Come on, feel the noise: how I unplugged my headphones and reconnected with the world

Until about a month ago, the thought of leaving my flat without my headphones connected to my smartphone filled me with anxiety. Any length of time, whether a two-minute walk to the shop or a two-hour commute, with nothing but my own thoughts and the racket of the city to listen to, was enough to send me into a mild frenzy.

I see this paradox most clearly in my desire for both cognitive and environmental control, the two of which are heavily interlinked. I often find it disorienting to live in a city. I witness so much horror and I have no choice but to avert my gaze. I walk around Manchester listening to Northern Soul, passing homeless people with a spring in my step, fully engulfed by my own audiotopia. In some ways it feels necessary. It is difficult to see so much sadness on a daily basis while unable to immediately help. I understand, then, the need to feel in control of my own experience; the sense of freedom that comes with tuning it all out. The same goes for blocking out the noise of industrialisation. I can understand the argument that headphones can be used as a tool for personal liberation, something Bull found in his research. But surely, true liberation would be for the outside world to be better suited to our needs (and, of course, the needs of the natural world).

A month after my experiment concluded, I still wear them now and then but they no longer exert the same control over me. Music is just music, not a necessity to get me through boring tasks. Podcasts and audiobooks are forms of entertainment and information, not a means of distraction from my own thoughts. And the sounds of the city are just sounds, not something I need to escape.