Unlock a New World of Wonder: The Astonishing Way Music Changes Your View of Reality!

While reading Michael Bull’s chapter “The Audio-Visual iPod” I had a lot of time to reflect on what he meant by saying that the view of the world changes while listening to music through headphones. 

It is important that the distinction was made that when a person usually walks around outside, they don’t tend to notice the physical environment around them, and most people do not appreciate nature or building structures on a daily basis. Yet, plugging into one’s iPod and listening to music changes the whole scenery, and suddenly the music makes the person pay very close attention to the world around them - almost like their music is a soundtrack to what is unfolding in front of their eyes.

There is a very powerful and calming feeling that comes from zoning out from the outside world

while listening to music, yet at the same time being able to see and feel the outside world more

with the music.  Bull mentioned that while listening to music, we tend to focus more on what is going on around us, which is something we rarely do.

One of my favorite things to do was to put on my headphones, listen to music and walk around the city until I found an interesting place where I wanted to sit and observe.
There was one time that I remember very vividly where I was walking around the city with my headphones, and it was a really beautiful and sunny day, and as I was walking I had to keep stopping because I could not stop staring at all of the incredible buildings. I remember thinking at that moment that it is insane that people were able to build such tall and elaborate buildings all over the city, but what was crazier was that I never used to stop and appreciate this. But something came over me as I was listening to my music and I wanted to see everything, I wanted to pay attention to every little detail - it felt like I walked in the middle of a movie set. So many things were happening at once, how did I not notice this before? How did I not see the magic in this?

That day, as I kept walking I ended up going to Central Park, where I found myself a nice area to sit on the grass and I just looked at everything around me. I made sure to listen to music that matched this bright and sunny day, and I couldn’t stop smiling.

There really is so much power that music has over us, and it could change our whole perception of the world. Even in the article it stated that the world looks better, and our emotions are heightened by the things we see - it is almost like music is adding a new sense. I think it is also very calming to take these moments of being able to look at the world from an outsider’s perspective, personally it gives me a lot of clarity that the world is so much bigger than I am. So instead of stressing out about the little things, I should just enjoy it.

Works Cited:

Bull, Michael. Sound Moves: IPod Culture and Urban Experience. Routledge, 2008.