Sound Bubble

I sat down on a bench to eat my lunch today. With each grass blade still fat and green in the late summer, and 20 minutes to spare I plopped down and ate my grilled veggie wrap on UNL’s City Campus.

It’s been a while since I’ve watched or listened to a college campus. There was the same rapid pulse, the same sense of movement, that I remember. Heavy, glass doors to each building being flown open or falling shut. The click of somebody’s bike chain setting properly into gear. The woozy feeling of leaves being blown around in the wind.

And then I started glancing at everyone’s hands, the ear buds peaking out of their heads. I realized hardly anybody was listening to or experiencing the same set of sounds. How strange to be occupy the same physical space but never share the same sound table, I thought.  A comfortable setting inside their own noise bubble. It made me think about the art of listening. The way we sort of shout rehearsed monologues or quips at each other in public rather than talk or listen. 

The way even I'll filter out the news I read, the music I hear, the world I experience from the clamor of noise. The underlying assumption is that goodness or good ideas rise up from inside the bubble and it spares us the noise of the Snookis of this world. But the common air space it isn't filled with just Snookis.  I thought about all of the music I’ve come across in public spaces, ideas (good ones sometimes) that didn’t come from inside my bubble that inspired me to expand just a little.  

I can’t say where I landed this noon about the sound bubble. I only had twenty minutes. I was glad to land outside of mine for a little bit.