Walking Alone

By Crispin Sartwell

It's the anniversary of the Walkman. When the miniature cassette player/radio with earphones was introduced in 1979, it seemed like a pleasant enough object, and perhaps a nice solution to the boombox problem: big basses in public places. As time rattled on, however, it began to seem as if Walkman users were hiding in their tiny room of sound, disconnecting from the people around them. Many argued that this heralded a dark new era of isolation: it's just you and your machine. But I think that sometimes disconnection is a good or necessary thing.

Sociality seems to be our new American religion. Solitude, even momentary solitude, is often taken as an anti-democratic gesture. Along these lines, the Walkman, along with the Gameboy and the Internet and the suburbs, have been condemned as destroyers of civic life. A widely applauded locus classicus of this argument is Robert Putnam's article "Bowling Alone" in the Journal of Democracy, which carefully documented a decline in Americans' civic participation.

When the Walkman was introduced twenty years ago, it participated in a boom in "personal technologies," little machines that we carry on and eventually may carry in our persons: the laptop computer, the pager, the "personal assistant," the cell phone. These things are useful, but they are also status symbols and fashion statements. That is, they have a social aspect, and even as they separate us from other people, they are also ways we connect to each other. The Walkman is, after all, a vehicle for the mass media, whether you're listening to Dixie Chicks or sports on the radio. Civic participation is not declining; rather the meanings of both "civic" and "participation" are changing.

And this is a good thing, because uninterrupted interaction with others can be a bit of a headache, especially for kids. There's no escape from the practices, the lessons, the classroom, the playground, the gossip. The parents are on your back, and there is no surcease from the siblings or the junior-sized soap operas on the schoolyard.

When I was a kid and afterward I've often wanted to disconnect from the people around me. And while some may call that pathological, I call their position not only sick, but downright un- American. Thoreau: "I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will." Henry David bowled alone.

The choice seems to be between personal pleasure and public participation, between personal and public "space." But we all have to find some balance between those things, and the balance shifts at different times in our lives. It is idiotic to think that one is bad, the other good. Perhaps you know a crazy recluse or two, a cut-rate Garbo who never leaves the house. But some folks are also so sociable as to be insane: they've got no time to reflect; and they are compulsive followers and joiners to the point at which you might wonder whether they actually exist at all: they live by mimicry, and when the action stops you've got to wonder whether anyone's there. Not having any civic life is a problem, but leave the consensuses and non-stop schmoozing to the really social animals: lemmings, for example.

You see the Walkman these days where personal space is a bit compromised. People like to hook up on treadmills at the gym, for instance, and download a book on tape rather than the grunts and rock stations. Or in the airport and the plane, in preference to muzak, CNN, obnoxious ticket agents, and screaming families. They're multitasking, but they're also screening out the insufferable social noise.

It seems a little late, what with the thing being twenty years old, but just a couple of weeks ago I tried the Walkman for the first time. My kid Vincie's South York County Braves were taking on the Dallastown Cougars Sunday at one in the afternoon, and I didn't think I could live without the Redskins' season opener against the Cowboys. (As you may recall the Skins trashed a 21-point lead in the fourth quarter and lost the game in OT. But the Braves kicked the Cougars.) The goal was to experience two football games at once.

Despite my fondness for healthy isolation, it didn't work out very well. With half my attention on Vincie and half on Darrell Green, I missed plays in both games and felt removed from the people around me. So I took a tape-and-watch-later approach the next week. My first Walkman experience may be my last. But everybody has to find their own solitude, and as I toast the Walkman's anniversary with apple cider, I don't begrudge its use to anybody.

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