That Sounds Awful

In Which I Remember that In France, The Stores Weren't Full Of Annoying Music

File:Nicolas Tournier - Banquet Scene with a Lute Player.jpg - Wikimedia Commons—Or: Me Wishing Everyone Would Be Quiet For A Hot Minute

I have all kinds of odds and ends I’ve been meaning to attend to. One is that I never properly wrote about Megan Basham’s excellent book, Shepherds for Sale. I mentioned it several times and then went on an epic Bread and Cheese Holiday through France, and never got back to it—I will though, I hope this week. Another are three or four other excellent books I read and wanted to draw to your attention—also for sure going to happen. And then there was that weird Churchill Flap—perhaps I will let that one lie. And now there’s been another attempt on the life of Mr. Trump. Oh, and Twitter is a buzz over the ABC whistle-blower. But what I really wanted to catch hold of, given that I can still vaguely remember it as my delicious French holiday recedes into distant memory, is how much I hate that there is loud pop music playing in every single store that I ever have to go into.

Turn Off The Music

I know I have said this before, though perhaps not for a long time, but one reason I prefer to shop at Aldi is that there is no music piped in, blanketing itself over the shelves and boxes and produce, dissipating my concentration as I wonder why the singer’s love life is such a shambles or why everything has to sound like 21 Pilots.

I know that this makes me old, though I don’t see why that should be a bad characteristic to possess, but why should I be forced to listen to the vapid music of the young just because I want to buy a head of lettuce or a box of tea? What has my need to eat food lest I die have to do with the discordant wailing of the world’s pop music? And, as bad as it is today, it is about to get much worse. In a few weeks, it will be the consumer liturgical season of Christmas shopping that now starts before Halloween and continues until one almost begins to hate the Birth of our Lord and Savior. Soon everywhere I go I will have to listen to really really awful musical trainwrecks about Santa for like six weeks.

Why Oh Why?

I moved to the United States sometime in the 90s and don’t remember if all the stores had music in them back then, though I expect that they did. In fact, I don’t remember when I first began to feel allergic to music playing in every space. After a while, as intended, the music became part of the background—until suddenly it wasn’t. Perhaps it was in the era of Covid when I stood in a long line, in a mask, holding fifteen things in my arms, clad I was in a large puff coat because of the winter going on forever, and suddenly I just couldn’t deal at all because some young woman was screaming repetitively through the speakers. I’m going to die, I thought, this is the end.

The thing is, you aren’t meant to pay attention to the music of the stores. It is supposed to be mood-setting, affecting how you feel and therefore what you buy without you actually noticing that it is even playing. I assume the particular vocal choices are intended to make you purchase more than you intended and also get out in a timely way so that more people can come in and buy more than they intend.

But I think, at this point, that—at least for people like me—it has gone too far. I can’t pay attention to the task of buying things when I have to listen to Tay Sway and Bruno Mars…

…perhaps I should just pause and say that I have no idea who anyone is or what their music actually sounds like. I speak generally, naming names without any reference to whether or not their music is played in Walmart, TJ Maxx, Weiss, Target, Home Goods, Old Navy, Wegmans, Petco, and Michaels, which are the only places I frequent here in the blighted landscape of Upstate New York. I stand before rows and rows of toothpaste or laundry detergent unable to think what it is I’m looking for because my mind is suddenly gripped by rage that I’m having to listen to a wall of sound that I didn’t ask for and would never ever go to find on my own. It’s intrusive. It’s distracting. It makes me feel how short and wretched life is, all the more because I can’t get away from it.

But I Also Hate Amazon

I suppose this must be yet one more reason why ordering things online and having them delivered to the front stoop is becoming the obvious thing. If I can listen to Mozart or Brahms, or perhaps just allow my own thoughts to wander while I fill my cart to the whirr of the computer and the click of my mouse, at least I get to feel that I am still my own person and not at the mercy of vast forces beyond my control, however untrue that feeling might be.

The thing is, I don’t have enough silence in my life. There is so much chatter, so many extra words, so many posts, so many billboards and signs battering down the fortress of my attention. How can I possibly think anything interesting when I have to beat my way past a jungle of so much useless speech?

If this current iteration of America was really democratic, or really the kind of capitalism that I learned about a long time ago that was supposed to make the world into a better place, or any of those cultural and political promises we used to cling to, then shopping would be pleasant and fun. Instead, it is l’enshittification. If you forget your headphones, you have to run in and run out as fast as you can if you don’t want to be blasted into mental illness.

So anyway, have a nice day!