Stereo Speakers

Last evening and into today (when I continue to listen to the McGarrigle Sisters and now Pentangle) I appreciated the difference between dear Alexa and the speakers I used to own and for which in my more youthful days  I assiduously, almost religiously shopped. I remember walking into listening rooms where the salesperson (then, always a male) turned up the volume on a sequence of speakers in the acoustically designed listening space that was nothing like my living room. No matter which set of speakers I might purchase (and I purchased not a few over the years) in my home the music would not sound nearly as clear or as loud as it did in the store. Nevertheless, in my living room the volume could be turned up just below the level that would bring in the complaint of the neighbors  and I would feel contained and enclosed in the music. Drugs were not even necessary though then, though they were always welcome.

     Last evening, however, the music emanated from my Echo and though it played clearly and even in multiple rooms, it also played unidirectionally and narrow. The music didn’t surround me: rather, it came at me as did the laser beam of light from one of those technological pointers that speakers employ in public lectures or teachers use in classrooms. Last evening, I still loved the music but I missed the experience of being wrapped in it. I missed the speakers. No matter how high I now turn up the volume—and there were technological and physical impediments--the result was inevitably inadequate.

     I want to link this experience with the habit of late of people watching movies on their television sets, though I acknowledge that the size of the screens has been increasing regularly. Nevertheless, the television is not a movie screen nor is the living room a movie theater. Sitting in the cinema, even in alternative sites such as mini- even micro-cinemas (for example, the Trylon Micro-Cinema in Minneapolis) to view the screen eyes move out in a widening angle, but on the television and computer displays the eyes move into a narrowing field of vision. And of course, the sound quality even with home theater equipment cannot equal that of the cinema speakers. Experience is reduced in scope and intensity, I think.

     It seems to me that life has been steadily contracting. I consider the difference between reading the newspaper on the subways of New York and now reading it on a smart phone or tablet. I know how messy newsprint was and still is, and how getting to work required a quick washing of hands before heading to the office and desk. I enjoyed reading print copy of The New York Times, but even the Daily News could be read when properly engineered on the subway. How I loved the experience, then—folding the paper longitudinally to read both sides of page one, and then folding back the first page to reveal the left column of page two and on the opposite side the right hand columns of page three. Opening the folded paper and bending them back would reveal the right columns of page two and the left columns of page three. Then, the paper still folded laterally I would turn the page over to expose the inner columns of the next pages and proceed to read them in the same fashion! And so on and so on—until one reached the editorial and op-ed pages at the end of the First Section. And then to move on to the next sections. As for me, when I moved from New York there were only two sections of the Times.

     I am somewhat sad that the world has narrowed so dramatically. Mea Culpa, I click on my Times app on the phone during the day, though I still have the print copy delivered during the weekdays. I like the feel of the paper and the expansiveness of the pages spread before me on the dining table. And I detest the news.