Dusan Zdravkovic

EN 121 – 303
Due date: 10/30/2022
Summary and Response Essay

In "Ways of Hearing," Damon Krukowski explores how sound and music have evolved

through time and dramatically changed the way people perceive not only what they hear, but also

how they interact with each other and share experiences in today’s world.

Through two episodes, “Time” and “Space,” he is creating a comparison of then vs now.

In “Time,” he takes us back to when he was a part of a band creating music himself. Back then,

music was still analog and, by being taped at a certain place and time, it created for him a

permanently recorded, real-time experience between him and his band members. Then he

compares it to the digital sounds of today, based on computer algorithms manipulated in

numerous ways. In the following “Space” episode, he takes us to the streets of New York City.

With all its constant noise, he points at people he believes are trying to separate themselves from

that noise, to control it, or isolate themselves from it. He further explained how that need to be

“elsewhere” affects human interaction and their experience of the city and people around them,

worrying about its negative consequences. With these two parallels, Krukowski questions how

these changes in how people perceive and understand sound affect them, and the quality of the

places we live. No matter how flawed the analog recordings might have been, the music they

created was a creative expression people shared, something that brought them together, and a

moment in time captured on tape they forever had. It wasn’t only the quality and sensibility of

music and sound they created, but also a romantic memory of a point in time. He is attached to

the emotion the sound was carrying during the analog time and is worried that the artificiality of

the digital sound doesn’t share the same emotion. Krukrowski also worries about people in NYC

today, and how it feels like they want to be anywhere else but here. They are trying to isolate
themselves from the world around them, missing out on all the experiences of NYC, or what it

used to be, which inevitably changes the quality of life of NYC’s population and the city itself.

Thinking about those two episodes of Damon’s podcast, I almost felt his emotional

attachment to the time when the things we used to do and share with other people had greater

significance than today. Living in NYC myself, I can also witness the alienation of its people,

and the negative impact of them isolating themselves from the crowd has on their life and the

relationships they form. Back in the days when Krukowski played with his band, the significance

of that moment was not only creating music, but also sharing that same experience in time with

other people, which we all miss these days. The sound was a permanent recording on physical

tape and, listening to it, we can feel its emotion and experience the sound in a much more

personal way than the digital sound can provide. As we are aware, digital music has absolutely

excluded all human voice – it almost leaves us with nothing to relate do. Rows of codes on a

spreadsheet will never be able to give us the emotional attachment we are looking to gain from

music. I am aware of certain advantages of digital sound, and I believe it has its place, but the

sensibility and that raw quality that an old record can bring will inevitably be something people

will be turning to, especially as the actual quality of the music today is on a downward spiral.

On the other hand, people do use anything they can possibly get to detach themselves

from the everyday noise we are surrounded by and isolate themselves on the streets. Forced to be

a part of something they don’t want to be a part of, a simple pair of headphones can create a

difference between the noise they don’t want to hear and their own little personal space. Trying

to maintain their focus and put up with the stress of city life, they are isolating themselves from

good things around them as well. To me, that pair of headphones can be a jump from the
negative to the positive feeling, and it helps me move on. But as Krukowski said, I might be

missing out on some good quality sound that is trying to reach me while I'm trying to isolate

myself from the crowd.

Times change, and so do we. Sometimes to the good, sometimes to the bad. As we give

those changes emotional attachment, we like to jump to the conclusion that the old days were

always better. And perhaps they were. But as we progress to the future and the unknown,

questioning ourselves and the changes we live through, all we can really do is try to remember

where we came from and what makes us who we are, and never forget to preserve the human

factor through everything we do. And I believe that is what Krukowski would like us to

remember.