In Your Ear

For my birthday, my family gave me new headphones. These were a practical gift from the standpoint of current usage. I am running most every day now, and I take my music with me. It is during this hour or so each day that my tastes and volume are my own. I don't have to program with anyone else but me in mind. It is also my preferred way of listening to music, since all the sounds pour directly into my ear holes and wash over the hearing part of my brain.
I had a great big pair of headphones handed down to me by my older brother when I was twelve. That's how I heard all those pre-teen angst manifestos. I still remember the way my ears would sweat after an hour or two being vacuum sealed under those great big sound mufflers. Many years later I arrived at my parents' house for Christmas eve, and my big present was one of those newfangled compact disc players. And the Pink Floyd album Wish You Were Here in this glorious new format. And a new pair of headphones. Lightweight, but with the capacity to bring all those noises directly from their digital source. I spent the night on the foldout bed in my parents' basement, listening to that one disc on repeat. It was the same kind of revelation that I experienced years before when I heard Sergeant Pepper on those clunky cans of my teens.
Then there was a period during which my music was played in a one bedroom apartment where I only worried a little about scaring my neighbors. No headphones were necessary during those years, but I confess that the details that I missed were quantum. I missed that intimate connection to the words and notes that spilled out all over the room and missed my ears entirely.
Once I began running as a real and true avocation, I went through as many sets of headphones as I did cassette players. Each one promised me better and real and true sound. Each one brought me more disappointment. When my son became immersed in stereophonics, he felt compelled to hook me up with earbuds that could more adequately recreate the way I had once listened. These tiny things with extra bass. Because that may have been what I was missing. Each time I plugged them into my head, I waited for that chance to hear a song that had somehow escaped me previously. Hearing voices and harmonies and instruments for the first time because I could actually differentiate them was a joy.
I had one of those moments with my newest headset the other day. Listening to Warren Zevon pound out a live version of French Inhaler, I marveled at the strength and the dexterity with which he worked his piano, and the way his voice came along behind it. And I missed Warren for the first time in a few years. Which, as it turns out, was kind of a good thing.
What will I hear tomorrow? Tune in and find out.