Well, I missed Live 8 this weekend; or it missed me, rather. These days, I seem to be catching up with the world instead of living in it. Images of the present are all around me; but they flicker in a sphere of some remove, while the sounds of the past, close up and intimate, continue to envelop and move me. The world of today often appears to be a realm apart, not a reality that is part of me. Even if it calls out to me, I can barely be reached for comment.
So, the spectacle of Live 8 has passed me by. Of course, mass-mediated fund-raising efforts and public appeals are nothing new; they certainly precede television. There was good old Kate Smith, for instance, who raised millions for defense on US radio during the war loan drives of the 1940s. US programs like the Treasury Star Parade staged plays expressly for the purpose of raising awareness—and plenty of dough. Not long after VJ Day, public service announcements encouraged listeners to assist financially in the rebuilding of Europe, to give to those who, not too long ago, were to be thought of as adversaries, as evil incarnate.
War and peace propaganda aside, radio audiences were often urged to contribute to their communities and be socially responsible; they were reminded that careful listening meant responding and interacting, even though the actions to be taken were dictated to them. Undoubtedly, Live 8 is creating the greatest gathering of people in need of a latter-day Borrioboola Gha—an entire continent deserving of their aid, providing said far-away and its miseries will remain distant.
I recall the Band Aid efforts of 1985; I was enjoying the idea of being part of a great musical bloc party, but never thought much about the cause behind it nor made any contribution other than showing up. Today, making a spontaneous donation is as easy as pressing a button on your mobile phone; but can the televised images of spoiled pop stars and starving children assist in making Africa become more familiar, in making millions elsewhere matter here?
Can an image say more than a thousand uttered sounds? Supposedly, the fleeting sounds of live radio appeal to the emotion much more than print or visual media, which encourage closer scrutiny and permit reexamination—the remove of reason. Radio, it has been argued by McLuhan and his followers, is a fascist medium; it unifies by infiltrating the mind and by stirring each listener singly. It is the great sonic leveler—browbeating, cajoling, indoctrinating.
The aural medium strikes me as a more immediate, more readily suggestive propagandistic tool than other mass media. Sure, television or computer screens, too, can reach the multitude-as-individuals with whatever messages are being conveyed; but the eye, opening up a world, keeps it at a distance. We look on, stare or gawk at something other than ourselves; even our own image, once televised or screened, becomes strange to us.
Unlike the eye, my ear brings the world home, making even the infinite seem intimate. Whatever “eager droppings” spill over the “porches of my ear” melt into me, become me. I take sound in, am taken in, and, thus taken, carried away—by force and by choice—from the image empire of today. I am listening, away.
Harry Heuser 