And in between I drink ... Black coffee

Most of the time at home, I operate in silence.  Other than the low-decibel traffic-noise or bird-chirping, or the occasional loud gardening sounds, it is mostly a quiet home.  Even most ashrams in India aren't this quiet, I would think.

When I want to have music in the background, I love to play one of the few vinyls that I have purchased over the years from the used-stuff-stores.  Or, the mix-tapes from the old days.  Or the CDs.  And, yes, sometimes I also stream Pandora or YouTube.

There is something magical about lifting the turntable arm, placing the LP, and the sounds then filling the home.  Like the magic of starting with vegetables and grains, and ending with tasty dishes with the aroma filling the home.

These days, it seems like fewer and fewer people prepare meals in their kitchens, and even fewer play music with LPs, CDs, and tapes.  Music is streamed.  Straight into one's ears, while the rest of the home can be a quiet zone.

But, the ability to instantly stream any music from anywhere has also completely devalued music itself.  NPR's Ari Shapiro notes that "It feels to me like as we go from purchasing physical things, like CDs, to purchasing MP3s on iTunes to now just streaming, the connection to the music we listen to has become weaker."

Shapiro's guest Amy Wang agrees with him:

So that's the hypothesis for why live events are growing so much. And people want to go to concerts and festivals more than ever because if you can stream things so easily and so openly every day, then you want to crave that emotional connection to an artist that you can get maybe in person or via some other means rather than just buying their music. 

The connection to the music is weaker.  Music is not merely about the notes.  It is about emotions.  The emotional connect is now weaker.  Which is why the old and the young want to go to live concerts.  The old go to concerts where the even older musicians are far from their best selves, and sometimes are unable to hit the notes.  It does not matter for the audience, who are there for the emotional connect.  They would even sing along and drown out the musician!

What an irony!  My father has stories about his younger days when live concerts were the only way one could listen to musicians.  And then the radio came to his village.  A few rich people who had radios played them loud enough for the poorer neighbors also to listen.  The record-player and then the big-fat spool-tape players made listening at any time possible.  Over the next couple of decades, we rapidly moved to compact cassette tapes and CDs.  All through these, the listener could still emotionally connect with the musician.

Streaming killed the emotional connect.  We humans die for the emotional connect.  And we now can't wait for the live concerts.  I am sure my father wonders about such craziness that he has been witness to.

Whether it is music, or food, or sex, or talking, or whatever, ultimately there is nothing that can substitute for the real, live, experience.  The sooner we realize this, the healthier we will be.

Maybe I will break the silence by playing the Sarah Vaughan LP.  Meanwhile, you can listen to her Black Coffee.