The Debriefing:

"Hey Nate! You've got the music on, that's… that's great. How's it going?"

"Well..."

"Hey, could you turn that off? Thanks."

I snapped off my thrilling theme music in mid-bebop. "The music springing from my pants is universally detested." Here I explained problems 1-3.

"Well, if the sound quality is the problem, then you could just use a ghetto blaster."

"Isn't that a little conspicuous? I mean, wouldn't it be weird, in a way we're not really going for, to go b-boy limpin' around, booming theme music from an utterly un-mysterious, blatantly explicable source?"

"So what you're saying then, is that people aren't charmed by the tape recorder."

"Not charmed. No. But I think it's more than that. The music itself is disruptive. I mean, let's say you're just trying to talk to someone about what you wanna have for dinner later on, and half the conversation is drowned out by this 'Macross' music shooting off of them. You're gonna be a little put off regardless of the quality of music or the source. The SDF-1 could be sitting on your shoulder blasting the melody out of God's own ethereal stereo speakers; you'll still be p.o.'d. You're trying to decide on Koo Koo Roo or Kenny's Roasters, and friggin' Minmei is singing in your ear!"

"Okay."

"Also, 99% of the time the music doesn't match the mood of what's going on in my life. Like yesterday, I'm teaching geometry at Hamilton High, and out of my pocket bounds all this excited, triumphant music. I mean, geometry just isn't that all-fired triumphant. And by the time I got to the distance formula, a tortured swan song was playing. It was just depressing."

"So you found that life's drama isn't exciting enough to keep up with the music with which we've decided to score it. The music came off as absurdly affected when compared to life, and the low sound quality of the music compounded that problem of inappropriateness."

"Yeah."

"So write about that, then."

"Oh. Okay. Later, ya ape."

Mission Accomplished.

My field investigations complete, I put the Sony TMC-48 cassette recorder back on the Akadot shelf and began writing this piece. And as I type these words, the only music that accompanies me is the chatter of the keyboard keys and the crunch of my editor's jaws as they crush tortilla chips just behind me.

Usually, when I drive home from the office I like to listen to the radio ... but not today. Today, I think I'll just enjoy the silence.