Monthly Archives: April 2026

Headphones

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I’ve been thinking about digging out my mp3 players and filling them up again as something to listen to on my breaks at work. The break room is quite large compared to the one at the other shop, so there’s less of a chance of multiple loud conversations and TikTok videos going at the same time and irritating my audio processing disorder. I can handle the levels in that room, and there’s always other places within the building I can go (or even to my car) if I need a bit of quiet.

I’ll totally cop to wanting to revisit those old high school days where I could distance myself from everything and focus only on whatever I’m listening to. I keep coming back to that as a possible way to unplug from all the excess noise and online presence I currently find myself in. [If it worked in the past, why not try it again?] These days the only time I see earbuds is when a customer’s having a day job conversation on their phone while checking out, otherwise most people’s media intake is on speaker. While I’m not complaining about that per se, it can sometimes be overwhelming to my APD (especially if they’re the type that likes to have the reel repeat itself multiple times) because I have to work twice as hard to focus on what noises and voices I need to focus on at that moment.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s more than wanting to revisit those 80s memories once more like I’d mentioned previously. That’s a big part of why I want to revisit this listening habit. But I’ve always had APD to some extent though I only learned what it was in the last decade or so, so a lot of the listening issues I had during my school years suddenly make more sense. And my wanting to hide away with headphones, turns out, wasn’t just a matter of wanting to escape life for a while, either; it was also a way to shut out the sounds and voices that irritated me.

And to weave it all together: whenever I did cocoon myself with a set of headphones and music playing on my Walkman (or even listening to music on my radio in an otherwise quiet house), that’s when my mind was calm. And that’s when I was able to fully and successfully lose myself in the mood that music created, and thus use as influence and inspiration for my creative outlets. Calm audio input means calm audio process means calm focus.

And I sense that that is what my brain needs right now, once more. Some kind of aural realignment, something to bring a calm clarity and perhaps a refreshing inspiration.

Walk in Silence…

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It’s been quite a long time since I’ve listened to the music I grew up with. In fact I was kind of trying to avoid it on purpose. Not for any emotional reasons (not this time, at any rate), more that I wanted to distance myself from it for a bit.

You all know how obsessive I can get about listening to music, and sometimes I’ll get myself into a spiral of listening to certain albums (or years) on constant repeat. On the surface that’s not inherently bad. Sometimes you just want to listen to the music that resonated with you the most. Songs and albums that created a deep and lasting connection with your life and awakens memories both good and bad.

Thing is, I felt like I was doing this a little too often, to the detriment of any new music that came my way. I know I’m an outlier in this sort of thing: I’m just that kind of obsessive where I’m also constantly interested in new and fascinating things. [The new album by The Clockworks is amazing and they are so criminally underrated. I highly recommend all their work.] So I purposely distanced myself from the sounds of my past, at least for a little while. Just long enough where I felt I wouldn’t fall into another listening spiral.

It was the recent “forty years ago” meme that changed that, however. Several people on social media remembering music that dropped in 1986, and I of course thought oh man, this is a perfect Forty Years On series…maybe it’s time to return. Especially considering that was the year when I discovered college radio and my listening habits completely changed from classic rock and AT40 to alternative almost overnight.

So here I am now, thinking that maybe it’s time to allow myself a bit of reminiscence again. Thinking that maybe it’s finally time to work through that Walk in Silence book once and for all. I have the time and the spoons for it. And I’m starting to see even more books and articles about Gen-X 80s and 90s alternative rock these days, now that my generation is slowly trudging its way towards Elder status. And I realize that I still want to tell my side of that story: not about a scene or anything like that, but just a story about someone who’s listened to this stuff to the point of obsession and let it influence and inspire their life. A story about how alternative rock not only changed me for the better but connected me with a group of people that became lifelong friends.

Will it be any different from the outtakes and the 80s posts I put up here over the years? That’s a good question. I’ve told some of that story here of course, but I’ve left stuff out as well. Stuff that’s just a bit too personal, things I didn’t want to share online at the time, or things that were a bit too emotionally rough for me to revisit. And there are some things I’ve completely forgotten that come to light after a close listen to a certain song or album, well after the original posts. There’s also the fact that I’ve told and retold the story in different ways and never quite felt satisfied with it as a writer.

Let’s be honest here: I’ve also been thinking about returning to that era’s music here anyway. After all, this blog is named after the first line of Joy Division’s “Atmosphere”, and its original purpose was to talk about my obsessions with said era. I won’t be dismissing my interest in new music at all, and I’m sure that talking about it here on a regular schedule will continue; I’m just saying that it’s time for me to return to where I’m happiest: back when I used to call it “college rock”.