What I Hear

Living in New York City for so many years, most of the sounds start to get drone out and become the background noises that we don't pay much attention to. Many of us does not even hear the background noise but instead we put on our headphones and listen to our music on our iPod. For this assignment, I did not listen to my iPod but begin to listen to the sounds around me, mainly on the subway because that is how I commute to school. I noticed that in the morning, there are not much sounds except the sound of the train moving on its tracks. Most of the people are either reading their newspaper or taking a nap before getting off their stops. This change when it is around the afternoon, the sounds are lively. Kids are off from school and they would yell and scream on the train. There are also musicians playing their instruments or singing on the train to entertain us. Other than musicians, there are always people preaching or asking for money which leads to passengers cursing out at them because they want their peace and quiet. The sound also changes when in different neighborhood. If you get off at Union Square, you immediately hear musicians playing on the street. There will also be a lot of chattering everywhere, talking about the artworks, the food and the movies. If you go to Upper East Side, where Metropolitan Museum is located, it is fairly quiet there. There aren't any musicians playing on the street, all you can hear are the traffics passing by. Sounds are everywhere, but soon enough everything will be drone out if we keep listening to our iPod and not be aware of our surrounding.