Peace of mind

Another post on the same subject as the last one...

I don't tend to put classical music on the iPod. It's not as though I lack tracks from that genre; I'm not an aficionado, but the collection includes hundreds (between the movements of symphonies, fanfares, tone poems, etc., that I accumulated largely during my music appreciation classes). And it's not that I no longer care for the pieces, as though I somehow grew out of a phase. Nothing like that.

It's due to cheap headphones.

I don't mean the headphones I use to listen to the music on my device; I mean the crappy ones that others nearby use to listen to the music on their devices at volumes those headphones cannot come close to handling.

Riding the train as my commute (as I've done for nearly a decade now), I know that there will be a lot of noises that could be encountered while in the car, and most of them I do not wish to hear. Sitting through half of cell phone conversations is bad enough, but those don't tend to last too long. What's particularly bad are those instances where someone gets on and the sound of their music bleeds from their headphones so much that even from ten feet away I can hear it.

The best recourse I have found is to drown it with the music in my own headphones. I don't have to blare my volume to overwhelm it, because my music is coming from a much closer distance (it's in my ears), but the music playing needs to have a full sound; it requires an inherent "loudness." While some classical music has "loud" portions (the 1812 Overture comes to mind as an obvious example), that's not what suffices. It needs something with drums—and I don't mean timpani, or the occasional snare hit. That loudness needs to fill most of the time the song is playing. Sadly, something with the dynamics of classical pieces doesn't tend to cut it, because the softer portions open the door for the sound from the nitwit with the crappy headphones to seep in. Although there are "soft" songs from all genres (jazz, country, rock), when that external sound seeps in over a classical piece it conflicts so much worse than songs from those other ones (not that it sounds good by any stretch of the imagination with those).

And as ridiculous and pathetic as it is to admit, that has pushed the classical pieces off what gets loaded on the device.

I have been tempted, at times, to carry a cache of decent headphones with me—the ones that I use were only $15 at Best Buy, and they handle a good range of sound without letting any slip out—to hand out in such instances, but I have refrained. The inconsiderate don't appreciate considerate gestures.

Especially when it's meant to be considerate to the rest of us more than to them.

~

Talk to them? Yeah, right. They have the volume turned up that loud because they don't want to be bothered by others who might point out their inconsideration to them. It's not an accident.

They have no consideration for their own hearing; the rest of us haven't a chance of being acknowledged.

~

I know my headphones are not leaking sound, by the way. When I take them out of my ears I cannot hear anything coming from them. Unless someone has superhuman hearing, they cannot hear anything when they're up against my ears. And in such a scenario, I suspect my music bothers the superhuman less than the nitwit with the crappy headphones.

I imagine.

Hitting 'em up

A couple of weeks ago as I entered the downtown train station a young man was hovering by the stairs panhandling. He stated that he was trying to get money for a ticket. It wasn't that he sought food; he sought to get somewhere, but apparently he couldn't put together $1.25 for a fare.

He was not disheveled. He was dressed in clothes that appeared laundered. He was clean-haven. But apparently he lacked even a dollar and a quarter.

Okay.

As I walked by, a guy and two young women also passed near him and he changed his line from "Can anyone spare any change?" to addressing one of the women with "I'd also take your phone number." He started following her, telling her how beautiful she was. As far as I could tell she had no interest (and may not have even spoken English). But really, I can't imagine why she wouldn't want a guy begging for train fare.

He's going places. Well, as soon as he can convince someone for a few quarters.

Helping things along

People never cease to amaze.

The past Wednesday morning, during my ride to work on the train, I overhear a man speaking into the intercom with the driver (engineer?). He was sitting behind me so I couldn't see him, but being close enough I could clearly hear him. And what pressing matter did he have to report to the driver? (When the driver replied—which goes throughout the whole train, so we could all hear that—he asked, "Is there an emergency?")

The man wondered why the train was not traveling at full speed.

The train was probably going 20 - 30 miles per hour, but as one (he noted) who "rode the train to work every day," he felt it his duty to inform the one operating the train that there might be some issue with the wheels or something (as evidenced by the fact the velocity was not 40 - 50 MPH). That the train was traveling along tracks that run down the middle of a major boulevard and that it must stop at red lights could not possibly have played a role in why the driver would proceed at a pace slower than what might be construed as "usual"; there couldn't be instructions from the system headquarters dictating the velocity; there could only be some mechanical malady that the one in the compartment at the front had not discerned.

What was particularly compelling about his argument was how he peppered his observations and speculations with the interjection "You know what I'm sayin'?"

The driver could only stammer and undoubtedly suppress his inclination to say what he wanted to tell the overly impatient passenger. Eventually the man got it out of his system, having duly made himself heard. He had performed his good deed for the day (albeit spurred by concern about being late, not for the good of everyone), reminding the driver that the train can, in fact, go faster.

Apparently, all these years I've been riding have given me the wrong way of regarding how the driver runs the train. I have noticed on many occasions the train not go full speed and I concluded that when that happens there was a reason. I should have assumed the driver was just lapsing from paying attention, or perhaps that he mischievously sought to make me late for work. Surely he was just waiting to see how long it could keep it up before someone called him on it.

Silly me.

Who watches the Watchtower?

I should have identified them the second I got on the train. Three well-dressed white-haired older women sitting at one end of the car is something of an unusual thing during the morning commute. However, it still caught me a bit off-guard when one of them stopped next to me as I sat and started to put the headphones in my ears. It had been a while since ones such as them had been on a train with me.

She asked if I would like something to read and offered me a copy of the Watchtower. I politely declined, and she replied, "Not today then," and wished me a good day.

The funny thing about this incident: Had the item offered simply been left on the seat next to me when I sat down, with no one around, I may very well have picked it up. It's not so much that I'm that intrigued by what the Jehovah's Witnesses have published for its spiritual value; I have over the years collected a number of pieces of religious propaganda (although mostly small leaflets or pamphlets, not magazine-sized items), and this could certainly be considered for inclusion in my collection. While this has been done in a very detached, ironic context (it is fascinating what some have done in what is ostensibly an effort to promote their beliefs), I couldn't bring myself to take something from someone's earnest hand knowing that my reaction was the opposite.

Especially when I was about to press play on the player and hear Peter Murphy sing about Bela Legosi.

It is not my intent to disparage anyone's genuine beliefs, but the way they go about trying to convince those who non-believers (we'll call the audience that) sometimes seems like it was not thought through all that thoroughly.

Perhaps with sufficient faith one doesn't require marketing savvy.

What if there's no light at the end?

Westbound tunnel from the Pershing Square station on the Metro Red Line.

Don't worry--the lights just keep going around the curve.

Chasing trains

It has long been my observation that there's something about seeing a place one frequents in a TV show (or movie) that, for those of us not in "the industry," seems to give one an unintentional sense of (for lack of a better term) tiny validation. Obviously those visual media exert a tremendous influence over our society, for better or for worse; given that even the least popular show on a basic cable channel (even that briefly aired John McEnroe talk show) gets seen by more people than most of us will even know, seeing a familiar location on the screen allows one to feel, perhaps for just a second, like one's non-descript little existence has been enhanced by the larger world seeing it. I know I've never been able to see a place I know well and refrain from mentioning to anyone within earshot how that's somewhere I go all the time.

While it's probably kind of pathetic to feel validated in even the slightest way over the remote connection to a creative work with which one had no involvement by the mere virtue of familiarity with the location for the shoot, surely that is exacerbated if the location is for a mere music video.

I'm not sure I feel this validation on a conscious level, but I do find myself compelled to tell you all about the latest instance of this I've discovered that applies to my non-descript little existence (because, at present, no one is around).

The Northern Irish (is that how to identify being from Northern Ireland?) band Snow Patrol's latest single, "Chasing Cars" (click to view a streamable copy) has a version of the video that was clearly shot in Los Angeles.

I found a longer version that does not have L.A. footage (again, click to view a streamable copy), and where singer Gary Lightbody has longer hair than in the one I see airing on TV (the one linked in the paragraph above), and where mostly he gets rained on while singing. I suspect they decided to give the singer a haircut and shoot one in make one more appealing to an American audience (perhaps the longer one is for Europe--maybe this blog would know, as it laments how the longer one is trying to make the band seem like Coldplay).

And what is more appealing to Americans than… subways?

Yes, in the video they shot a sequence in the downtown L.A. station of the Blue Line, the second-busiest light rail system in the country (really), and on one of its trains. The Blue Line, as some of you know, is how I've been commuting to work for the last seven years.

The thing is, that train line travels above ground for most of its 22-mile length, and only goes underground for about a half-mile (between the Staples Center and the skyscrapers of the "New Downtown" district), and hence is not actually a subway; there is another line, the Red Line, that is entirely underground (in fact, that one connects with the Blue Line at the station where they shot this) that they could have used—and, in fact, the cars on the Red Line are roomier, which would seem to be better for filming. Eh, what do I know about filming? That probably cost extra. (Presumably they shot this late at night, when the trains weren't running, but clearly they had to get someone to operate the train to come in. It all adds up, I'm sure.) I digress.

Most people wouldn't know the difference between Blue Line and Red Line trains, nor that it is only ostensibly a subway in the shot. They just see the train doors close, the train pull away from the platform (see poor screen capture below):
Then, switching to an interior shot, the camera slowing move up the aisle...
Until it hovers directly over the singer, who lies flat on the floor in the open area by the door, singing the lyrics.
(The chorus is: "If I lay here, if I just lay here, would you lie with me, and just forget the world?" Hence, the video is filled with shots of him lying on the ground and singing.)

Hence, most people wouldn't necessarily have the same visceral reaction that I do, because they haven't been on those trains twice a day, five days a week, for seven years. My reaction, after Hey, it's the Blue Line, is Egad, does he have any idea what has been on that floor? I'm not sure there are chemicals in existence that could get that filth clean enough that I would lie on it for any amount of money.

(Watching the sequence immediately after the train, I see him lying in what looks to be the hills of Elysian Park—not far from Dodger Stadium—but there they put a blanket beneath him. The hills, and the other spots he lies—the street, the top of the escalator—are ones I'd practically eat off of before lying on that train floor.)

Ignorance is bliss—well, really it's blissful—especially when one's personal experience doesn't ruin the artistic intent.

If only I lived somewhere that showed the longer version of the video, where I recognize none of the shooting locations... I would miss out on both the pathetic validation and the associated specific revulsion. Both of which I could live without.

Going underground

Where the Blue Line descends (or ascends, depending on which direction the train is traveling) in downtown L.A., right by the Staples Center.


"I want nothing that society's got, I'm going underground"
- The Jam

Signs of nature in L.A.

In recent weeks the wildflowers have been blooming, and living in the metropolitan area crafted out of the desert that is Southern California, one would think that one would have to travel well away from the strip malls and condo complexes to see them. However, on my daily ride on the train I have found evidence of the natural blooms amid the manicured terrain. (The photos were taken out the window while the train was moving quickly, but you should get the idea.)
Yellow blooms in an empty triangular-shaped lot in northern Long Beach, just north of the 405 (the bridge in the background is the transition ramp to the 710 north), along the Los Angeles River (yes, the concrete-lined area over which said bridge passes).

Farther up the Blue Line tracks, just past where they cross underneath the 91 freeway and on the north side of Crystal Park Casino (in what is technically Compton), this vacant field is also awash in yellow. (Yes, admire the power line towers in the background.)

In mere weeks, these blooms will wither and the green will start to turn brown, and the ride to work will offer nothing colorful except the graffiti on the backs of warehouses in Lynwood.

Pictures

A couple shots I've taken recently:
Looking down the platform of the Willow station on the Blue Line, and the sun setting over Hidden Valley in the mountains above Palm Springs.