt paragraph.