The Connection between Patience and Music
The best thing about music is that I'm more patient while I'm listening to it. Before I bought a CD player for my car, I was impatient with traffic. Now I listen to music while I'm making that long commute from Palmdale to Hollywood, and I find it doesn't bother me any more that another lane is moving faster than my lane. While I'm listening to music I no longer find it necessary to speed up to 40 only to hit the brakes again. (Picture a long spring, such as a Slinky®. Now move one end along the axis of the spring. That's how traffic moves on LA freeways.) Of course, the people behind me get annoyed when I leave too great a following distance, but then that's their problem, not mine, right? As long as the music is loud enough, I won't hear their horn.
When I was in high school, music was my mind-altering drug. I'm sure it's not well understood how music alters the mind -- at least I'm sure I don't understand it. All I know is when I strapped on that pair of Koss® fluid-filled headphones and cranked up the volume I was in a chronosynclastic infundibulum.1 I'm sure my hearing would be better today if I hadn't done that, but what drug doesn't cause damage? What? (Just kidding.)
Now I'm busy developing this web site directly onto a web server in a different country (Canada) using an Intel®-based computer running Windows95® with a good quality SoundBlaster® card and a very slow modem. It takes several seconds -- maybe up to half a minute -- to open the web using FrontPage98®. But that delay doesn't seem to bother me as much when I put a CD into my computer, and crank up the volume.
Footnotes:
1. a phrase invented by Kurt Vonnegut in The Sirens of Titan, meaning "those places ... where all the different kinds of truths fit together".