I love my AirPods.  I use them in the library, walking to class, grocery shopping, every call I make to my mom, working out at the gym, and many more places. They are in a rubber case designed to look like a Tabasco hot sauce bottle and I often get asked why I carry around a bottle of hot sauce. (I think this bizarre look has done quite a lot for the increase in unique AirPod case sales at UNC) While Tabasco hot sauce is divine, the freedom to listen to anything and everything wherever I go is better.  My headphones allow me to tune out the rest of my surroundings, honing in on the things I love instead of the abrasive sounds of cars, alarms, and chatter in my everyday life.  

So by controlling the environment of sound that surrounds me, my soundscape, am I escaping my surroundings, or am I romanticizing my own experience?

Our Airpods and headphones that we wear are allowing us to create a personalized soundscape, disassociating ourselves from the grinding noises of urban life.  Through this experience, I am the composer of the soundtrack to my life, by creating a movie score geared towards my liking and directional vision.  All of us are making a personalized score to our lives, playing songs we like for certain experiential moments. 

Like scent, music deeply connects me to moments in my life. Electric Love by BORNE reminds me of graduating high school. ABBA reminds me of dancing as a child with my mother. Old Pine by Ben Howard places me in the Blue Ridge Mountains and Maggie Rodgers distinctly reminds me of the walk to my college dorm.  I played all of these songs to fit the mood I was in and they are now permanently associated with those moments, feelings, and periods of my life.  They are the music score to those moments.  I adore film and movies would be nothing if it wasn’t for a wonderful song to back them.  Why can’t we view our lives the same way? Our headphones give us the unique ability to have total control to direct the score and become musical directors of our lives.  That is so beautiful to me.

This mentality has taken mundane things in my life filled normally with the buzz of my surroundings into a chance to truly romanticize my surroundings with my favorite songs.  My headphones have brought great joy in times that would otherwise be monotonous.  So I do escape reality for a little bit when I put in my AirPods to walk to class, but I am enjoying the beauty in small moments as is only possible with a great movie score.

So thank you Spotify for inventing Spotify Premium and if you would like to listen to my playlist you can find it here.