Last year I left almost 300 dogs in some AirPods Pro. The only reason I didn’t settle for the regular ones was the noise cancellation. I didn’t buy listening to music better. I bought not to listen.
On the subway I see people with 15 euro headphones that must filter as much as a shower curtain. The noise of the carriage, the street musicians, the loud tiktoks of the abnormal next door who wants to make them sound. All that is for those who cannot afford to delete it..
Years ago I worked in the kitchen of a fast food chain. Eight hours of voiceovers, irons hissing, fryers bubbling, customers screaming. Then came my first apartment in Madrid, the one I could afford: I could hear which channel my neighbor was watching with complete clarity. I better not even talk about his occasional pinches. The noise always accompanied me. That noise was a reminder of my place.
There was a time when noise was synonymous with power. A roaring V8, the keys of a typewriter, a landline breaking the silence of a living room. Today the noise is no longer impressive. It is imposed. The engines, the construction sites, the garbage trucks, the unscrupulous subway and home neighbors carry it with you. Silence, on the other hand, is what you have to earn.
Cities have been divided into acoustic layers. Near airports, apartments are worth less. Next to a highway, rents go down because the windows shake. In neighborhoods with perpetual construction, passing ambulances and glass containers emptying at one in the morning live those who cannot leave.
Those who can pay for triple glazing, good insulation, acoustic studies prior to purchase and doors that weigh as much as a car. At airports, VIP lounges are not VIP because they have faster WiFi, but because you don’t have to deal with the noise and hustle and bustle. And on the AVE, the silent wagon It doesn’t cost more money, but there is only one. Silence is what is most scarce.
Because we’re not just talking about decibels. We talk about being able to choose. To be objective, my gray-haired neighbor didn’t make that much noise. What was unbearable was the imposition: I couldn’t stop listening to it, even when I really didn’t feel like it. I paid to live there and yet I couldn’t demand silence. With AirPods I bought something else: the ability to decide what enters my world for a while and what doesn’t. That is true modern luxury.
Status is no longer displayed with loud cars or jingling clocks. It is exhibited, or rather, hidden, with silence. Live without being interrupted, without vibrationswithout foreign voices passing through walls that are too thin. Being able to close the world whenever you feel like it.
My AirPods do not filter noise. They filter reality. And that capacity, today, costs money.
Featured image | omid armin
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