Music Speakers Quotes

The most unreal thing about the bar was Taylor Swift’s ‘Blank Space’ blasting from the speakers. ‘Dwarves like human music?’ I asked Blitzen. ‘You mean humans like our music.’ ‘But …’ I had a sudden image of Taylor Swift’s mom and Freya having a girls’ night out in Nidavellir. ‘Never mind.

It is like sitting in a traffic jam on the San Diego Freeway with your windows rolled up and Portuguese music booming out of the surround-sound speakers while animals gnaw on your neck and diseased bill collectors hammer on your doors with golf clubs.

As the music played over the speakers and the waterfall in the pool filled the silence around us, I knew that, without a doubt, I had just been ruined.

Music is the fastest motivator in the world.

Those who choose, conduct, present, and accompany the music may influence the spirit of reverence ... more than a speaker does.

People spend thousands of dollars on stereos. Sometimes tens of thousands. There is a specialist industry right here in the States which builds stereo gear to a standard you wouldn't believe. Tubed amplifiers which cost more than a house. Speakers taller than me. Cables thicker than a garden hose. Some army guys had that stuff. I'd heard it on bases around the world. Wonderful. But they were wasting their money. Because the best stereo in the world is free. Inside your head. It sounds as good as you want it to. As loud as you want it to be.

Love was like notches on a speaker that could be cranked up and down, the decibels of desire, the frequencies of feeling. Sometimes she thought that she might have cranked it all the way up and broken the dial before the music had even started.

It's funny how after all those years attending youth events with light shows and bands, after all the contemporary Christian music and contemporary Christian books, after all the updated technology and dynamic speakers and missional enterprises and relevant marketing strategies designed to make Christianity cool, all I wanted from the church when I was ready to give it up was a quiet sanctuary and some candles. All I wanted was a safe place to be. Like so many, I was in search of sanctuary.

I've just worked out what the music on the speakers is," he said. "It's John Martyn, Over The Hill." "And ?" "And nothing. It's just, maybe I'm not there yet.

I was always fishing for something on the radio. Just like trains and bells, it was part of the soundtrack of my life. I moved the dial up and down and Roy Orbison's voice came blasting out of the small speakers. His new song, "Running Scared," exploded into the room. Orbison, though, transcended all the genres - folk, country, rock and roll or just about anything. His stuff mixed all the styles and some that hadn't even been invented yet. He could sound mean and nasty on one line and then sing in a falsetto voice like Frankie Valli in the next. With Roy, you didn't know if you were listening to mariachi or opera. He kept you on your toes. With him, it was all about fat and blood. He sounded like he was singing from an Olympian mountaintop and he meant business. One of his previous songs, "Ooby Dooby" was deceptively simple, but Roy had progressed. He was now singing his compositions in three or four octaves that made you want to drive your car over a cliff. He sang like a professional criminal. Typically, he'd start out in some low, barely audible range, stay there a while and then astonishingly slip into histrionics. His voice could jar a corpse, always leave you muttring to yourself something like, "Man, I don't believe it." His songs had songs within songs. They shifted from major to minor key without any logic. Orbison was deadly serious - no pollywog and no fledgling juvenile. There wasn't anything else on the radio like him.

Ben had never seen his mother cry before, and it startled him, so he didn't ask again. Right afterward she'd put on her favorite record and played a mysterious song called "Space Oddity," about an astronaut named Major Tom who gets lost in space. She used to listen to the song over and over again. With her eyes closed, she'd place the palm of her hand against the fabric of the speaker, so she could feel it vibrate against her skin.

What’s your favorite word?” Startled, I looked up at him, unsure I’d heard him right. “My favorite word?” He nodded, slipping his glasses up his nose with a quick, practiced scrunch of his face that made him look angry and then surprised within a single second. “You have seven boxes of books up here. A wild guess tells me you like words.” I suppose I had never thought about having a favorite word, but now that he asked, I kind of liked the idea. I let my eyes lose focus as I thought. “Ranunculus,” I said after a moment. “What?” “Ranunculus. It’s a kind of flower. It’s such a weird word but the flowers are so pretty, I like how unexpected that is.” They were my Mom’s favorite, I didn’t say. “That’s a pretty girly answer.” “Well, I am a girl.” He kept his eyes on his feet but I knew I wasn’t imagining the gleam of interest I’d seen when I said ranunculus. I bet he had expected me to say unicorn or daisy or vampire. “What about you? What’s your favorite word? I bet it’s tungsten. Or, like, amphibian.” He quirked a smile, answering, “Regurgitate.” Scrunching my nose, I stared at him. “That is a gross word.” This made him smile even wider. “I like the hard consonant sounds in it. It kinda sounds like exactly what it means.” “An onomatopoeia?” I half expected trumpets to blast revelatory music from an invisible speaker in the wall from the way Elliot stared at me, lips parted and glasses slowly sliding down his nose. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m not a complete idiot, you know. You don’t have to look so surprised that I know some big words.” “I never thought you were an idiot,” he said quietly, looking toward the box and pulling out another book to hand to me. For a long time after we returned to our slow, inefficient method of unpacking the books, I could feel him looking up and watching me, tiny flashes of stolen glances. I pretended I didn’t notice.

Music was a kind of penetration. Perhaps absorption is a less freighted word. The penetration or absorption of everything into itself. I don't know if you have ever taken LSD, but when you do so the doors of perception, as Aldous Huxley, Jim Morrison and their adherents ceaselessly remind us, swing wide open. That is actually the sort of phrase, unless you are William Blake, that only makes sense when there is some LSD actually swimming about inside you. In the cold light of the cup of coffee and banana sandwich that are beside me now it appears to be nonsense, but I expect you to know what it is taken to mean. LSD reveals the whatness of things, their quiddity, their essence. The wateriness of water is suddenly revealed to you, the carpetness of carpets, the woodness of wood, the yellowness of yellow, the fingernailness of fingernails, the allness of all, the nothingness of all, the allness of nothing. For me music gives access to everyone of these essences, but at a fraction of the social or financial cost of a drug and without the need to cry 'Wow!' all the time, which is LSD's most distressing and least endearing side effects. ...Music in the precision of its form and the mathematical tyranny of its laws, escapes into an eternity of abstraction and an absurd sublime that is everywhere and nowhere at once. The grunt of rosin-rubbed catgut, the saliva-bubble blast of a brass tube, the sweaty-fingered squeak on a guitar fret, all that physicality, all that clumsy 'music making', all that grain of human performance...transcends itself at the moment of its happening, that moment when music actually becomes, as it makes the journey from the vibrating instrument, the vibrating hi-fi speaker, as it sends those vibrations across to the human tympanum and through to the inner ear and into the brain, where the mind is set to vibrate to frequencies of its own making. The nothingness of music can be moulded by the mood of the listener into the most precise shapes or allowed to float as free as thought; music can follow the academic and theoretical pattern of its own modality or adhere to some narrative or dialectical programme imposed by a friend, a scholar or the composer himself. Music is everything and nothing. It is useless and no limit can be set to its use. Music takes me to places of illimitable sensual and insensate joy, accessing points of ecstasy that no angelic lover could ever locate, or plunging me into gibbering weeping hells of pain that no torturer could ever devise. Music makes me write this sort of maundering adolescent nonsense without embarrassment. Music is in fact the dog's bollocks. Nothing else comes close.

The feedback from the speakers changes and begins blasting death metal music so loudly into the sky that I swear the bridge suspensions are vibrating. The twins were in charge of the music selection. I catch sight of them on the side of the bridge, each with an arm raised, holding up their forefingers and pinkies in a devil sign, head-banging to the beat. They’re mouthing the words to the garbled voice screaming over the intense electric guitar and drums blasting out of the speakers. They might look pretty badass if it weren’t for their hobo clown outfits. It’s the loudest party the Bay Area has ever heard.

edible. But I still hated the shows and hated myself for hating them. The clubs were smoky, which hurt my eyes and made my clothes stink. The speakers were always turned up so high that the music blared, causing my ears to ring so

Janie sped away in her convertible. Her car’s speakers blasted AC/DC’s Highway to Hell for good measure. She smiled as she mouthed the lyrics, ironically feeling like she was escaping hell.

I like this song," I blurted out. Jim Morrison's voice was soft and barely reached us from where it was filtering through Betty's speakers. "Yeah? The Doors?" Liam;s face lit up. "'Come on baby, light my fire,'" he crooned in a low voice, trying to match Morrison's. "Try to set the night on fire. . . .'" I laughed. "I like it when he sings.

Words accrue and lose meaning through a semantic mobility dependent on the community in which they thrive, and these meanings cannot be divorced from bodily sensation and emotion. Slang emerges among a circle of speakers. Irony requires double consciousness, reading one meaning and understanding another. Elegant prose involves a feeling for the rhythms and the music of sentences, a product of the sensual pleasure a writer takes in the sounds of words and the varying metric beats of sentences. Creative translation must take all this into account. If a meaning is lost in one sentence, it might be gained or added to the next one. Such considerations are not strictly logical. They do not involve a step-by-step plan but come from the translator’s felt understanding of the two languages involved. Rodney

Yet the laboriously sought musical epiphany rarely compares to the unsought, even unwanted tune whose ambush is violent and sudden: the song the cab driver was tuned to, the song rumbling from the speaker wedged against the fire-escape railing, the song tingling from the transistor on the beach blanket. To locate those songs again can become, with age, something like a religious quest, as suggested by the frequent use of the phrase "Holy Grail" to describe hard-to-find tracks. The collector is haunted by the knowledge that somewhere on the planet an intact chunk of his past still exists, uncorrupted by time or circumstance.

What's coming out of the stereo is like a genre unto itself, a charming, fucked-up fairy tale that immediately breaks my heart in all the best ways. I stretch out on the floor with my ear parked next to the speaker, in a trance. I place the album cover over my face to block out any interruption as "I'll Be Your Mirror" seduces me. I immediately add the song to my mental list of top ten songs ever. And as I'm bobbing my head with dreamy abandon, I hear a voice. "Nice choice, DJ," it says. I slowly slide the album cover down past my eyes and look up. My eyes spy his shoes first--paint-splattered brogues. My heart stops when I look at his face. Pale skin, messy black hair, emerald eyes...Senor Smolder! He's eighteen, maybe nineteen. And no, my imagination didn't lie, he is just as devastating now as he was the first time I saw him. Only even more, because he just complimented my taste in music.

Instructions for Dad. I don't want to go into a fridge at an undertaker's. I want you to keep me at home until the funeral. Please can someone sit with me in case I got lonely? I promise not to scare you. I want to be buried in my butterfly dress, my lilac bra and knicker set and my black zip boots (all still in the suitcase that I packed for Sicily). I also want to wear the bracelet Adam gave me. Don't put make-up on me. It looks stupid on dead people. I do NOT want to be cremated. Cremations pollute the atmosphere with dioxins,k hydrochloric acid, hydrofluoric acid, sulphur dioxide and carbon dioxide. They also have those spooky curtains in crematoriums. I want a biodegradable willow coffin and a woodland burial. The people at the Natural Death Centre helped me pick a site not for from where we live, and they'll help you with all the arrangements. I want a native tree planted on or near my grave. I'd like an oak, but I don't mind a sweet chestnut or even a willow. I want a wooden plaque with my name on. I want wild plants and flowers growing on my grave. I want the service to be simple. Tell Zoey to bring Lauren (if she's born by then). Invite Philippa and her husband Andy (if he wants to come), also James from the hospital (though he might be busy). I don't want anyone who doesn't know my saying anything about me. THe Natural Death Centre people will stay with you, but should also stay out of it. I want the people I love to get up and speak about me, and even if you cry it'll be OK. I want you to say honest things. Say I was a monster if you like, say how I made you all run around after me. If you can think of anything good, say that too! Write it down first, because apparently people often forget what they mean to say at funerals. Don't under any circumstances read that poem by Auden. It's been done to death (ha, ha) and it's too sad. Get someone to read Sonnet 12 by Shakespeare. Music- "Blackbird" by the Beatles. "Plainsong" by The Cure. "Live Like You Were Dying" by Tim McGraw. "All the Trees of the Field Will Clap Their Hands" by Sufian Stevens. There may not be time for all of them, but make sure you play the last one. Zoey helped me choose them and she's got them all on her iPod (it's got speakers if you need to borrow it). Afterwards, go to a pub for lunch. I've got £260 in my savings account and I really want you to use it for that. Really, I mean it-lunch is on me. Make sure you have pudding-sticky toffee, chocolate fudge cake, ice-cream sundae, something really bad for you. Get drunk too if you like (but don't scare Cal). Spend all the money. And after that, when days have gone by, keep an eye out for me. I might write on the steam in the mirror when you're having a bath, or play with the leaves on the apple tree when you're out in the garden. I might slip into a dream. Visit my grave when you can, but don't kick yourself if you can't, or if you move house and it's suddenly too far away. It looks pretty there in the summer (check out the website). You could bring a picnic and sit with me. I'd like that. OK. That's it. I love you. Tessa xxx

What kind of love do you think you deserve then?” “I’m not sure,” I answer honestly, my voice small and hardly audible over the music streaming from the speakers. He clasps my chin between his fingers and looks me in the eyes as he says, “Then it’s up to us to figure it out. Together.

A person’s native tongue influences the way he or she perceives music. The same succession of notes may sound different depending on the language the listener learned growing up.”12 As evidence, speakers of tonal languages including Mandarin are more likely than Westerners to have perfect pitch. In one study, 92 percent of Mandarin speakers who began the music lessons at or before the age of five had perfect pitch compared to 8 percent of English speakers with comparable music training.

Elevators are supposed to smell like urine. That's what make the jazz playing through the overhead speakers sound more authentic.

Enjoy the full, rich sound of your favorite music without any cords or cables. GGMM M4 uses Wi-Fi/ Bluetooth 4.0 technology to equally project exquisite audio wirelessly.

Christmas music spills down from the speakers, tired tunes Holly could live happily without for the rest of her life.

The "real stuff" is what he calls the music that is piped in through the speaker in the machine. The music that comes from inside my head is not considered real.

At the end of the day, someone took the monitor and speakers away. But the music was still there. This was my first understanding of grief.

What is the use of beauty in woman? Provided a woman is physically well made and capable of bearing children, she will always be good enough in the opinion of economists. What is the use of music? -- of painting? Who would be fool enough nowadays to prefer Mozart to Carrel, Michael Angelo to the inventor of white mustard? There is nothing really beautiful save what is of no possible use. Everything useful is ugly, for it expresses a need, and man's needs are low and disgusting, like his own poor, wretched nature. The most useful place in a house is the water-closet. For my part, saving these gentry's presence, I am of those to whom superfluities are necessaries, and I am fond of things and people in inverse ratio to the service they render me. I prefer a Chinese vase with its mandarins and dragons, which is perfectly useless to me, to a utensil which I do use, and the particular talent of mine which I set most store by is that which enables me not to guess logogriphs and charades. I would very willingly renounce my rights as a Frenchman and a citizen for the sight of an undoubted painting by Raphael, or of a beautiful nude woman, -- Princess Borghese, for instance, when she posed for Canova, or Julia Grisi when she is entering her bath. I would most willingly consent to the return of that cannibal, Charles X., if he brought me, from his residence in Bohemia, a case of Tokai or Johannisberg; and the electoral laws would be quite liberal enough, to my mind, were some of our streets broader and some other things less broad. Though I am not a dilettante, I prefer the sound of a poor fiddle and tambourines to that of the Speaker's bell. I would sell my breeches for a ring, and my bread for jam. The occupation which best befits civilized man seems to me to be idleness or analytically smoking a pipe or cigar. I think highly of those who play skittles, and also of those who write verse. You may perceive that my principles are not utilitarian, and that I shall never be the editor of a virtuous paper, unless I am converted, which would be very comical. Instead of founding a Monthyon prize for the reward of virtue, I would rather bestow -- like Sardanapalus, that great, misunderstood philosopher -- a large reward to him who should invent a new pleasure; for to me enjoyment seems to be the end of life and the only useful thing on this earth. God willed it to be so, for he created women, perfumes, light, lovely flowers, good wine, spirited horses, lapdogs, and Angora cats; for He did not say to his angels, 'Be virtuous,' but, 'Love,' and gave us lips more sensitive than the rest of the skin that we might kiss women, eyes looking upward that we might behold the light, a subtile sense of smell that we might breathe in the soul of the flowers, muscular limbs that we might press the flanks of stallions and fly swift as thought without railway or steam-kettle, delicate hands that we might stroke the long heads of greyhounds, the velvety fur of cats, and the polished shoulder of not very virtuous creatures, and, finally, granted to us alone the triple and glorious privilege of drinking without being thirsty, striking fire, and making love in all seasons, whereby we are very much more distinguished from brutes than by the custom of reading newspapers and framing constitutions.

On his worst days, Ellwood hated England...They were a small-minded people, the English, and their greatest art form, writing, was small-minded also, it was provincial; it did not translate like music and painting, it was only for the English-speakers. That [his friends] should all have to die so that England could continue in its smug small-mindedness seemed worse than a tragedy, for it was not beautiful. No, it was only stupid, and Ellwood hated the muddy fields and the dreary sheep and the clumsy, prehistoric rock formations that they had all been asked to die for.

we pulled into the garden center, where “Carol of the Bells” was blaring out of tinny speakers that had been mounted on poles. It was like the kind of music you’d play if Santa was a serial killer.

Moments later, I was climbing nervously into the back of the car. The driver wore the archetypal expression of an antagonist. No words were exchanged beyond the brief lines uttered to this nameless stranger, whose inclinations remained unclear. The car sped along empty roads and traversed dingy alleyways. Music blared from its speakers. I did not remember exhaling throughout the entire journey.

After a noticeable silence, he'd recently published a book of technically baffling poems, with line breaks so arbitrary and frequent as to be useless, arrhythmic. On the page they look like some of Charles Bukowski's skinny, chatty, muttering-stuttering antiverses. Impossibly, Mark's words make music, the faraway strains of an irresistible jazz. It's plain to any reader, within a few lines—well, go read the poems and see, Marcus Ahearn traffics with the ineffable. He makes the mind of the speaker present, in that here-and-now where the reader actually reads—that place. Such a rare thing. Samuel Beckett. Jean Follain, Ionesco—the composer Billy Strayhorn. Mark calls his process "psychic improvisation" and referred me to the painter Paul Klee; the term was Klee's. "You just get out a pen and a notebook and let your mind go long," he told me.

[In South Carolina listening to Gullah-speakers sing spiritials] As with bluegrass in Tennessee I am reminded once more of the extraordinary power that comes from music that is played in the place where it was born.

Here is a historical fact that somehow gets overlooked, and might seem controversial, but it just simply is true: The Beastie Boys should only be listened to by deaf people. Any other time it plays over speakers, it should be considered torture and an act of war. Even ducks, the songbirds of the feathered swimmers, hate The Beastie Boys, and consider them to be The Three Stooges of the musical world, with all of the vocal talent of Gilbert Gottfried.

Bubble baths are good. But why not soak your body in aqua infused with sonic waves provided by waterproof speakers pulsing the healing music of Enya? That's what my ducks swim in, and that's why they taste like Amelia Earhart's final flight.

jukeboxes—industry estimates suggest that up to half of all the records sold in the United States in the later 1930s went into commercial music machines—and the early electric speakers were particularly suited to the percussive power of a piano.

The people in the Eden’s Gate houses fill their trash cans and pilot SUVs between their two homes and play music on Bluetooth speakers in their backyards and tell themselves they’re good people, conducting honorable, decent lives, living the so-called dream—as though America were an Eden where God’s warm benevolence fell equally across every soul. When in truth they’re participating in a pyramid scheme that’s chewing up everybody at the bottom, people like his mother. And they’re all congratulating themselves for it.

They start setting up on a little left stage playing my secret favorite song: the rustling of sheet music and set lists, the coughing and quiet warm-up, the tuning of instruments, squeak of speakers and amps, the last rags on cigarettes and popping of knuckles.

Or rather, he likes the white noise that comes with driving, the steady concreteness of going from here to there, the directions, the control. Most of all, he likes the inability to do anything else but drive, hands on the wheel, eyes on the road, music blaring through the speakers.

Relly fired off the opening riff. Butt laid down the beat, old doom and new joy mixed together. "I wait till I, like fire, shall rise," Jerod sang. And then again, louder, wailing sure and true. I was the last one to join in. I had a bass line all wroked out, of course. I'd been waiting weeks for this momment. My fingers colosed on the strings, pressed them hard to the frets. Butt and Relly were locked in, repeating the four-bar intro. Louder and louder, fierce as a war cry. "Ok," I whispered into the pounding noise. I joined in, doubling Relly at first, then splitting off to coil our riffs together. It was great, it was huge, it was endless. The song rose, churning and sucking everything in like a cyclone. "The will my voice in great goodbyes," Jerod screamed from the speakers. "Join to the chorus of the skies." Silence was inside me, riding the Ghost Metal tornado. Right at the center, at the heart of the song. I didn't need a voice. I had a bass. I didn't need to hear myself talk or sing. Jerod could make the words for me. Or maybe it was Silence herself, pouring out through the PA system. Either way, any way, They were my words. And all the world would hear them.

the truth is, he likes driving. Or rather, he likes the white noise that comes with driving, the steady concreteness of going from here to there, the directions, the control. Most of all, he likes the inability to do anything else but drive, hands on the wheel, eyes on the road, music blaring through the speakers.

Julia doesn’t like James Gillen, but that’s not the point, not out here. In the Court, back in the Court any eye you catch could be Love peal-of-bells-firework-burst Love, all among the sweet spray of the music and the rainbowing prisms of the lights, this could be the one huge mystery every book and film and song is sizzling with; could be your one-and-only shoulder to lean your head on, fingers woven with yours and lips gentle on your hair and Our Song pouring out of every speaker. This could be the one heart that will open to your touch and offer up its never-spoken secrets, that has spaces perfectly shaped to hold all of yours.

I had hooked up my iPod to the speakers. The air was filled with the raw, sexy purr of Etta James. "The thing that's great about the blues," I told Luke, pausing to sip from my glass of wine, "is that it's about feeling, loving, wanting without the brakes on. No one's brave enough to live that way. Except maybe musicians.

Such colourless phrases as he achieved were produced with a difficulty, a hesitancy, simulated perhaps, but decidedly effective in their unconcealed ineptness. Like most successful men, he had turned this apparent disadvantage into a powerful weapon of offense and defense, in the way that the sledge-hammer impact of his comment left, by its banality, every other speaker at a standstill, giving him as a rule complete mastery of the conversational field. A vast capacity for imposing boredom, a sense of immensely powerful stuffiness, emanated from him, sapping every drop of vitality from weaker spirits. "So you were at school together," he said slowly.

Some swivel in Seymour has locked: he can no longer see the planet as anything but dying, and everyone around him complicit in the killing. The people in the Eden’s Gate houses fill their trash cans and pilot SUVs between their two homes and play music on Bluetooth speakers in their backyards and tell themselves they’re good people, conducting honorable, decent lives, living the so-called dream—as though America were an Eden where God’s warm benevolence fell equally across every soul. When in truth they’re participating in a pyramid scheme that’s chewing up everybody at the bottom, people like his mother. And they’re all congratulating themselves for it.

Some swivel in Seymour has locked: he can no longer see the planet as anything but dying, and everyone around him complicit in the killing. The people in the Eden’s Gate houses fill their trash cans and pilot SUVs between their two homes and play music on Bluetooth speakers in their backyards and tell themselves they’re good people, conducting honorable, decent lives, living the so-called dream—as though America were an Eden where God’s warm benevolence fell equally across every soul. When in truth they’re participating in a pyramid scheme that’s chewing up everybody at the bottom, people like his mother. And they’re all congratulating themselves for it. MATHILDA:

Daily alone time My ability to embrace stillness and meditation was the momentum swing in my health transformation. I breathed in and out with the musical sounds of the Pacific Ocean. I breathed in life, energy, and the universe and as I breathed out, I felt every red and white blood cell washing the cancer cells out to sea with the waves.

One day Ron Mael of Sparks casually asked Morgan what he thought of the recording we were making. Morgan gave it a thought and wisely said, ‘You have to put more sound between the speakers’, stretching his arms wide. Ron turned to me with a surprised expression on his face and said, ‘Wow.’ Morgan’s suggestion made us widen the stereo soundscape of that mix.

He’s not a pretty boy. Is he?” Nico’s about thirty feet away, and for once I’m grateful that the jukebox music from the house speakers is just a little too loud. But I lower my voice anyway. “I mean, he’s pretty and he’s a boy, but he’s not a pretty boy.” “Please. I bet his semen is sparkly and it sings Beatles love songs while shooting out of his perfect penis.

Here's the plan: We do everything, all the traditions, and we do it grander than anyone ever dreamed! Here are the houselights, which will require extra generators so we don't smash the power grid, the holiday music CDs that will need waterproof outdoor concert speakers, the train set with extra boxes of tracks to connect all the rooms of the house, the toys where we forget the batteries, several gingerbread house kits we'll combine to form a mansion, DVDs of all the classic Christmas specials to run nonstop, mistletoe for all the doorways, the manger scene with a little Jesus that glows in the dark to emphasize the Holy Spirit third of the Trinity because he's the shy one who gets the least press, and all the presents we'll wrap together and give each other as Secret Santas.

Seymour has locked: he can no longer see the planet as anything but dying, and everyone around him complicit in the killing. The people in the Eden’s Gate houses fill their trash cans and pilot SUVs between their two homes and play music on Bluetooth speakers in their backyards and tell themselves they’re good people, conducting honorable, decent lives, living the so-called dream—as though America

See, birds of every varied voice Around us in the woods rejoice, On creeper, shrub, and plant alight, Or wing from tree to tree their flight. Each bird his kindly mate has found, And loud their notes of triumph sound, Blending in sweetest music like The distant warblings of the shrike. See how the river banks are lined With birds of every hue and kind. Here in his joy the Koïl sings, There the glad wild-cock flaps his wings. The blooms of bright Aśokas526where The song of wild bees fills the air, And the soft whisper of the boughs Increase my longing for my spouse. The vernal flush of flower and spray Will burn my very soul away. What use, what care have I for life If I no more may see my wife Soft speaker with the glorious hair, And eyes with silken lashes fair? Now is the time when all day long The Koïls fill the woods with song. And gardens bloom at spring's sweet touch Which my beloved loved so much. Ah me, Sumitrá's son, the fire Of sorrow, sprung from soft desire, Fanned by the charms the spring time shows, Will burn my heart and end my woes, Whose sad eyes look on each fair tree,

There is another system, more beaded than weather or murder, that is moving up into the province. As Les leaves the chair to investigate his son’s crying a thousand zombies form an alliterative fog around Lake Scugog and beyond, mouthing the words Helen, hello, help. This fog predominates the region; however, other systems compete, bursting and winding with vowels braiding into dipthongs so long that they dissipate across a thousand panting lips. In the suburbs of Barrie, for instance, an alliteration that began with the wail of a cat in heat picked up the consonant “Guh” from a fisherman caught in surprise on Lake Simcoe. The echoing coves of the lake added a sort of meter, and by the time these sounds arrived in Gravenhurst, the people there were certain that a musical was blaring from speakers in the woods. All across the province, zombies, like extras in a crowd scene, imitate a thousand conversations. They open and close their mouths on things and sound is a heavy carpet of mumbling, a pre-production monstrosity. In minutes the Pontypool fog will march on the town of Sunderland and over the barriers south of Lindsay.

The feedback from the speakers changes and begins blasting death metal music so loudly into the sky that I swear the bridge suspensions are vibrating. The twins were in charge of the music selection. I catch sight of them on the side of the bridge, each with an arm raised, holding up their forefingers and pinkies in a devil sign, head-banging to the beat. They’re mouthing the words to the garbled voice screaming over the intense electric guitar and drums blasting out of the speakers. They might look pretty badass if it weren’t for their hobo clown outfits. It’s the loudest party the Bay Area has ever heard.

You can have the perfect message, but it may fall on deaf ears when the listener is not prepared or open to listening. These listening "planes" were first introduced by the American composer Aaron Copland (1900-1990) as they pertain to music . . . 1. The Sensual Plane: You’re aware of the music, but not engaged enough to have an opinion or judge it. 2. The Expressive Plane: You become more engaged by paying attention, finding meaning beyond the music, and noticing how it makes you feel. 3. The Musical Plane: You listen to the music with complete presence, noticing the musical elements of melody, harmony, pitch, tempo, rhythm, and form.

The smallest bell was Ranna. Sleeper, some called it, its voice a sweet lullaby calling those who heard it into slumber. The second bell was Mosrael, the Waker. Lirael touched it ever so lightly, for Mosrael balanced Life with Death. Wielded properly, it would bring the Dead back into Life and send the wielder from Life into Death. Kibeth was the third bell, the Walker. It granted freedom of movement to the Dead, or it could be used to make them walk where the wielder chose. Yet it could also turn on a bell-ringer and make her march, usually somewhere she would not wish to go. The fourth bell was called Dyrim, the Speaker. This was the most musical bell, according to The Book of the Dead, and one of the most difficult to use as well. Dyrim could return the power of speech to long-silent Dead. It could also reveal secrets, or even allow the reading of minds. It had darker powers, too, favored by necromancers, for Dyrim could still a speaking tongue forever. Belgaer was the name of the fifth bell. The Thinker. Belgaer could mend the erosion of mind that often occurred in Death, restoring the thoughts and memory of the Dead. It could also erase those thoughts, in Life as well as in Death, and in necromancers’ hands had been used to splinter the minds of enemies. Sometimes it splintered the mind of the necromancer, for Belgaer liked the sound of its own voice and would try to steal the chance to sing of its own accord. The sixth bell was Saraneth, also known as Binder. Saraneth was the favorite bell of all Abhorsens. Large and trustworthy, it was powerful and true. Saraneth was used to dominate and bind the Dead, to make them obey the wishes and directions of the wielder. Lirael was reluctant to touch the seventh bell, but she felt it would not be diplomatic to ignore the most powerful of all the bells, though it was cold and frightening to her touch. Astarael, the Sorrowful. The bell that sent all who heard it into Death.

Some swivel in Seymour has locked: he can no longer see the planet as anything but dying, and everyone around him complicit in the killing. The people in the Eden's Gate houses fill their trash cans and pilot SUVs between their two homes and play music on Bluetooth speakers in their backyards and tell themselves they're good people, conducting honorable, decent lives, living the so-called dream - as though America were Eden where God's warm benevolence fell equally across every soul. When in truth they're participating in a pyramid scheme that's chewing up everybody at the bottom, people like his mother. And they're all congratulating themselves for it.

The absolute success of these two movements is such that at this stage, "indie" and "yuppie" are meaningless designators. The yuppie aesthetic of connoisseurship has infiltrated everywhere and now there is only--for many of us--either luxury gelato or food made of chemical waste. Ikea, Martha Stewart, and Whole Foods make yuppiedom no longer a chic and extravagant choice but an enforced mode. It's either that or eat at a toxic toilet such as McDonald's. The indie aesthetic is likewise de rigueur. H&M, Urban Outfitters, and American Apparel sell the floppy "Brit on a holiday" look to all Americans. Radiohead and Arcade Fire music is blasted from speakers at stadiums. For many poor souls, there is no alternative to the alternative.

In terms of cultural impact, one parallel for “Earth Song” is John Lennon’s classic, “Imagine.” Both songs became global anthems with instantly identifiable piano hooks and choruses. Both ask listeners to try to care for the world we have, rather than simply be placated by the thought of an afterlife. Yet where “Imagine” makes a subdued, elegant statement, “Earth Song” is epic, intense, and visceral. This, indeed, is one reason “Imagine” is more palatable to the average music listener. Its radical ideas can be softened by its ethereal sound. “Earth Song,” in contrast, seeks to shatter indifference, as it demands accountability. Radio can’t do it justice. It is a song that was created to blast out of speakers if it couldn’t be seen in person.

Still, everything in their house was buffed to a high, flat shine, so much reflection to protect the fact that there was nothing underneath. They didn’t read; there were a few books, a set of encyclopedias (the wine-colored spines warmed up the den), but the only well-leafed volumes were instruction manuals, do-it-yourself how-to’s, cookbooks, and a haggard set of The Way Things Work, volumes one and two. They had no comprehension why anyone would seek out a film with an unhappy ending or buy a painting that wasn’t pretty. They owned a top-shelf stereo with speakers worth $1,000 apiece, but only a handful of easy-listening and best-of CDs: Opera Stoppers; Classical Greatest Hits. That sounds lazy, but I think it was more helpless: They didn’t know what music was for.

With a slight smile on her face, she lies down on one side of the bed and pats the empty spot next to her. Confused, I follow suit, the both of us staring up at the ceiling silently. Right as I begin to ask her what she's doing, a burst of music fills the room. My eyes flick to where she holds her phone up, "Sunglasses at Night" playing from the speakers. "Mol—" "Shh," she hushes, laying her hand over mine. "Don't be rude. Olivia might be trying to listen, too." I can't breathe. A fire explodes in my chest, burning a path down to our entwined hands. I hope to God that it burns her, too. I want the flames to melt our hands together so she can never let go. If she wanted me to fall in love with her, she only needed to tell me. Now, she has no choice in the matter. Though, I suppose she never really did.

I close my eyes and hear wind rushing through palm trees again. And then laughter. The scene is foggy at first, and then it comes into sharp focus. I am standing in a kitchen. It's one of those big, well-appointed spaces you see in magazines, but this one is well loved, not just staged. A cake bakes in the oven. Carrot. There are matches and a box of birthday candles at the ready by the stove. Stan Getz's smoky-sweet saxophone filters from a speaker somewhere nearby. I'm stirring a pot of marinara sauce; a bit has splattered onto the marble countertop, but I don't care. I take a sip of wine and sway to the music. A little girl giggles on the sofa. I don't see her face, just her blond ponytail. And then warm, strong arms around my waist as he presses his body against me. I breathe in the scent of rugged spice, fresh cotton, and love.

He laughs and turns up the music so that I can hear it in the back. The speakers blast out: ‘Streets like a jungle, so call the police.’ ‘Call the police,’ I smile, ‘fuck the police’ nodding my head to the beat. The guard turns it up even more. ‘Yeah, fuck the police for stitching me up and presenting their dodgy evidence,’ I think to myself. Fuck them for getting me put away for seven instead of the four or five I should have got. A new song comes on and I’m merrily tapping my feet while the guard sings along up front to The Clash. ‘Fighting the nation. Police and thieves in the street, oh yeah…Oh yeah! Scaring the nation with their guns and ammunition. Police and thieves in the street. Oh yeah. Fighting the nation with their guns and ammunition’. Ha ha. The DJ on the radio is on my side. The Securicor men are on my side. And I’m heading back to civilisation and as many drugs as I can get my hands on. Everything’s going my way. There must be a song about that, too.

Lord o’ mercy! It might be a ship as is passing near us!” As this thought occurred to the speaker, he raised himself into an erect attitude, as if to get a better view. “I’ll hail, Will’m,” he muttered; “I’ll hail ’em. Keep your ears open, lad; and listen for the answer. Ship ahoy!” The hail was sent in the direction whence the mysterious sounds appeared to have proceeded. There came no response; and the sailor, after listening attentively for a second or two, repeated the “Ship ahoy!” this time in a louder key. Quick as an echo the words came back, though it could not be an echo. There are no echoes upon the ocean; besides, the voice that repeated the well-known phrase was quite different from that of him who had first pronounced it. Though different both in tone and accent, it was evidently a human voice; and, as evidently, that of a man. A rude, rough voice it was; but it is superfluous to say that, to the ears of Ben Brace and his youthful companion, it sounded sweeter than any music to which they had ever listened.

In his earliest memories he was sitting on the floor in the family room, in front of the giant stereo his parents had bought themselves as a wedding present, his face pressed into the padded fabric of one speaker. The fabric was prickly against his forehead but his nose fit perfectly into a little groove, and he could feel music spilling like molten gold through his entire body. He'd sit back on his heels when the song was over and his father, an accountant and amateur drummer whose (still-unrealized) dream was to open a jazz club and coffee house, would say, "Order up!" and put another record on the turntable. Rabbit's favorite albums were by Earth, Wind & Fire (syncopation made his brain feel like it was laughing) and Also sprach Zarathustra, its opening rumbling like an earthquake. And he loved The White Album, and when his mother played ABBA on the piano and they'd sing together (though Alice couldn't do it without being a total showoff), and the Star Wars soundtrack, and of _course_ Zeppelin. For six months in 1984, he had asked his parents to play "Stairway to Heaven" instead of a bedtime story.

A display cake read JUNETEENTH! in red frosting, surrounded by red, white, and blue stars and fireworks. A flyer taped to the counter above it encouraged patrons to consider ordering a Juneteenth cake early: We all know about the Fourth of July! the flyer said. But why not start celebrating freedom a few weeks early and observe the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation! Say it with cake! One of the two young women behind the bakery counter was Black, but I could guess the bakery's owner wasn't. The neighborhood, the prices, the twee acoustic music drifting out of sleek speakers: I knew all of the song's words, but everything about the space said who it was for. My memories of celebrating Juneteenth in DC were my parents taking me to someone's backyard BBQ, eating banana pudding and peach cobbler and strawberry cake made with Jell-O mix; at not one of them had I seen a seventy-five-dollar bakery cake that could be carved into the shape of a designer handbag for an additional fee. The flyer's sales pitch--so much hanging on that We all know--was targeted not to the people who'd celebrated Juneteenth all along but to office managers who'd feel hectored into not missing a Black holiday or who just wanted an excuse for miscellaneous dessert.

The same song was playing the second I met my ex–best friend and the moment I realized I’d lost her. I met my best friend at a neighborhood cookout the year we would both turn twelve. It was one of those hot Brooklyn afternoons that always made me feel like I'd stepped out of my life and onto a movie set because the hydrants were open, splashing water all over the hot asphalt. There wasn't a cloud in the flawless blue sky. And pretty black and brown people were everywhere. I was crying. ‘What a Wonderful World’ was playing through a speaker someone had brought with them to the park, and it reminded me too much of my Granny Georgina. I was cupping the last snow globe she’d ever given me in my small, sweaty hands and despite the heat, I couldn’t help imagining myself inside the tiny, perfect, snow-filled world. I was telling myself a story about what it might be like to live in London, a place that was unimaginably far and sitting in the palm of my hands all at once. But it wasn't working. When Gigi had told me stories, they'd felt like miracles. But she was gone and I didn't know if I'd ever be okay again. I heard a small voice behind me, asking if I was okay. I had noticed a girl watching me, but it took her a long time to come over, and even longer to say anything. She asked the question quietly. I had never met anyone who…spoke the way that she did, and I thought that her speech might have been why she waited so long to speak to me. While I expected her to say ‘What’s wrong?’—a question I didn’t want to have to answer—she asked ‘What are you doing?’ instead, and I was glad. “I was kind of a weird kid, so when I answered, I said ‘Spinning stories,’ calling it what Gigi had always called it when I got lost in my own head, but my voice cracked on the phrase and another tear slipped down my cheek. To this day I don’t know why I picked that moment to be so honest. Usually when kids I didn't know came up to me, I clamped my mouth shut like the heavy cover of an old book falling closed. Because time and taught me that kids weren't kind to girls like me: Girls who were dreamy and moony-eyed and a little too nice. Girls who wore rose-tonted glasses. And actual, really thick glasses. Girls who thought the world was beautiful, and who read too many books, and who never saw cruelty coming. But something about this girl felt safe. Something about the way she was smiling as she stuttered out the question helped me know I needn't bother with being shy, because she was being so brave. I thought that maybe kids weren't nice to girls like her either. The cookout was crowded, and none of the other kids were talking to me because, like I said, I was the neighborhood weirdo. I carried around snow globesbecause I was in love with every place I’d never been. I often recited Shakespeare from memory because of my dad, who is a librarian. I lost myself in books because they were friends who never letme down, and I didn’t hide enough of myself the way everyone else did, so people didn’t ‘get’ me. I was lonely a lot. Unless I was with my Gigi. The girl, she asked me if it was making me feel better, spinning the stories. And I shook my head. Before I could say what I was thinking—a line from Hamlet about sorrow coming in battalions that would have surely killed any potential I had of making friends with her. The girl tossed her wavy black hair over her shoulder and grinned. She closed her eyes and said 'Music helps me. And I love this song.' When she started singing, her voice was so unexpected—so bright and clear—that I stopped crying and stared at her. She told me her name and hooked her arm through mine like we’d known each other forever, and when the next song started, she pulled me up and we spun in a slow circle together until we were both dizzy and giggling.

You already know what you know, after all—and, unless your life is perfect, what you know is not enough. You remain threatened by disease, and self-deception, and unhappiness, and malevolence, and betrayal, and corruption, and pain, and limitation. You are subject to all these things, in the final analysis, because you are just too ignorant to protect yourself. If you just knew enough, you could be healthier and more honest. You would suffer less. You could recognize, resist and even triumph over malevolence and evil. You would neither betray a friend, nor deal falsely and deceitfully in business, politics or love. However, your current knowledge has neither made you perfect nor kept you safe. So, it is insufficient, by definition—radically, fatally insufficient. You must accept this before you can converse philosophically, instead of convincing, oppressing, dominating or even amusing. You must accept this before you can tolerate a conversation where the Word that eternally mediates between order and chaos is operating, psychologically speaking. To have this kind of conversation, it is necessary to respect the personal experience of your conversational partners. You must assume that they have reached careful, thoughtful, genuine conclusions (and, perhaps, they must have done the work tha justifies this assumption). You must believe that if they shared their conclusions with you, you could bypass at least some of the pain of personally learning the same things (as learning from the experience of others can be quicker and much less dangerous). You must meditate, too, instead of strategizing towards victory. If you fail, or refuse, to do so, then you merely and automatically repeat what you already believe, seeking its validation and insisting on its rightness. But if you are meditating as you converse, then you listen to the other person, and say the new and original things that can rise from deep within of their own accord. It’s as if you are listening to yourself during such a conversation, just as you are listening to the other person. You are describing how you are responding to the new information imparted by the speaker. You are reporting what that information has done to you—what new things it made appear within you, how it has changed your presuppositions, how it has made you think of new questions. You tell the speaker these things, directly. Then they have the same effect on him. In this manner, you both move towards somewhere newer and broader and better. You both change, as you let your old presuppositions die—as you shed your skins and emerge renewed. A conversation such as this is one where it is the desire for truth itself—on the part of both participants—that is truly listening and speaking. That’s why it’s engaging, vital, interesting and meaningful. That sense of meaning is a signal from the deep, ancient parts of your Being. You’re where you should be, with one foot in order, and the other tentatively extended into chaos and the unknown. You’re immersed in the Tao, following the great Way of Life. There, you’re stable enough to be secure, but flexible enough to transform. There, you’re allowing new information to inform you—to permeate your stability, to repair and improve its structure, and expand its domain. There the constituent elements of your Being can find their more elegant formation. A conversation like that places you in the same place that listening to great music places you, and for much the same reason. A conversation like that puts you in the realm where souls connect, and that’s a real place. It leaves you thinking, “That was really worthwhile. We really got to know each other.” The masks came off, and the searchers were revealed. So, listen, to yourself and to those with whom you are speaking. Your wisdom then consists not of the knowledge you already have, but the continual search for knowledge, which is the highest form of wisdom.

I left Brookstone and went to the Pottery Barn. When I was a kid and everything inside our house was familiar, cheap, and ruined, walking into the Pottery Barn was like entering heaven. If they really wanted people to enjoy church, I thought back then, they should make everything in church look and smell like the Pottery Barn. My dream was to surround myself one day with everything in the store, with the wicker baskets and scented candles, the brushed-silver picture frames. But that was a long time ago. I had already gone through a period of buying everything there was to buy at the Pottery Barn and decorating my apartment like a Pottery Barn outlet, and then getting rid of it all during a massive upgrade. Now everything at the Pottery Barn looked ersatz and mass-produced. To buy any of it now would be to regress in aspiration and selfhood. I didn’t want to buy anything at the Pottery Barn so much as I wanted to recapture the feeling of wanting to buy everything from the Pottery Barn. Something similar happened at the music store. I should try to find some new music, I thought, because there was a time when new music could lift me out of a funk like nothing else. But I wasn’t past the Bs when I saw the only thing I really cared to buy. It was the Beatles’ Rubber Soul, which had been released in 1965. I already owned Rubber Soul. I had owned Rubber Soul on vinyl, then on cassette, and now on CD, and of course on my iPod, iPod mini, and iPhone. If I wanted to, I could have pulled out my iPhone and played Rubber Soul from start to finish right there, on speaker, for the sake of the whole store. But that wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to buy Rubber Soul for the first time all over again. I wanted to return the needle from the run-out groove to the opening chords of “Drive My Car” and make everything new again. That wasn’t going to happen. But, I thought, I could buy it for somebody else. I could buy somebody else the new experience of listening to Rubber Soul for the first time. So I took the CD up to the register and paid for it and, walking out, felt renewed and excited. But the first kid I offered it to, a rotund teenager in a wheelchair looking longingly into a GameStop window, declined on the principle that he would rather have cash. A couple of other kids didn’t have CD players. I ended up leaving Rubber Soul on a bench beside a decommissioned ashtray where someone had discarded an unhealthy gob of human hair. I wandered, as everyone in the mall sooner or later does, into the Best Friends Pet Store. Many best friends—impossibly small beagles and corgis and German shepherds—were locked away for display in white cages where they spent their days dozing with depression, stirring only long enough to ponder the psychic hurdles of licking their paws. Could there be anything better to lift your spirits than a new puppy?

knocking again, but there is still no reply.  “Jackson?” she yells.  When there is no response, she opens the heavy oak door.  Music overloads her as she walks into his room.                 Her eyes scan the space, and when they fall on Jackson, she’s mortified.  He turns around, without his shirt on.  “Do you often walk into a person’s room uninvited?” he asks.                 Unable to speak, Kayla gawks at him.  Finally, she sputters, “I knocked a couple of times and even…called…out your name.”                 Jackson walks to his closet.  He yanks a shirt off a hanger and pulls it on.  “Sorry, I couldn’t hear you.”                 “Obviously,” Kayla yells over the music.  She walks over to the stereo and turns it down.  “Dear Lord, Jackson, how are you not deaf?”                 “It distracts me,” Jackson mumbles.  “Why are you here anyway?”                 Kayla sits on his bed.  “To spend time with you and to work on our project.”                 “What?  You didn’t want to get to know Damien?” Jackson grumbles, returning to his desk.                 “Jackson, I have no idea who Damien is, and for some reason he’s talking like he’s interested in me, which I do not understand.”                 He turns and looks at her.  “Kayla, I feel protective of you and just want you to be careful with Damien.  His motives…well…you may not understand them.  Just be careful.”                 “Should I be worried?  Is he a bad guy?”                 Jackson shakes his head. “No, not at all. He rubs me the wrong way, but he isn’t a bad guy.  I wish he were, but he isn’t.  Full of himself, yes, but—”                 “So are you,” Kayla interrupts.  Jackson smirks and nods. The song over the speakers changes and

against the velvet rope force fields that kept everyone without an invitation at bay. As I walked toward the entrance, the crowd bombarded me with a mix of insults, autograph requests, death threats, and tearful declarations of undying love. I had my body shield activated, but surprisingly, no one took a shot at me. I flashed the cyborg doorman my invitation, then mounted the long crystal staircase leading up into the club. Entering the Distracted Globe was more than a little disorienting. The inside of the giant sphere was completely hollow, and its curved interior surface served as the club’s bar and lounge area. The moment you passed through the entrance, the laws of gravity changed. No matter where you walked, your avatar’s feet always adhered to the interior of the sphere, so you could walk in a straight line, up to the “top” of the club, then back down the other side, ending up right back where you started. The huge open space in the center of the sphere served as the club’s zero-gravity “dance floor.” You reached it simply by jumping off the ground, like Superman taking flight, and then swimming through the air, into the spherical zero-g “groove zone.” As I stepped through the entrance, I glanced up—or in the direction that was currently “up” to me at the moment—and took a long look around. The place was packed. Hundreds of avatars milled around like ants crawling around the inside of a giant balloon. Others were already out on the dance floor—spinning, flying, twisting, and tumbling in time with the music, which thumped out of floating spherical speakers that drifted throughout the club. In the middle of all the dancers, a large clear bubble was suspended in space, at the absolute center of the club. This was the “booth” where the DJ stood, surrounded by turntables, mixers, decks, and dials. At the center of all that gear was the opening DJ, R2-D2, hard at work, using his various robotic arms to work the turntables. I recognized the tune he was playing: the ’88 remix of New Order’s “Blue Monday,” with a lot of Star Wars droid sound samples mixed in. As I made my way to the nearest bar, the avatars I passed all stopped to stare and point in

Davy, ever the daring one, bought a jumbo peppermint milk shake and got fifty cents back. He talked me out of getting plain vanilla. “You can get plain vanilla anytime!” he said. “Try…” He scanned the chalkboard that listed all the flavors. “Try peanut butter!” I did. I have never been sorry, because it was the best milk shake I ever tasted, like a melted and frozen Reese’s cup. And then it happened. We were walking across the parking lot, under the burning sun, with our shakes freezing our hands in the big white paper cups that had Spinnin’ Wheel in red across the sides. A sound began: music, first from a few car radios and then others as teenaged fingers turned the dial to that station. The volume dials were cranked up, and the music flooded out from the tinny speakers into the bright summer air. In a few seconds the same song was being played from every radio on the lot, and as it played, some of the car engines started and revved up and young laughter flew like sparks. I stopped. Just couldn’t walk anymore. That music was unlike anything I’d ever heard: guys’ voices, intertwining, breaking apart, merging again in fantastic, otherworldly harmony. The voices soared up and up like happy birds, and underneath the harmony was a driving drumbeat and a twanging, gritty guitar that made cold chills skitter up and down my sunburned back. “What’s that, Davy?” I said. “What’s that song?” …Round…round…get around…wha wha wha-oooooo… “What’s that song?” I asked him, close to panic that I might never know. “Haven’t you heard that yet? All the high-school guys are singin’ it.” …Gettin’ bugged drivin’ up and down the same ol’ strip…I gotta find a new place where the kids are hip… “What’s the name of it?” I demanded, standing at the center of ecstasy. “It’s on the radio all the time. It’s called—” Right then the high-school kids in the lot started singing along with the music, some of them rocking their cars back and forth, and I stood with a peanut butter milk shake in my hand and the sun on my face and the clean chlorine smell of the swimming pool coming to me from across the street. “—by the Beach Boys,” Davy Ray finished. “What?” “The Beach Boys. That’s who’s singin’ it.” “Man!” I said. “That sounds…that sounds…” What would describe it? What word in the English language would speak of youth and hope and freedom and desire, of sweet wanderlust and burning blood? What word describes the brotherhood of buddies, and the feeling that as long as the music plays, you are part of that tough, rambling breed who will inherit the earth? “Cool,” Davy Ray supplied. It would have to do. …Yeah the bad guys know us and they leave us alone…I get arounnnnddddd… I was amazed. I was transported. Those soaring voices lifted me off the hot pavement, and I flew with them to a land unknown. I had never been to the beach before. I’d never seen the ocean, except for pictures in magazines and on TV and movies. The Beach Boys. Those harmonies thrilled my soul, and for a moment I wore a letter jacket and owned a red hotrod and had beautiful blondes begging for my attention and I got around.

At one in the morning on the 20th. November, radio hams over most of Europe suffered serious interference to their reception, as if a new and exceptionally strong broadcaster was operating. They located the interference at two hundred and three metres; it sounded something like the noise of machinery or rushing water; then the continuous, unchanging noise was suddenly interrupted by a horrible, rasping noise (everyone described it in the same way: a hollow, nasal, almost synthetic sounding voice, made all the more so by the electronic apparatus); and this frog-like voice called excitedly, "Hello, hello, hello! Chief Salamander speaking. Hello, chief Salamander speaking. Stop all broadcasting, you men! Stop your broadcasting! Hello, Chief Salamander speaking!" And then another, strangely hollow voice asked: "Ready?" "Ready." There was a click as if the broadcast were being transferred to another speaker; and then another, unnaturally staccato voice called: "Attention! Attention! Attention!" "Hello!" "Now!" A voice was heard in the quiet of the night; it was rasping and tired-sounding but still had the air of authority. "Hello you people! This is Louisiana. This is Kiangsu. This is Senegambia. We regret the loss of human life. We have no wish to cause you unnecessary harm. We wish only that you evacuate those areas of coast which we will notify you of in advance. If you do as we say you will avoid anything regrettable. In future we will give you at least fourteen days notice of the places where we wish to extend our sea. Incidents so far have been no more than technical experiments. Your explosives have proved their worth. Thank you for them. "Hello you people! Remain calm. We wish you no harm. We merely need more water, more coastline, more shallows in which to live. There are too many of us. Your coastlines are already too limited for our needs. For this reason we need to demolish your continents. We will convert them into bays and islands. In this way, the length of coastline can be increased five-fold. We will construct new shallows. We cannot live in deep ocean. We will need your continents as materials to fill in the deep waters. We wish you no harm, but there are too many of us. You will be free to migrate inland. You will not be prevented from fleeing to the hills. The hills will be the last to be demolished. "We are here because you wanted us. You have distributed us over the entire world. Now you have us. We wish that you collaborate with us. You will provide us with steel for our picks and drills. you will provide us with explosives. You will provide us with torpedoes. You will work for us. Without you we will not be able to remove the old continents. Hello you people, Chief Salamander, in the name of all newts everywhere, offers collaboration with you. You will collaborate with us in the demolition of your world. Thank you." The tired, rasping voice became silent, and all that was heard was the constant noise resembling machinery or the sea. "Hello, hello, you people," the grating voice began again, "we will now entertain you with music from your gramophone records. Here, for your pleasure, is the March of the Tritons from the film, Poseidon.

Xavier and Catalina sat in the VIP box, waving down at us enthusiastically and I waved back before giving Darius my full attention. The entire right side of his face was covered in mud, not to mention the rest of him and his torn jersey fell open to reveal the firm cut of his abs and that perfect V which dipped beneath his waistband. “You’re killing it out there,” I told him truthfully, flashing a sweet smile which instantly had him narrowing his eyes in suspicion. We hadn’t exactly talked much since the whole three way thing and I was really curious about how he was feeling about that. But I was even more curious as to how he was going to react when he realised I’d been playing with the sack of treasure I stole from him oh so long ago. There were plenty of times when I’d thought about the little stash we’d hidden out in the woods and wondered why he hadn’t asked for it back and there was only one reason that made any sense – he assumed I didn’t have it anymore. I didn’t know if he thought I’d sold it or destroyed it, but I was about to remind him that I still had it and see how nice he was when his temper flared. I was pretty sure there was a guide book or two out there about not poking a Dragon, but I guessed I was just too stupid to care. “Thanks. Are you looking for me to make some cheesy statement like I’m thinking of you every time I tackle someone?” he teased and I laughed, tossing my hair. He frowned at me and I had to admit that might have been overkill, but whatever. “Nice to know I’m on your mind every time you have someone pinned beneath you in the mud,” I purred. From the corner of my eye, I noticed Mildred rising to her feet in the stands with a face like an angry Koala which had been hit by a car. I didn’t have long before she came over here to stake her claim on her Dragon, but I didn’t need much time. “I think I’ve made my desire to pin you beneath me pretty clear,” Darius replied in a low voice which had my toes curling, but I wasn’t here to flirt, I was here to poke a Dragon. “Good luck for the second half,” I said in a sweet voice, reaching out touch his bicep, making sure that the gold rings pressed against his skin. Darius looked down the moment he felt his magic stir in response to the gold and his eyes widened in surprise which was quickly followed by a flash of fury as he recognised the jewellery from his stash which I’d stolen. I whirled away from him with a dark laugh before he could do any more than suck in an angry breath and I jogged out to join my squad just as they started up a chant. V – E – G – A! She’ll wipe the floor with you today! Veeeeega! Veeeeega! I fell into the moves of the chant, clapping my hands as some of the others rustled pom-poms and Darcy offered me an appreciative smile from the side of the pitch. We had little chants like that for all of the team members, but we often forgot to call out for the Heirs. The music suddenly dropped and 7 Rings by Ariana Grande burst from speakers around the stadium as we moved into a full routine filled with dance moves and tricks. The song choice turned out to be perfect for taunting a gold obsessed Dragon as well as performing a badass routine to and I couldn’t help but smirk like a psychopath throughout. Darius stood glaring at me from the side of the pitch even when Seth tried to drag him into the locker rooms and my heart thundered at the pure fury in his eyes. Remind me again why I thought poking the Dragon was a good idea because he looks ready to shit a brick! I turned my eyes from him, grinning out at the crowd as I moved between my girls, running forward as I performed a set of hand springs which ended in me throwing a huge blast of multicoloured petals up into the air so that they fell over the crowd. (Tory)

THIS BRINGS US NICELY to the third speaker in our sound system. Like the second one, this third one has often been turned up far too loud. This has meant both that the music it is quite properly trying to play has itself been distorted and that the music coming from the other speakers (apart from the equally distorted second one) has been overwhelmed. In much modern biblical scholarship, in fact, this one has often drowned out all the others.

Around 1976, 12" dance and DJ singles emerged. Because the grooves on these oversize singles could be wider, and because they were spinning as fast as a 45, they were louder than LPs that spun at 33 RPM. I remember in the late seventies hearing how the low end (the sound of the kick drum and bass) could be brought forward on this format and made louder. Discos had speakers that could accommodate those frequencies, and they became a world of throbbing, pulsing low end—an experience that had to wait for the CD and digital recording to be experienced outside the club environment.

world had become. I’d dropped each joy, one by one, not noticing they were gone or really remembering I’d had them at all. I stopped listening to music, stopped dancing, stopped going on country drives. I stopped enjoying food, found no pleasure in good company, but instead a temporary lessening of misery, which made me a super-fun presence. Depression is so talented at turning you from a foodie into someone who wishes they could just eat a compressed nutrition bar every day, except about everything. I started to do and fall in love with all my favorite activities again, with gusto. I remembered what it was to put a new song I loved on repeat, to make little involuntary happy noises when biting into a soft ball of burrata, to push the Miata to 6,000 rpms, to rewrite Carly Rae Jepsen lyrics to be about my dog, to put on heels and a slip to mop while “Dangerous Woman” plays out of the speakers at full volume.

input Get data from the "outside world". This might be reading data from a file, or even some kind of sensor like a microphone or GPS. In our initial programs, our input will come from the user typing data on the keyboard. output Display the results of the program on a screen or store them in a file or perhaps write them to a device like a speaker to play music or speak text. sequential execution Perform statements one after another in the order they are encountered in the script. conditional execution Check for certain conditions and then execute or skip a sequence of statements. repeated execution Perform some set of statements repeatedly, usually with some variation. reuse Write a set of instructions once and give them a name and then reuse those instructions as needed throughout your program.

The pub off George Square is a tourist trap. Inside it’s all tartan upholstery and claymores on the walls. Soft rock music is playing slightly too loud from tiny white speakers screwed into the ceiling. Giant blackboards show the menu of steak and chips, haggis and whisky-flavoured ice cream. It seems very expensive to Margo but that’s probably because it serves visitors to the city who don’t know that better food is available two streets away for half the price. It’s quiet. The five o’clock rush is over but the evening hasn’t begun. There are only two other customers: men sitting away from each other in the far corners of the L-shaped room, pretending to read newspapers but really just killing themselves with drink.

Q did his disappearing act again, turning music so loud, lyrics corroded my fierce decision to leave. French laments full of regret and self-loathing throbbed through the speakers:     Mes besoins sont ma défaite. Je suis un monstre dans une peau humaine. My needs are my downfall. I’m a monster in human skin.   I hated the songs. Soft songs made Q seem human, living with mistakes and anguish, just like the rest of us. I preferred the raging songs. Ones with a heavy beat, heating my blood, filling me with energy to escape.     Et je vais prendre ce que je veux et payer mon propre désir. Cauchemars de ma solitude. L'obscurité pour un ami. And I'll take what I want and pay for my own desires. Nightmares for my loneliness. The darkness for a friend.

On a warm June day in 2005, Steve Jobs went to his first college graduation—as the commencement speaker. The billionaire founder and leader of Apple Computer wasn’t just another stuffed-shirt businessman. Though only fifty years old, the college dropout was a technology rock star, a living legend to millions of people around the world. In his early twenties, Jobs almost single-handedly introduced the world to the first computer that could sit on your desk and actually do something all by itself. He revolutionized music and the ears of a generation with a spiffy little music player called the iPod and a wide selection of songs at the iTunes store. He funded and nurtured a company called Pixar that

Nabbi’s restored my faith in dwarves, because it was in fact a claustrophobic tunnel. The ceiling was a low-clearance hazard. The walls were papered with old fight posters like DONNER THE DESTROYER VS. MINI-MURDER, ONE NIGHT ONLY! featuring pictures of muscular snarling dwarves in wrestling masks. Mismatched tables and chairs were occupied by a dozen mismatched dwarves—some svartalfs like Blitzen who could easily have passed for human, some much shorter guys who could have easily passed for garden gnomes. A few of the patrons glanced at us, but nobody seemed shocked that I was a human…if they even realized. The idea that I could pass for a dwarf was pretty disturbing. The most unreal thing about the bar was Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space” blasting from the speakers. “Dwarves like human music?” I asked Blitzen. “You mean humans like our music.” “But…” I had a sudden image of Taylor Swift’s mom and Freya having a girls’ night out in Nidavellir. “Never mind.

Verse speakers and opera singers could learn a great deal if they listen to all forms of popular music from Billie Holiday to Edith Piaf, where the passion, the feeling, the intonation, the tempo all arise from the word. In Broadway jargon, this is called ‘reading’ a song. I once asked Richard Rodgers, composer of Oklahoma! and countless other musicals, whether he had a stash of melodies in a top drawer, waiting to be used. ‘Of course not!’ he said. ‘I need the words.’ Like every composer of songs, it is the words that are proposed by a lyric that awaken the tune”.

Every spring, commencement speakers take the stage across the country to tell the graduates, “Our hopes for the future are in your hands.” I have an urgent message for these speakers: in the name of God, don’t do it! It’s unfair to lay all responsibility for the future on the younger generation. After all, the problems they face are partly due to the fact that we, their elders, screwed up. Worse still, it’s not true that the young alone are in charge of what comes next. We—young and old together—hold the future in our hands. If our common life is to become more compassionate, creative, and just, it will take an intergenerational effort. Let’s stop talking about “passing the baton” to the young as we elders finish running our laps. Since most of us are more skilled at sitting than at running, let’s change the metaphor and invite young adults to join the orchestra. As we sit together, we can help them learn to play their instruments—while they help us learn the music of the emerging world, which they hear more clearly than we do. Together we can compose something lovelier and more alive than the current cacophony, something in which dissonance has a place but does not dominate.

The most unreal thing about the bar was Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space” blasting from the speakers. “Dwarves like human music?” I asked Blitzen. “You mean humans like our music.” “But…” I had a sudden image of Taylor Swift’s mom and Freya having a girls’ night out in Nidavellir. “Never mind.

The opening notes of the Guns N’ Roses hit “Welcome to the Jungle” began to echo from the buildings behind us, Slash’s guitar sending those tones bouncing around the concrete and towers, somehow resonating with the steel and stone of the streets and buildings of the city. Chicago herself became the speaker, music ringing off every surface, setting the ground to quivering in resonance.

Don’t worry about your schedule, your business, your family, or your friends. Just focus with me and really open your mind. In your mind’s eye, see yourself going to the funeral of a loved one. Picture yourself driving to the funeral parlor or chapel, parking the car, and getting out. As you walk inside the building, you notice the flowers, the soft organ music. You see the faces of friends and family you pass along the way. You feel the shared sorrow of losing, the joy of having known, that radiates from the hearts of the people there. As you walk down to the front of the room and look inside the casket, you suddenly come face-to-face with yourself. This is your funeral, three years from today. All these people have come to honor you, to express feelings of love and appreciation for your life. As you take a seat and wait for the services to begin, you look at the program in your hand. There are to be four speakers. The first is from your family, immediate and also extended—children, brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents who have come from all over the country to attend. The second speaker is one of your friends, someone who can give a sense of what you were as a person. The third speaker is from your work or profession. And the fourth is from your church or some community organization where you’ve been involved in service. Now think deeply. What would you like each of these speakers to say about you and your life? What kind of husband, wife, father, or mother would you like their words to reflect? What kind of son or daughter or cousin? What kind of friend? What kind of working associate? What character would you like them to have seen in you? What contributions, what achievements would you want them to remember? Look carefully at the people around you. What difference would you like to have made in their lives? Before you read further, take a few minutes to jot down your impressions. It will greatly increase your personal understanding of Habit 2.

She connected her phone with his car stereo. "Now. Is this your opinion of proper road-trip music?" A few seconds later, the dulcet tones of Cardi B came rolling out of his speakers. He grinned.

Shortly after that, I was invited by a friend to fly over the desert in his plane. I told my friend about the Jedi thing and asked if Racey could come with us. He said yes, smiling over an idea he had. He made arrangements with the ground crew, and as we landed, we heard a voice over the cabin speakers announcing, “Racey, you are a Jedi! You are a Jedi now!” Racey rolled his little eyes in disbelief. I asked him if he was a Jedi yet. He wouldn’t answer me. When we got home, he ran straight to Darth Vader. He dropped in his coin, the music began, with the heavy breathing, the sword rose, and the deep voice said, “Impressive, but you are not a Jedi yet.” That seemed to be the way of it. I asked him one more time, and he told me, “Grandma, I not.” Many of us judge ourselves as relentlessly as that plastic toy played its recording, telling ourselves over and over what we are and what we’re not.

started around 2010 and the product was released on June 23, 2015. In its first editions, Amazon Echo was available for Amazon Prime users only till the product released and became available for the United States region. The importance of the project can be seen in the fact that it was featured in the first-ever Amazon Super Bowl advertisement in 2016. After its United States debut, Amazon Echo was distributed to the United Kingdom and after that to Germany during 2016. The Amazon Echo hardware is a cylindrically shaped speaker, 9.25 inches tall. Inside the body of the speaker, there is a seven-piece microphone array. That number of microphones allows the device to receive signals in a 360-degree perimeter. This speaker is not a finished product. Because of Alexa, it can be seen as an ongoing project, an idea in development. It ranges from a regular speaker of which you use only for listening to music to an assistant who can do small chores for you. The most obvious option is to use Echo to listen to music. Listening to music was never so exciting and cool as it is when you use a smart speaker. It can be called ‘smart listening.' If you are a teen, you will not have to lie to your parents when you say that you are doing something smart. It is definitely not a waste of time.  Songs can be streamed from several locations using Amazon Echo. The regular Amazon library provides the user with 1 million songs to choose from. If someone finds that number of songs unsatisfying,

Then again, almost nobody passed the test of our mockery. Almost anything said or done by anybody was in some way undermined by an unconscious assumption or blind spot or standpoint issue which the speaker or actor suffered from. Everyone was disdained, oneself especially. The performance of kicking in one’s own rotten ideological floorboards was something we called “reflexivity.” This was a cop-out, of course, but it was a smart cop-out. Being smart—which we confused with being knowledgeable—was less about seeing something for what it was than about critically viewing one’s act of seeing, and then critically viewing oneself critically viewing one’s originally seeing self, and so on infinitely, as in an Escher, without vertigo. In practice, it led to abandoning all attempts to actually absorb anything, and defaulting to an ironic or camp focus on obviously trash TV and comic books and music, and expressing a perverse but real admiration for brazenly rich or crooked or right-wing people, whom we associated with authenticity and transparency, the idea being that human beings purporting to act in good faith were either operators or people who had mistaken their lucky success for merit. It sounds unbelievable, but that’s how small-minded and envious we were. That isn’t to say that perspectivism doesn’t have value, because of course it does. But it does not solve the problem. One remains an American idiot.

What you consume is what you create. Reader becomes writer, listener becomes speaker, music lover becomes singer, driver becomes fleet owner, it's the cycle we're bound to.

I usually disliked whatever was being played on a music store’s speakers. It spoiled the pleasure of thinking about other music. Record shops, I felt, should be silent spaces; there, more than anywhere else, the mind needed to be clear.

Standing in front of my bathroom mirror while music blares from my speakers, I wipe away the third crooked line I’ve drawn beneath my eye. My hands are shaking, damn it. Starting senior year of high school and seeing my boyfriend after a summer apart shouldn’t be so nerve-racking, but I’ve gotten off to a disastrous start. First, my curling iron sent up smoke signals and died. Then the button on my favorite shirt popped off. Now, my eyeliner decides it has a mind of its own. If I had any choice in the matter, I’d stay in my comfy bed and eat warm chocolate chip cookies all day.

I made myself listen to the music I loved as I worked. I would not be a coward anymore. If I acted like a lunatic, so be it! In my mind I raged and I vowed that Samuel’s leaving would not make me resort to musical holocaust. I was done with that nonsense! I played Grieg until my fingers were stiff, and I worked with the frenzy of Balakirev’s ‘Islamey’ pounding out of the loud speakers. My dad came inside during that one and turned around and walked right back out again. On day 15, I made a chocolate cake worthy of the record books. It was disgustingly rich and fattening, teetering several stories high, weighing more than I did, laden with thick cream cheese frosting, and sprinkled liberally with chocolate shavings. I sat down to eat it with a big fork and no bib. I dug in with a gusto seen only at those highly competitive hotdog eating contests where the tiny Asian girl kicks all the fat boys’ butts. “JOSIE JO JENSEN!” Louise and Tara stood at the kitchen door, shock and revulsion, and maybe just a little envy in their faces. Brahms ‘Rhapsodie No. 2 in G Minor’ was making my little kitchen shake. Eating cake to Brahms was a new experience for me. I liked it. I dug back in, ignoring them. “Well Mom,” I heard Tara say, “what should we do?!” My Aunt Louise was a very practical woman. “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em!” She quoted cheerfully. Before I knew it, Tara and Louise both had forks, too. They didn’t seem to need bibs either. We ate, increasing our tempo as the music intensified. “ENOUGH!” My dad stood in the doorway. He was good and mad, too. His sun-browned face was as ruddy as my favorite high heels. “I sent you two in for an intervention! What is this?! Eater’s Anonymous Gone Wild?” “Aww, Daddy. Get a fork,” I replied, barely breaking rhythm. My dad strode over, took the fork from my hand and threw it, tines first, right into the wall. It stuck there, embedded and twanging like a sword at a medieval tournament. He pulled out my chair and grabbed me under the arms, pushing me out of the kitchen. I tried to take one last swipe at my cake, but he let out this inhuman roar, and I abandoned all hope of making myself well and truly sick. “Tara! Aunt Louise!” I shouted frantically. “I want you gone!!! That’s my cake! You can’t have any more without me!” My dad pushed me through the front door and out onto the porch, the screen banging behind him. I sunk to the porch swing, sullenly wiping chocolate crumbs from my mouth. My dad stomped back inside the house and suddenly the music pouring from every nook and cranny stopped abruptly. I heard him tell Louise he’d call her later, and then the kitchen door banged, indicating my aunt’s and Tara’s departure. Good. They would have eaten that whole cake. I saw the way they were shoveling it in.

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The applause light comes on. The audience claps like crazy. Theme music swells out of the speaker.

Think of the times in your life when you have been deeply passionate about something. Whether it is for your family, a cause, a person, an adventure, a hobby, a career, a love for music, or even going to the beach—your passion for it helps you tap into your unique personal power to live and love your life out loud.

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GGMM E5 is a WiFi/Bluetooth speaker that integrates with Amazon Alexa Voice Service. Just tap the speaker to ask Alexa a question, Such as "What's the weather today?" With Alexa Voice service you can order Domino Pizza, call a Uber, control your smart home devices, add items to your Amaozn shopping cart, or play Amazon Prime Music.

There is no better way to find out the true heart, honor, and professionalism of a person, than seeing how they handle themselves and others when facing a crisis, disaster or intense level of pressure.

Charlie smiled. ‘Actually, right now I feel like venting; maybe seeing how loud I can make the speakers in the gym and doing a workout of some kind. Does the hotel have music?’ ‘Um, pass?’ ‘You haven’t tried? Dude! Sort the shit. Hey, Valles?’ ‘Hello.’ ‘Play Queen.’ ‘Disambiguation. One: Play the Queen: Act like a queen: female monarch. Subjects needed. Two: Play the Queen: Act like a queen: a person with excessive emotional outbursts. Setting demanded. Three: Play music related to “Queen”: Playqueen: New Zealander electropop group. 2040s. Four. Play music related to...’ ‘British rock band. 1980s.’ ‘Album, or track?’ ‘I Want to Break Free.

If kind words were said without meaning, simply to make us pleased with the speaker, the result was surely accomplished, and we felt more kindly disposed toward the whole of Guatemala for the pleasant words spoken in that musical language.

GGMM E2 Multi-room speaker is perfect for different music styles and let you customize according to your individual taste, 10W power offers a surround sound for rich, clear and powerful sound.

Bo put a record on the stereo and the speakers crackled, that moment of anticipation before the needle found its way to the first song. An organ, in rhythm. A chord. “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.” Mum cheered. It was her favorite, the soundtrack to a movie called The Big Chill.

Putting time, energy, and effort into counterattacking your critics, giving rebuttals to bad reviews, or arguing with people who don’t like you or your business are all a big waste of time.

Speaking on Stage Speakers and presenters have only a few short seconds before their audience members begin forming opinions. True professionals know that beginning with impact determines audience engagement, the energy in the room, positive feedback, the quality of the experience, and whether or not their performance will be a success. A few of the popular methods which you can use to break the ice from the stage are: • Using music. • Using quotes. • Telling a joke. • Citing statistics. • Showing a video. • Asking questions. • Stating a problem. • Sharing acronyms. • Sharing a personal story. • Laying down a challenge. • Using analogies and comparisons. • Taking surveys; raise your hand if . . . Once you refine, define, and discover great conversation starters, you will enjoy renewed confidence for communicating well with new people.

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Enjoy the full rich sound by wirelessly streaming your favirote music to GGMM M3. M3 uses Wi-Fi/ Bluetooth 4.0 technology to equally project exquisite audio wirelessly.

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Max magnetic speakers reproduce high medium and low frequency with exact tonal quality. The in-ear design combined with the correct ear tips will seal your music in and leave the external noise out.

I blew into L.A. streaking down the freeway, the song "L.A. Woman" blasting out of the car speakers, the wind in my hair, the music in the wind. The first thing you notice about L.A. is that it’s overflowing with people, tourists, the homeless, the starstruck, it was like an old fashioned boom town, a few ghosts wandered it’s streets but it was still booming, if L.A. lived off the people that were successful, the city would be awfully empty.

No exterior sounds were audible to dilute the glorious music that emanated from the Rolls-Royce’s top of the range sound system. The London Philharmonic Orchestra Choir were performing a stirring rendition of Thomas Tallis’s Gaude gloriosa Dei Mater. Leeson sipped twenty-four-year-old single malt and sang along in Latin. As the anthem finished he dabbed his watery eyes with an Egyptian cotton handkerchief and thumbed a button on the console to mute the speakers before he was enraptured by more beauteous sound. Tallis made Mozart and Beethoven seem like amateurs.

I was clearing some plates off a table when I heard the familiar strum of guitar chords. My heart clenched painfully as I slowly made my way to the kitchen. Tonight was another open-mic night, and while I enjoyed having live music playing throughout the bar and dining room, I didn’t usually pay that much attention to it. But there was no way to miss this song. The deep, husky voice began crooning through the speakers as I came back out of the kitchen empty-handed. And I couldn’t shake the feeling that I knew that voice as I made my way to a spot where I could see the stage. I rubbed a hand over my aching chest and stopped suddenly when I saw Kash sitting on the stool in front of the mic with a guitar in his hands. What was he doing? Since when did he play guitar and sing? And why this song? His eyes searched the dining area and landed on me just as he began the first chorus of “I’ll Be.” Tears pricked the back of my eyes and my entire body warmed under his intense stare as he continued through words that meant more to me than he could have known. Not once did he take his eyes from me, and my mind and heart fought over my conflicting feelings. Part of me wanted to yell that he was the guy I’d been waiting for. That I was in love with him and was done being only his friend. The other part wanted to know why he was torturing me with this song. With everything else that had happened tonight and the fourth anniversary of my parents’ death less than two months away, I wanted to run away from there, to curl in a ball and mourn what I had lost and would never have. I couldn’t call my mom and tell her I’d met a guy whose presence alone made me dizzy. Who sang to me the same song Dad had always sung to her. I couldn’t tell my parents that no matter how hard I fought my feelings and pushed Kash away, I knew I’d met the man I wanted to marry. The haunting words drifted to an end, and soon the chords did too. When Kash was finished, he put the guitar on the stand and began walking in my direction. Throughout all of this, his eyes still hadn’t left mine. Before he could reach me, the bitter side of me won out and I turned on my heel and rushed back to my customers. I kept myself busy for the rest of the hour and whenever I had to go over to the bar, I made sure to go to Bryce’s side so I wouldn’t have to face Kash again. I knew I was being ridiculous, but if it had been any song other than that one, if it had been on a night that wasn’t wearing me completely down, I may have been brave enough to finally fight for what I wanted. But right now all I could think of was finishing out this shift at work and staying far from Logan Hendricks. Somehow, he knew how to get to me. And somehow, I knew that our being together was right. But especially after that morning, everything about him—and us together—scared me. And I wasn’t sure I could handle that right now. People say that being in love is amazing. They lie. It’s freaking terrifying.  

We were putting everything away when a guitar started coming through the speakers. Figuring one of the guys had turned on the music, we thought nothing of it and I kept talking to Bryce until I heard a husky voice join in. I abruptly stopped talking and stood there with two glasses in my hands just staring at the wall that separated us from the area that held the stage. I bit my lip to contain my smile as I heard the first few lines of “Your Guardian Angel.” It didn’t matter what type of song it was; Kash could sing it. And in his deep voice? Lord, it was a treat. He’d just started the second verse of the song by The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus when I rounded the corner and leaned up against the wall to watch him. His lips curled up when he saw me enter the dim room, and other than the few times he’d look down when he was only playing the guitar, he kept his gray eyes trained on me. I took in the words like I was hearing them for the first time, because Kash had told me last week after dancing with me in my kitchen that he would only sing me songs that meant something for us. My heart beat wildly as I felt every word go straight to my soul, and I subconsciously grabbed at my warming chest. When his words trailed off and his hand stopped strumming the guitar, I was still leaning against the wall, hoping it would keep me standing as he set the guitar down and stepped off the stage. Much like the first night he sang to me in the bar, his stride was purposeful as he made his way toward me. Only this time, I didn’t turn and run. His smile grew when he got closer to me, but he didn’t pull me into his arms like he normally would. Just as I started to push myself off the wall, he spoke, his voice gruff. “I didn’t do this right the first time.” Dropping slowly to one knee, he grabbed my left hand and brought a diamond solitaire up to my ring finger. “Rachel Masters, I promise to love you and take care of you . . . no matter the cost, every day for the rest of my life. Will you marry me?” “Yes,” I whispered, and bounced on my toes when he slid the ring onto my finger. Grabbing his face, I pulled him up and kissed him with every bit of passion in my body.

Eventually we discovered Bleeker Bob's in the West Village on 118 West Third Street. One time I was there I literally tried to rip the first Iron Maiden album out of the hands of a friend of mine. [...] I was having a tug-of-war with this guy over who was gonna buy it. [...] If I hadn't won, I would've gone home and gotten my shitty little tape recorder that you have to use two fingers to push play and record on, and I would've brought that to my friend's house and held it in front of a speaker to tape the record so I'd have something to listen to until I could find another copy. Yeah, it'd sound terrible but so what? We didn't know anything else. When I hear people say, 'I hate MP3s, they sound like shit,' I'm like, 'Fuck you, you hae no idea, you first-world-problem-having motherfucker.

Life is about using all the skills in your toolbox. Paint your life with vibrant color, soothing music, and hang around exciting people who will stretch your colors from red and blue to purple. Use all your senses and enjoy your surroundings. ~Janiece Rendon Transition Strategist

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Intent on not worrying for the rest of the day, I jumped out of bed and plugged my iPack into the radio. I selected 'Save Yourself' and heard the guitar strumming from the speakers. The singer's voice drifted over waves in the atmosphere, swaying between air currents, and entered my mind producing a relaxing effect.

To this day, when I put on music, I have to listen and not just heart it. If I want to play you a song and you start talking, I'm the guy who will stop and start it over because I want your full attention on what is coming out of the speakers-not your mouth, mine, or anyone else's.

Fundamentals of Esperanto The grammatical rules of this language can be learned in one sitting. Nouns have no gender & end in -o; the plural terminates in -oj & the accusative, -on Amiko, friend; amikoj, friends; amikon & amikojn, accusative friend & friends. Ma amiko is my friend. A new book appears in Esperanto every week. Radio stations in Europe, the United States, China, Russia & Brazil broadcast in Esperanto, as does Vatican Radio. In 1959, UNESCO declared the International Federation of Esperanto Speakers to be in accord with its mission & granted this body consultative status. The youth branch of the International Federation of Esperanto Speakers, UTA, has offices in 80 different countries & organizes social events where young people curious about the movement may dance to recordings by Esperanto artists, enjoy complimentary soft drinks & take home Esperanto versions of major literary works including the Old Testament & A Midsummer Night’s Dream. William Shatner’s first feature-length vehicle was a horror film shot entirely in Esperanto. Esperanto is among the languages currently sailing into deep space on board the Voyager spacecraft. - Esperanto is an artificial language constructed in 1887 by L. L. Zamenhof, a polish oculist. following a somewhat difficult period in my life. It was twilight & snowing on the railway platform just outside Warsaw where I had missed my connection. A man in a crumpled track suit & dark glasses pushed a cart piled high with ripped & weathered volumes— sex manuals, detective stories, yellowing musical scores & outdated physics textbooks, old copies of Life, new smut, an atlas translated, a grammar, The Mirror, Soviet-bloc comics, a guide to the rivers & mountains, thesauri, inscrutable musical scores & mimeographed physics books, defective stories, obsolete sex manuals— one of which caught my notice (Dr. Esperanto since I had time, I traded my used Leaves of Grass for a copy. I’m afraid I will never be lonely enough. There’s a man from Quebec in my head, a friend to the purple martins. Purple martins are the Cadillac of swallows. All purple martins are dying or dead. Brainscans of grown purple martins suggest these creatures feel the same levels of doubt & bliss as an eight-year-old girl in captivity. While driving home from the brewery one night this man from Quebec heard a radio program about purple martins & the next day he set out to build them a house in his own back yard. I’ve never built anything, let alone a house, not to mention a home for somebody else. Never put in aluminum floors to smooth over the waiting. Never piped sugar water through colored tubes to each empty nest lined with newspaper shredded with strong, tired hands. Never dismantled the entire affair & put it back together again. Still no swallows. I never installed the big light that stays on through the night to keep owls away. Never installed lesser lights, never rested on Sunday with a beer on the deck surveying what I had done & what yet remained to be done, listening to Styx while the neighbor kids ran through my sprinklers. I have never collapsed in abandon. Never prayed. But enough about the purple martins. Every line of the work is a first & a last line & this is the spring of its action. Of course, there’s a journey & inside that journey, an implicit voyage through the underworld. There’s a bridge made of boats; a carp stuffed with flowers; a comic dispute among sweetmeat vendors; a digression on shadows; That’s how we finally learn who the hero was all along. Weary & old, he sits on a rock & watches his friends fly by one by one out of the song, then turns back to the journey they all began long ago, keeping the river to his right.

Snacks? What kind of snacks?” I asked. “Something called chips, which are made from potatoes, and different kinds of candies.” “Oh, you’re gonna sell candy, too?” “Yeah, but totally different from the candy shop.” “I see.” “I hope you’ll come by for the grand opening.” “When is it?” “Hopefully, next week. I’ll let you know.” I nodded. “Okay, I’ll try to make it, Tes.” “Cool. Thank you. Alright, I’m going to get some more food,” he said and left. A few minutes later, Maky got on the microphone and announced that the dancing portion of the night was going to start soon. “Woohoo! It’s dancing time,” said Arthur excitedly. “You know who I’m going to ask to dance with me?” “Who?” I asked. “Autumn,” answered Pierce. “Yup! Hopefully, she’ll agree.” “What about you, Pierce? Are you gonna ask anyone to dance?” “Um, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just dance by myself or with a group of friends,” the knight answered. “Cool…” I said sadly because I felt a little bit left out. “Or you know, maybe I’ll just hang out with you.” “Naw, I’m fine. You don’t have to keep me company.” Then suddenly, music started playing from the speakers that were set up at all the four corners of the city square. “Oh, here we go! I’ll be back later,” said Arthur as he took off to find Autumn. As the music played, I looked around for Maky’s band, but they were nowhere in sight. “Hm. This music must be coming from the jukebox,” I said. “Yeah, I don’t think Maky is playing tonight,” said Pierce. “She’s not? Why not? They’re super good.” “I don’t know, Steve.” “Hm. Oh, look. People are starting to take to the dance floor.” Slowly, a couple of villagers made their way toward the center of the city square. They were nervous about being the first ones, but soon after, many others followed their lead. Before I knew it, there were a ton of villagers in the middle, jumping up and down and dancing to the music. “That looks like fun…” I said. “Yeah…” said Pierce. “You should go join them.” “N-nah. I like sitting here.” Right when Pierce said that, someone came by and grabbed his hand and pulled him to the dance floor. “Come on, Pierce, let’s show them how it’s done,” said Leila. “B-but I’m not that good!” said Pierce. I tried my best to smile and said, “Have fun…” With my fake smile on, I watched as Pierce was dragged into the middle. Leila had stolen my only company away from me, and that made me feel super left out. I sighed and thought to myself, I wish I was out of this chair already. But I knew I didn’t have a choice, so I just sat in my chair and nodded along to the music. A few minutes later, the first song ended and the next one came on. I just continued sitting there while watching my friends have fun. In the middle, I could see Arthur dancing with Autumn, Cindy dancing with Arceus, and Leila dancing with Pierce. Shortly after, someone came by to talk to me. “Hey, Steve! How ya doing?” Maky asked while breathing hard. “Maky? Why aren’t you playing tonight?” I asked. “Oh, because I wanted to dance and have fun tonight. I mean, playing my instrument is fun, too, but dancing is a different kind of fun.” “I see.” “So, what are you doing over here? You don’t want to join the fun?” “Uh, there’s not much fun to be had when I’m stuck in a wheel chair.” “Oh, that’s nonsense!” Then she ran behind my chair, tilted it slightly backwards and pushed me off toward the middle of the dance floor. “Whoa! What are you doing?!” “We’re going to dance!” “Huh?!

In a 1963 performance entitled "Who R U?" at the San Francisco Museum of Art, Stern and Callahan added highway sounds to the mix, moving them from speaker to speaker in the showroom. They also had individuals placed in booths around a central auditorium, miked their conversations, and replayed them simultaneously in an eighteen-channel remix. By 1965 this show had morphed into a program called "We R All One," in which USCO deployed slide and film projections, oscilloscopes, music, strobes, and live dancers to create a sensory cacophony. At the end of the performance, the lights would go down, and for ten minutes the audience would hear multiple "Om's" from the speakers. According to Stern, the show was designed to lead viewers from "overload to spiritual meditation."19 In the final moments, the audience was to experience the mystical unity that ostensibly bound together USCO's members.

His music gave no lesser joy than a vacation. Creativity in his music and its success stood out as an example to all kinds of artists, in the lectures of business speakers, engineers, and to anyone who built or constructed something in their respective profession.

This music, transmitted by loud-speakers, made a masterpiece appear like an amateurish attempt at composition by nimcompoop

I was recently providing music at a conference where one of the speakers, a noted professor of theology, remarked that we are in the “Experiential Age” of the Christian faith, an age that is defined by a professed personal relationship with Christ. Then she threw up her hands and said: “What does that mean?

He had a new stereo installed that’s pretty crisp, but I hate music in cars, so it doesn’t do me much good. The second he starts it up, Pigs in the Toaster, this emo band he loves for reasons I cannot fathom, blasts out of the speakers at a volume that should be illegal for whining set to guitar. The singer’s voice is screechy and the music is too disjointed to have a real beat. He doesn’t move to turn it down. Normally,

Into all our lives, in many simple, familiar, homely ways, God infuses this element of joy from the surprises of life, which unexpectedly brighten our days, and fill our eyes with light. He drops this added sweetness into His children's cup, and makes it to run over. The success we were not counting on, the blessing we were not trying after, the strain of music, in the midst of drudgery, the beautiful morning picture or sunset glory thrown in as we pass to or from our daily business, the unsought word of encouragement or expression of sympathy, the sentence that meant for us more than the writer or speaker thought,--these and a hundred others that every one's experience can supply are instances of what I mean. You may call it accident or chance--it often is; you may call it human goodness--it often is; but always, always call it God's love, for that is always in it. These are the overflowing riches of His grace, these are His free gifts. S. LONGFELLOW.

The people that look after the elephants were completely smashed. They drink this stuff called arrack. For “Save a Prayer,” John and I were on an elephant, Simon was on one with Andy, and Roger was on one of his own. And they brought a female elephant who let out this enormous noise, which one of the guys in the crew was taping. He thought, Oh, this will be funny, and he played it back through the speakers. Nobody knew that it was her mating call. So the elephant with Roger on its back charges down the swamp and mounts this other elephant. Roger’s hanging on for dear life, and all of the mahouts are rolling around, thinking it’s hilarious. If he’d fallen off, he could have been trampled to death.

The following approaches are likely to fall flat, with less than 10 percent of the churchless reporting they might be attracted by such efforts: information about a church provided through the mail advertising for a church on TV, in a newspaper, or on the radio an unsolicited phone call from someone representing a church in the community to describe the church and offer an invitation to attend advertising for the church on a local billboard a website that describes the church and invites people to attend a sermon from the pastor on CD or podcast emphasizing that the church has multiple locations in the community providing entry to a “video church”—a ministry that has a real-time video feed of live teaching from the main location, with live music and leadership at the remote location a contemporary seeker service showing a Hollywood-quality movie at the church that deals with issues like marriage, faith, or parenting providing a book club that discusses books about faith and life offering an open-mic discussion group or online chat that focuses on questions related to faith and spirituality a celebrity guest speaker appearing at a church’s worship services

I just run faster and hit the slowest of the lead boys. I wink and race by him. He smells like onions and he has big, wet circles in the pits of his shirt. He speeds up, but can only stay with me for a tenth of a mile before he drops back. Then it’s Nick. I cruise next to him. He’s some sort of running god, because he isn’t close to being winded. His stride is long, powerful, and quick. “Hi.” Why I said this, I do not know. He’s cute. Okay. I am a sucker for cute boys and he was nice to Issie. Plus, he has good hair and he isn’t as pale as most Maine males. He looks like he works in the sun, or at least has seen the sun once, maybe many weeks ago. Plus, life is all supposed to be about making love, not war. My dad listened to John Lennon; I know this stuff. “You’re fast,” he says, easy. No huffing. No puffing. No blowing the house down. “So are you.” We run together, keeping pace. The only one ahead of us is Ian, who is loping around the track as if it’s nothing. Nick shrugs at me while he runs, which is really something, because when I’m running full tilt it’s hard for me to speak, let alone break form to shrug. “You can go faster, can’t you?” I huff out. He just gives a little smile again and then his eyes shift into something cold, like gravestones with just the barest information about a life etched onto them. “Zara,” he whisper-says. I lean in closer to hear him. “What?” My voice is not a whisper. It matches the thudding beat of my heart, the bass of the music that blares out of the speakers. “Awesome job, new girl!” Devyn yells, clapping.

was an old portable turntable. A record player. “What is it?” asked Ava, walking over to him. “This is what they used to play music on. Think of it as an old fashioned iPod.” “Really?” “No,” he laughed. “It’s better than any iPod ever invented.” He flicked a switch on the side. I heard the built in speakers crackle to life as he lifted the arm and moved the needle over and onto the black disc spinning on the platen. There

Another group comes in, ringing the bell, and this one is mine. As I head for them, music is playing on the speakers overhead, something tinny and country because that’s all the owners will play. The swell of customer voices is cheerful. It’s only Virginia and me on this morning, since Kary Ann

I had my PDA set to wake me up at 0600, which it did by gently piping music through its little speakers and gradually increasing the volume until I woke.

is the strength of the songwriting. Dark Side contained strong, powerful songs. The overall idea that linked those songs together – the pressures of modern life – found a universal response, and continues to capture people’s imagination. The lyrics had depth, and had a resonance people could easily relate to, and were clear and simple enough for non-native-English speakers to understand, which must have been a factor in its international success. And the musical quality spearheaded by David’s guitar and voice and Rick’s keyboards established a fundamental Pink Floyd sound. We were comfortable with the music, which had had time to mature and gestate, and evolve through live performances – later on we had to stop previewing work live as the quality of the recording equipment being smuggled into gigs reached near-studio standards. The additional singers and Dick Parry’s sax gave the whole record an extra commercial sheen. In addition, the sonic quality of the album was state of the art – courtesy of the skills of Alan Parsons and Chris Thomas. This is particularly important, because at the time the album came out, hi-fi stereo equipment had only recently become a mainstream consumer item, an essential fashion accessory for the 1970s home. As a result, record buyers were particularly aware of the effects of stereo and able to appreciate any album that made the most of its possibilities. Dark Side had the good fortune to become one of the definitive test records that people could use to show off the quality of their hi-fi system. The packaging for the album by Storm and Po at Hipgnosis was clean, simple, and immediately striking, with a memorable icon in the shape of the prism.

I’m going to walk in that house. And work there. And live there. For a year.” He turns the radio on. The Weeknd vibrates through the tinny speakers. It’s not precisely reassuring, the way the music fights with the storm for dominance and loses. I open the door. Wind tries to keep it closed, but I use my body weight to half-step, half-fall onto the soggy grass. I drag the carry-on luggage I picked up from Walmart last week with me.

Dad was the new Captain Cheeseburger. “Ahoy there, Bakers!”  I heard him bellow over the pirate music pumping through the speakers. He smiled from behind the cash register. “Can I interest you in a Skipper Meal?” Yep. Things just kept getting worse. I had to do something to help Dad, so that evening I mailed the apology letter to my dad’s old boss. I was determined

This is a story that begins in Summer, because it is the type of thing that can only happen when the sun is too hot, the nights are too long, and your heart rules everything. Just north of the Black Mountains, there exists a town called Hay-on-Wye. It is a town populated by more books then people. Which is, perhaps why, it was the only place that could have fashioned a modern fairytale such as the one that happened on a summer’s night in August. A girl got drunk at a pub. Trying to forget someone. A boy joined her, matching her drink for drink. Trying to forget responsibility. In a flurry of laughter, false bravado, perfume, and charming smiles they found themselves vacationing in the others world for brief respite. They were a rest from the troubles of their own worlds. Where family, money, obligation, and responsibility tormented the bright, young things like a dementor waiting to suck joy at every step. Neither was certain if it was the booze that made them have stars in their eyes, or if the stars came before. But they shared a moment spurred on by Ed Sheeran playing over pub speakers, messy sheets, and tangled limbs as most modern English love stories are. In the morning, they woke up, sobered, and all that was left was a poem scribbled on a pillow by the girl for the boy. It would have all been forgotten, if not for the stars, and that Ed Sheeran music is designed for soulmates and happy endings. The stars saw how the couple shined for each other that night, and knew they’d make the world shine together. So, the stars did what they do best. They shined down on them, starting their journey back to each other knowing they’d need the light through the dark times to come. -Royals and Rebels: Love and War, book 2 only on Dreame

I’m about to start singing a capella when music comes from the speakers. Cara must’ve given them a karaoke version. I open and close my hands as I wait for my entry point. And I sing. I’m into the second verse when the strangest sensation starts in my fingers. It’s not bad, just weird, like tingling. It travels up my arms and settles in behind my face. Maybe the sensation is confidence, I don’t know, but I feel different. I want to reach out and wrap my hands around the microphone, maybe even sway my hips to the music. I wish I could get into my performance; yank the microphone out of the stand, toss my hair around, fall to my knees. You know, like the divas do in their videos. I don’t, though.

Before we can make seismic professional, economic, and sociological changes, we have to squeeze out of our Spanx and remember how it feels to breathe—with sweat in our eyes, air in our lungs, and music pouring boldly from our speakers.

Young adulthood afforded me a lot of time on my own. Sometimes on a night off from work, I would park my car in a supermarket lot and just sit there, listening to tapes on my battery powered, one speaker Norelco. That sounds lonely but it was really cool, actually. It was all I needed. I pretty much do the same thing now but with slightly better playback.

WHEREAS her birth signaled the responsibility as mother to teach what it is to be Lakota, therein the question: what did I know about being Lakota? Signaled panic, blood rush my embarrassment. What did I know of our language but pieces? Would I teach her to be pieces. Until a friend comforted, don’t worry, you and your daughter will learn together. Today she stood sunlight on her shoulders lean and straight to share a song in Dine, her father’s language. To sing she motions simultaneously with her hands I watch her be in multiple musics. At a ceremony to honor the Diné Nation’s first poet laureate, a speaker explains that each People has been given their own language to reach with. I understand reaching as active, a motion. It’s here we roll along the pavement into hills of conversation we share a ride we share a country but live in alternate nations and here I must tell them what they don’t know or, should I? Well you know Native people as in tribes as in people living over there are people with their own nations each with its own government and flag they rise to their own national songs and sing in their own languages, even. And by there I mean here all around us I remind them.

SUNDAY Very boring weekend. I ended up spending most of it lying on my bed listening to the Mary Poppins soundtrack (really very catchy) and reading one of my library books, My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell, which is a true story about a boy who goes off to Corfu with his family and adopts loads of cool animals. His older siblings are totally head-wrecking, especially his pretentious big brother Larry, which is partly why I like it. But I also like it because I too have an affinity with the animal kingdom, as proved by the fact that every time I go to Alice’s house in the country I always see loads of wild creatures. Well, squirrels. But they’re wild, aren’t they? Of course, my sensible way of spending the weekend didn’t please my tyrannical parents. Their sympathy for my relegation to the chorus didn’t last very long. This afternoon my mother came in to my room (without knocking, of course. She has the manners of a … I dunno. Something rude) when I was quietly reading, took one look at me and said, ‘What on earth are you doing like that?’ ‘I am reading, mother,’ I said. ‘Isn’t that obvious?’ ‘But why are you lying with your head over one side of the bed and the book on the floor? That can’t be comfortable. Or good for your neck.’ Honestly! She can even find fault with the way I read! I don’t even know why I was lying like that; it just felt like the right way to lie. Also it meant that when I needed to take a break from Mary Poppins I could reach over and change the music on my iPod which was plugged into its little speakers on a shelf by the bed. So I told her this and she said, ‘Well, if you get a terrible crick in your neck, don’t say I didn’t warn you.’ And then she demanded I come down soon and chop up some carrots. Yet again, I wonder what the fans of my mother’s books would

He was how I imagined a Korean would be, at least one living in any renown. He would stride the daises and the stages with his voice strong and clear, unafraid to speak the language like a Puritan and like a Chinaman and like every boat person in between. I found him most moving and beautiful in those moments. And whenever I hear the strains of a different English, I still shattter a little inside. Within every echo from a city storefront or window, I can hear the old laments of my mother and my father, and mine as a confused schoolboy, and then even the fitful mumblings of our Ahjuhma, the instant American inventions of her tongue. They speak to me, as John Kwang could always, not simply in new accents or notes but in the ancient untold music of a newcomer's heart, sonorous with longing and hope.

The music suddenly dropped and 7 Rings by Ariana Grande burst from speakers around the stadium as we moved into a full routine filled with dance moves and tricks. The song choice turned out to be perfect for taunting a gold obsessed Dragon as well as performing a badass routine to and I couldn’t help but smirk like a psychopath throughout.

The beginning dun-dun-dun-dun of “Back That Azz Up” starts blasting through the speakers when the door opens, and I’m kind of regretting not sharing my input on the music.

Oh fucking shit! Yeaaah!!!” someone screams to the right of me. My thoughts exactly. Jungle makes me feel like that, it contains ecstatic patterns, vortexes and sound-whorls. Being this close to the speakers gives me the sensation of being tossed around by a sonic tornado. The decibels are giving the mathematic and relentless jungle music substance, flesh. It is here to deliver us.

the music piped through the speakers was Christian—the new kind, which says that Jesus is awesome.

It must have been about this time that I first heard Eugene Debs speak. He was facing an audience which packed the Academy of Music. On that same stage Henry Ward Beecher had stood and upheld the cause of the Democratic party in a tense campaign. I had been greatly interested in seeing Debs, for I had read and been told much about him-of his fearless leadership in the railroad strike of 1894, his term in jail as a consequence, and his fighting spirit. But I was disappointed that night-not by what he said, but by his manner. I thought him too much like a school-boy elocutionist. In after years, however, I attended several mass-meetings at which Debs was the main speaker, and he who had once been amateurish had become a real tribune of the people and a master of chastisement of the profit pharisees. No question about it an inspiring man because he was himself inspired. He was emotional, and used the logic of understanding born of long experience with workers. When one heard him voice a natural sympathy for the enslaved, one felt that here was a champion who would go to the stake rather than sacrifice his own beliefs.

Those jagged record sleeves and distorted garage recordings that leapt out of Tracy's speakers had forced open a window to my soul, and I had finally experienced a connection that made me feel understood. Having always felt slightly removed from the norm, I never had anywhere or anyone to turn to for understanding and reassurance among my peers.

Now Mrs. Retallack wondered how the effects of what she called "intellectual mathematically sophisticated music of both East and West" would appeal to plants. As program director for the American Guild of Organists, she chose choral preludes from Johann Sebastian Bach's Orgelbuchlein and the classical strains of the sitar, a less-com­ plicated Hindustani version of the south Indian veena, played by Ravi Shankar, the Bengali Brahmin. The plants gave positive evidence of liking Bach, since they leaned an unprecedented thirty-five degrees toward the preludes. But even this affirmation was far exceeded by their reaction to Shankar: in their straining to reach the source of the classical Indian music they bent more than halfway to the horizontal, at angles in excess of sixty degrees, the nearest one almost embracing the speaker. In order not to be swayed by her own special taste for the classical music of both hemispheres Mrs. Retallack, at the behest of hundreds of young people, followed Bach and Shankar with trials of folk and "country-western" music. Her plants seemed to produce no more reac­tion than those in the silent chamber. Perplexed, Mrs. Retallack could only ask: "Were the plants in complete harmony with this kind of earthy music or didn't they care one way or the other?" Jazz caused her a real surprise. When her plants heard recordings as varied as Duke Ellington's "Soul Call" and two discs by Louis Arm­ strong, 5 5 percent of the plants leaned fifteen to twenty degrees toward the speaker, and growth was more abundant than in the silent chamber. Mrs. Retallack also determined that these different musical styles markedly affected the evaporation rate of distilled water inside the chambers. From full beakers, fourteen to seventeen milliliters evapo­rated over a given time period in the silent chambers, twenty to twenty­ five milliliters vaporized under the influence of Bach, Shankar, and jazz; but, with rock, the disappearance was fifty-five to fifty-nine milliliters.

The discs themselves contained a series of microscopic grooves, representing a series of ones and zeros. The laser fired its beam at the grooves and bounced back the information to a sensor. Then the circuitry translated that information into an electrical impulse, which was sent to a speaker, completing the transformation from digital signals on plastic to analog vibrations in the air.

This imaginary image can sometimes shift as the balance of the music shifts from side to side, which can be very disconcerting to the listener, especially if the speakers are placed far apart. As a result, film sound has always relied upon a third speaker channel in the center to keep the sound anchored. This format is called LCR, for Left, Center, Right, and it became a staple of multiplex movie theaters and high-end home video setups where the center speaker is located near or behind the screen. This third channel never caught on in consumer music circles however, mostly because people had a hard time finding a place for two speakers, let alone three.

He would buy me a pair of headphones if I would promise to use them when he was home. Those headphones forever changed the way I listened to music. The new artists that I was listening to were all exploring stereo mixing for the first time. Because the speakers that came with my hundred-dollar all-in-one stereo system weren’t very good, I had never before heard the depth that I could hear in the headphones—the placement of instruments both in the left-right field and in the front-back (reverberant) space. To me, records were no longer just about the songs anymore, but about the sound. Headphones opened up a world of sonic colors, a palette of nuances and details that went far beyond the chords and melody, the lyrics, or a particular singer’s voice. The swampy Deep South ambience of “Green River” by Creedence, or the pastoral, open-space beauty of the Beatles’ “Mother Nature’s Son”; the oboes in Beethoven’s Sixth (conducted by Karajan), faint and drenched in the atmosphere of a large wood-and-stone church; the sound was an enveloping experience. Headphones also made the music more personal for me; it was suddenly coming from inside my head, not out there in the world. This personal connection is ultimately what drove me to become a recording engineer and producer. Many years later, Paul Simon told me that the sound is always what he was after too.

Milton passed through the gate and walked towards the centre. A group of youngsters had congregated around one of the park benches. One of their number was showing off on his BMX, bouncing off the front wheel as the others laughed at his skill. Milton assessed them coolly. There were eight of them, mid-teens, all dressed in the uniform: caps beneath hoodies, baggy jeans and bright white trainers. He kept walking. As he drew closer, he heard the sound of music being played through the reedy speaker of a mobile phone. It had a fast, thumping beat and aggressive lyrics. The rapper was talking about beefs and pieces and merking anyone who got in his way. One of the group sauntered out from the pack and blocked his path.

Soundgarden screamed from the speakers of the Mustang, music a little older than Jack himself, but it pounded in rhythm with his pulse.

�Communication and a clear mutual understanding between two or more people builds the best route to success in any venture. I don’t expect… * immediate action, * instant perfection, * total comprehension * complete implementation, or * flawless execution. I do expect the best communication and honest effort to create the best plans for the best results while being able to stay on the same page as much as possible. If that concept doesn’t work for you, then you won’t be working with me.

Does this car have Bluetooth?” Oliver chuckles. “Yes, Princess Estelle, is it up to par with your inspection?” I stop moving my hand over the dash and set it back on my lap, feeling a blush creep into my face. “I liked your old car better,” I say. Oliver’s eyebrows hike up and he turns to gape at me. “You like my beat-up Maxima better than this?” I shrug. “It was more cozy. This reminds me of the Batmobile, and there’s nothing wrong with the Batmobile, but I like cozy.” He shakes his head and mutters something under his breath, but starts to look for my phone to hook up to Bluetooth. He already knows it’s because I want to play my own music—I don’t even have to explain. I used to bring my own CD whenever I was in the car with him. Oliver listens to two things: heavy rock and rap, and while I’m okay with both, I prefer the classics. The Steve Miller Band hasn’t even gotten to the hook before they’re interrupted by a call from Mia. Oliver looks at me with a question in his eyes. “If you don’t mind,” I say. He presses the button, and before I say hello, Mia’s frantic voice comes through. “What underwear are you wearing?” she asks. My face goes hot for the second time this morning. From the corner of my eye, I see Oliver bite down on his lip. “What?” I ask. “Mia, you’re on speaker phone!” “I don’t care. This is an emergency. Do you not hear the shrill tone in my voice? What are you wearing under your clothes?” My eyes snap to the side of Oliver’s face, then out the front window, and finally, I pull my shirt slightly and look down, because I completely forgot what underwear I have on. “Can you disconnect the phone?” I say to Oliver, who shakes his head in refusal. “Please. This is like . . . monumentally embarrassing.” “Just answer,” he whispers. “Who’s that?” Mia asks. “Oliver. We’re in his car, and you’re on the fucking Bluetooth.” She laughs. “Oh my God! I am so sorry, Bean!” “What?” I shout. “He’s not the one being harassed!” “Oh, but now he is. So tell me—underwear?” “White lace bra and matching boy shorts,” I say, almost through my teeth, not missing the way Oliver’s eyes snap to me with an approving look. I want to slap him for it, but I know nothing good would come of that, so I just cross my arms over my chest like a petulant child.

Hidden speakers played harmless music;

The strange, jangly music made its way out of the speakers and it wasn’t long before Buster emerged from the hallway, tapping his foot. Annie waved him over and they stood in front of the speaker, nodding their heads, singing along, “Contort yourself, contort yourself.” If Annie could not drink, if Buster could not overmedicate, then dancing to abrasive, atonal jazz-punk would have to do. The music screeched and spilled over the edges of normal rhythm, but Buster and Annie did not miss a step, dancing the only way they’d ever known, poorly, but with great enthusiasm. If there was a name for this dance, it would be The Fang.

I poured another glass of wine from my already corked bottle and took residence on my porch chair overlooking the calm sea. In an attempt not to screw up my routine, a routine I carefully followed to the letter on most days, I lit my hurricane candles on my porch as Novo Amor’s “Faux” drifted through my speakers and out to sea. I learned much too late, ambiance was the key for me. Music, wine, and candles created my safe haven. These little things made me feel like I was in the midst of something, instead of looking forward to something else. I had spent way too much of my life looking forward to things. Those things rarely ever came the way I’d imagined them. Certainties were pap smears, head colds, and flat tires. But the feeling you got wrapped up in a good book, the perfect song, surrounded by candlelight could be repeated over and over. Endless self-made memories that no one could screw up? Yes, please.

MISPLACEMENT OF BEINGS" September 11, 2011 at 3:24 PM THERE ARE GODS OF SPORTS(MICHAEL JORDAN) THERE ARE GODS OF MUSIC (MICHAEL JACKSON) AND THERE ARE EVEN GODS OF WAR (AMERICA) "THIS IS NECESSARY" THIS GALACTIC COSMIC UNIVERSE IS CONSTANTLY EXPANDING, AND EVOLVING MORE AND MORE STARS ARE BEING BIRTH TO ANNOUNCE THEIR EXISTENCE FOR WE ARE ALL APART OF THIS NEVER ENDING PROCESS IN WHICH WE CALL LIFE WEATHER WE ARE AWARE OF THIS OR NOT WE ARE ALL, AS SPACE CAN BE DEFINE AS THE DNA OF GOD WE ARE THE INTELLECT OF THE COMPLETE SOURCE IN WHICH WE AS LIGHT BEING SHOULD EXPRESS THIS KNOWLEDGE BUT THE FACT THAT SOME STILL WILL NOT EXPRESS OR IS AFRAID OF WHAT THEY MIGHT LOOSE IS IS A STRIKING TO ONES HEART KNOW WHO YOU ARE....LOVE,TRUTH,PROSPERITY

John is standing at the other end of the table, drinking Coke and nodding his head to the beat. I’ve been so busy running around, we’ve hardly had a chance to talk. I lean over the table and call out, “Having fun?” He nods. Then, quite suddenly, he bangs his glass down on the table, so hard the table shakes and I jump. “All right,” he says. “It’s do or die. D-day.” “What?” “Let’s dance,” John says. Shyly I say, “We don’t have to if you don’t want to, John.” “No, I want to. I didn’t take swing-dancing lessons from Stormy for nothing.” I widen my eyes. “When did you take swing dance lessons from Stormy?” “Don’t worry about it,” he says. “Just dance with me.” “Well…do you have any war bonds left?” I joke. John fishes one out of his pants pocket and slaps it on the refreshments table. Then he grabs my hand and marches me to the center of the dance floor, like a soldier heading off to the battlefield. He’s all grim concentration. He signals to Mr. Morales, who is manning the music because he’s the only one who can figure out my phone. Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood” comes blaring out of the speakers. John gives me a determined nod. “Let’s do this.” And then we’re dancing. Rock-step, side, together, side, repeat. Rock-step, one-two-three, one-two-three. We step on each other’s feet about a million times, but he’s swinging me around--twirl, twirl--and our faces are flushed and we’re both laughing. When the song is over, he pulls me in and then throws me back out one last time. Everyone is clapping. Mr. Morales screams, “To the young ones!” John picks me up and lifts me into the air like we’re ice dancers, and the crowd erupts. I’m smiling so hard my face feels like it could break.

And then the finale, its four modest notes. Do, re, fa, mi: half a jumbled scale. Too simple to be called invented. But the thing spills out into the world like one of those African antelopes that fall from the womb, still wet with afterbirth but already running. Young Peter props up on his elbows, ambushed by a memory from the future. The shuffled half scale gathers mass; it sucks up other melodies into its gravity. Tunes and countertunes split off and replicate, chasing each other in a cosmic game of tag. At two minutes, a trapdoor opens beneath the boy. The first floor of the house dissolves above a gaping hole. Boy, stereo, speaker boxes, the love seat he sits on: all hang in place, floating on the gusher of sonority pouring into the room. […] All he wants to do forever is to take the magnificent timepiece apart and put its meshed gears back together again. To recover that feeling of being clear, present, here, various and vibrant, as huge and noble as an outer planet.

As Michael spoke, a flourish of horns and maracas blasted over the speakers. The music made Veronica think of Havana in the fifties, before Fidel Castro. Men in Panama hats and women in slinky dresses enjoying decadent lives before Communism's proverbial hammer swung down. Just like tsarist Russia. For a moment, Veronica was back in the Russian dream world of ornate palaces and complicated love affairs.

On 14 September 1869, one hundred years after his birth, Alexander von Humboldt’s centennial was celebrated across the world. There were parties in Europe, Africa and Australia as well as the Americas. In Melbourne and Adelaide people came together to listen to speeches in honour of Humboldt, as did groups in Buenos Aires and Mexico City. There were festivities in Moscow where Humboldt was called the ‘Shakespeare of sciences’, and in Alexandria in Egypt where guests partied under a sky illuminated with fireworks. The greatest commemorations were in the United States, where from San Francisco to Philadelphia, and from Chicago to Charleston, the nation saw street parades, sumptuous dinners and concerts. In Cleveland some 8,000 people took to the streets and in Syracuse another 15,000 joined a march that was more than a mile long. President Ulysses Grant attended the Humboldt celebrations in Pittsburgh together with 10,000 revellers who brought the city to a standstill. In New York City the cobbled streets were lined with flags. City Hall was veiled in banners, and entire houses had vanished behind huge posters bearing Humboldt’s face. Even the ships sailing by, out on the Hudson River, were garlanded in colourful bunting. In the morning thousands of people followed ten music bands, marching from the Bowery and along Broadway to Central Park to honour a man ‘whose fame no nation can claim’ as the New York Times’s front page reported. By early afternoon, 25,000 onlookers had assembled in Central Park to listen to the speeches as a large bronze bust of Humboldt was unveiled. In the evening as darkness settled, a torchlight procession of 15,000 people set out along the streets, walking beneath colourful Chinese lanterns. Let us imagine him, one speaker said, ‘as standing on the Andes’ with his mind soaring above all. Every speech across the world emphasized that Humboldt had seen an ‘inner correlation’ between all aspects of nature. In Boston, Emerson told the city’s grandees that Humboldt was ‘one of those wonders of the world’. His fame, the Daily News in London reported, was ‘in some sort bound up with the universe itself’. In Germany there were festivities in Cologne, Hamburg, Dresden, Frankfurt and many other cities. The greatest German celebrations were in Berlin, Humboldt’s hometown, where despite torrential rain 80,000 people assembled. The authorities had ordered offices and all government agencies to close for the day. As the rain poured down and gusts chilled the air, the speeches and singing nonetheless continued for hours.

I froze with embarrassment, but then listened to the music as it thundered out of the speakers around us. The beat was driving, calling to something in my blood, something wild and uninhibited, and I started moving up and down to it. I felt stiff, awkward, out of place, certain everyone was watching and judging me for this ridiculous display. But the music drove me onward, and before I knew it, I was jumping higher, timing my jumps to the beat, then going bigger… and bigger. My movements grew less controlled, more fluid and instinctual, and pretty soon I was laughing just as hard as Alexy. It was unabashedly ridiculous, yet I didn’t think I’d ever felt anything so wonderful in my entire life.

But it’s not music that fills the car. “I’m not done with you yet,” a male voice coos through the speakers. “What the fuck?

The town seemed to be full of oddities. Like the garden of strange snow statues, carved to look like little round men with jaunty black hats and carrots for their noses. And the leafy green bouquets with white berries tied up in bows hanging over archways all around town, often with two people smooching beneath them, as if the leaves were sprinkled with some kind of love potion. And then there was the large rotating contraption of wooden animals spinning round and round as jaunty music played from a hidden speaker. Even stranger, several children were riding on these animals, squealing in delight as they spun. Looks like fun, Sally couldn't help thinking.

Brother Clarence had wanted her to take over as song leader, and she had turned it down. If what she was hearing from the speakers was the direction the church was going in, it was just as well. She was forty-two, and she knew every generation thought their music was better than the next generation’s music, but this truly was garbage. Absolute garbage. Sugary ballads to Jesus, crowing anthems, trance inducing chorus repetitions. And why exactly did DeWayne need a ten-person praise team on stage all singing the melody?

danced on top of the speakers. Heaven followed the prototypical model of New York's Paradise Garage, a gay club, opened in 1977, where Larry Levan, “The Jimi Hendrix of Dance Music,” 48 created the soundtrack for the rise and fall of the disco revolution with his innovative experiments in spinning gospel and R&B records underpinned with drum machines and synthesizers—experiments that formalized Levan's idea of constructing a new, intuitive electronically produced “Garage” music that would never end.49 Levan

The music suddenly dropped and 7 Rings by Ariana Grande burst from speakers around the stadium as we moved into a full routine filled with dance moves and tricks.

altering extra musical effects of funk music—the point at which sounds seem to shift beyond perceptibility, levitate, and protrude from the speakers—were more interesting to Atkins: “I felt that if I could take that type of music and add a funky element to it then it would be a smash. We did that, but we just didn't get recognized. Soul Sonic Force came along and beat us to it.” 21 In 1981, Cybotron established their own label, Deep Space, and produced the track “Alleys of Your Mind,” which combined synthesized bass lines played in the style of Parliament's Bernie Worrell with Kraftwerk's investments in the future of audio technology.

The music thrums through the speakers. I swallow hard and start singing “Jingle Bell Rock” while performing the same dance from Mean Girls.

Other post-Roman ethnolinguistic frontiers followed the same pattern. After the fall of Rome German speakers moved into the northern cantons of Switzerland, and the Gallic kingdom of Burgundy occupied what had been Gallo-Roman western Switzerland. The frontier between them still separates ecologically similar regions within a single modern state that differ in language (German-French), religion (Protestant-Catholic), architecture, the size and organization of landholdings, and the nature of the agricultural economy. Another post-Roman migration created the Breton/French frontier across the base of the peninsula of Brittany, after Romano-Celts migrated to Brittany from western Britain around 400–600 CE, fleeing the Anglo-Saxons. For more than fifteen hundred years the Celtic-speaking Bretons have remained distinct from their French-speaking neighbors in rituals, dress, music, and cuisine. Finally, migrations around 900–1000 CE brought German speakers into what is now northeastern Italy, where the persistent frontier between Germans and Romance speakers inside Italy was studied by Eric Wolf and John Cole in the 1960s. Although in this case both cultures were Catholic Christians, after a thousand years they still maintained different languages, house types, settlement organizations, land tenure and inheritance systems, attitudes toward authority and cooperation, and quite unfavorable stereotypes of each other. In all these cases documents and inscriptions show that the ethnolinguistic oppositions were not recent or invented but deeply historical and persistent.

head downstairs where I find my mum in the lounge, her kindle in her hand, and music playing softly through the speakers mounted on the wall.

The group had a shared vision of the ecstasy of song and dance being a sacred rite, according to the bassist, and proportional to that framework Bear yearned to create a soundsystem. “His ideal was musical sound undistorted by the artifacts present in the sound-reproduction system—the entire signal path from pickup through preamp through power amp to speaker. Only the vibrating string and the vibrating air had purity,” Lesh wrote. “Everything else was compromised and must be made transparent. A noble goal, and one we endorsed gladly.” To put it another way, as Kreutzmann later wrote of the Dead’s time with Bear in LA: “Somehow we were placed inside his dream of building the perfect soundsystem for a live band.

In his living room, Bear wired up a personal stereo system beyond what even serious high-fidelity aficionados at the time could have fantasized about ever owning: a set of massive Altec-Lansing Voice of the Theater speaker horns, originally designed for movie houses. “If I could not be at a live show, next best was listening to music at Bear’s,” Rhoney Gissen, another of Bear’s partners in chemistry, who also lived with him on and off into the 1970s, later wrote in her memoir Owsley and Me. “He modified his home audio system by exchanging the components of the amp and preamp with precision parts he ordered from an aircraft manufacturer,” wrote Gissen. “He changed the type of cables and the wiring of the connectors. He had the best speakers—JBLs with the cones exposed. He even altered those, adding a subwoofer to increase the amplitude of the bass. His placement of the two tall speakers was calculated to optimize the quality of the sound.” Already shining through were two concepts that helped make the Wall: souping up hardware and attention to acoustic directivity.

I once shared a meal in an Oslo restaurant with the German psychologist Franz Ruppert. The noise was overwhelming: loud pop music pumping through several speakers and multiple TV channels blaring from bright screens mounted high on the walls. I have to think that when the great Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen used to hold court in that same establishment a little over a century before, the ambience was much more serene. "What's this all about?" I shouted to my companion over the M cacophony, shaking my head in exasperation. "Trauma," he replied as he shrugged his shoulders. Ruppert meant, simply, that people were desperately seeking an escape from themselves.

The lights dim, and he refills my water. “Mr Mitchell has been in a lot of situations where his life has been at risk. Trust me when I say this is minor. He’s too valuable to be killed. Many have tried and failed. He’s good at what he does because of what he’s gone through.” He gives me a tight smile and gestures to the cockpit. “I’ll be right through there if you need anything. Get some rest. Miss— Stacey.” I’m not sure how much time passes; the music playing from the speakers is all I have to focus on. “When the party’s over” by Billie Eilish is on, and my heart sinks with every lyric. Memories rush through me. Me inverted on the hoop; Kade kissing me upside down while this song plays. He often used to interrupt my routine to kiss or touch me. Other times he’d sit to the side and watch me, as if he was watching me dance for the first time. I knew that version of Kade was in love with me. I could see it in his eyes. I’m not sure I’ll ever see that side of him again.

As Charlie Gillett wrote in his seminal history The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll, “Played through the huge speakers of jukeboxes, 78s delivered a massive sound which can only be vaguely approximated by CDs on a domestic hi-fi or portable system. Owners of Elvis’s 78rpm singles on Sun justifiably believe that no other format has come close to reproducing their impact.” Jim Dawson, coauthor of What Was the First Rock ’n’ Roll Record? and 45 RPM, agrees, telling National Public Radio’s The Record that 78s “could accommodate wider grooves (great for bass). It was actually one of the best music carriers; far superior to 45s in that regard. Once you hear 1950s R&B and rock ’n’ roll on a 78 jukebox, everything else will sound anemic.

Cool air floats in through an open window, low music playing from hidden speakers, a full stomach and the buzz of alcohol making me feel relaxed.

Music's never loud enough. You should stick your head in a speaker. Louder, louder, louder.