Open Your Ears, Not Your Eyes

Buzz, buzz, buzz. Tick, tick, tick. "That's a lot of tweeting". As I sit here in my apartment, writing this blog post on our newest reading, The Zen of Listening, I hear a plethora of noises around me. The vent of our AC makes a slightly annoying buzz. The clock on our collage wall ticks in a steady rhythm. My roommates voices discuss the social media going on with the presidential debate. Prior to this reading, I probably wouldn't have been acutely aware of these sounds. I probably would have drowned them out while working away in my chair in the corner of the living room.

Because listening is so innate, I have never taken much time to think about the act of listening and how it relates to the way we consume media, specifically radio. Just as listening is innate, as the article mentions, my love of radio seems innate as well. When I get in my car, the radio comes to life immediately, usually set to 99.9, my favorite country station. I sing along with songs, let it play softly in the background, and flip the channels when I am tired of hearing commercials. It is all so natural, right?

Two of the points in the article I enjoyed the most were the discussion of our love of radio due to the power listening has on our imagination and the idea that radio was the first and remains one of the best ways to feel a mutual sense of connection at the same time as people all over the world.

The article discusses in depth the ways in which the radio allows us to take the voices and situations we hear on the radio and turn them into whatever we want. We can imagine what the DJ looks like, where a newscaster is reporting from, and how a song would play out in a video in our minds. People love radio, myself included, for the same reason they love tangible, worn in books. Yes a movie can perfectly put into visuals the characters or setting from your favorite book. But when happens, the creation of your own mind imagination is crushed. In order for people to grow as imaginative individuals, the opportunity must be given to think and create on your own. Radio does just that.

I also enjoyed the brief history of radio and the ways in which it was such a revolutionary invention when it first become widely used. In the past, the radio was a coveted piece of technology, used to connect people and pass information over miles and miles. Today, I believe we take the radio for granted, not recognizing the way in which it still represents a single moment in time, very much the same, and being shared by millions of people at the same time. It is very personal in the way we can apply our imagination and very communal in the way we share it with so many other people.

Do you still listen to the radio frequently? If not, what do you use to listen to music and other broadcasted information? An iPod, Pandora, other?
What do you like about radio that you don't think TV can offer?