Today I am tempted to reach for Jean-Paul Sartre’s Le Nausée, the textbook on existential dread. The first time I read it was in high school and the last time I read it was shortly after former Australian Prime Minister John Howard’s re-election in 2004. That a majority of the population was willing to reinstall such a tricky, mean, ultimately cruel, and entirely inauthentic excuse for a human being was enough to induce a weeks-long bout of existential nausea. The book helped. As in: misery loves company.
The world is going mad at an accelerated rate. We know all about the daily horrors being inflicted by capitalism’s logical extension: greed and its greatest achievement, man’s inhumanity to man. This morning I experienced a microcosm of the madness, though not as dramatic as the daily headlines.
I needed to verify an extended warranty on a cheapo TV bought at Harvey Norman a few years back, but they hadn’t yet opened. So I repaired to a coffee shop in the relatively new Home HQ, self-described as “Melbourne’s first undercover state-of-the-art homemaker centre.” It’s a immense two-story rectangle, home to several bedding and furniture outlets. The reason I go there is JB Hi-Fi, the only shop with any customers, for their great selection of CDs and DVDs.
As I strode down the cavernous upper corridor to the Big Café, I was assailed by bland pop music at extreme volume. We’ve all become accustomed to this auditory intrusion in just about every establishment on the face of the earth, but this had the hallmark of insanity. It was 8:45 AM, for Christ’s sake. And the place was empty.
I entered the coffee shop (no doors, it opens on to the corridor). The music there, on a different loop, was twice as loud as the the music in the corridor. Standing on the perimeter between the two, my left ear was assaulted by Abba, and my right ear by Billy Joel. The coffee shop’s music was not just loud, it was blasting. I should have left, but told myself, “You’re bigger than this.” So I ordered a coffee and, would you believe, managed to read a few pages of Journey to Ixtlan by Carlos Castaneda. (I read it in the Sixties, and it’s even better now.) Don Juan was up to his usual antics and I laughed out loud a couple of times, though it was hard to hear myself. What a choice venue to drive home the old Brujo’s teachings, I thought.
A few weeks ago I had breakfast at the local Pancake Parlor. It was 9 AM on a Sunday morning and they were playing disco music at full volume. Posing as the last sane man on earth, I asked the waitress to turn it down; she cheerfully complied. But this morning I didn’t bother. The pinch-faced girl on duty was probably trying to drown out the noise in the corridor. But at what cost to her sanity?
As I said, this is not exactly a dramatic example, but it is an example. The crap thrown at us by profiteers and their market forces is relentless.
It doesn’t stop with pop music- I went into a comic book store in Newcastle last year and they were playing Metallica so loud I felt nauseous and my dearest stormed out. I’ve loved Metallica since high school, but that was a bit much.
Yeah, it doesn’t matter if they’re playing your favourite track of all time. It’s the decibel level of this mind-befuddling onslaught that turns it into noise. Above all, it’s inappropriate.