No one is consulted. No one is held to account. No one has the authority to turn it off. How is it that muzak has slipped through every legal control?
The blame, I’d say, lies with those who are frightened of silence — with those who spend more money in shops that buzz to a friendly background hum, and laugh too loudly when all around are mute. To moderate their visceral fear of the quiet they cling to cheaply produced, intellectually demeaning and superficially comforting sub-music. Muzak comes in various forms — piped, performed live, and through other people’s headphones, when you can’t actually hear pitched sounds, only a desiccated, insistent beat.
Live it can be most memorable. Everyone must have their least favourite story. Mine is that last summer I went to stay in a hotel by the Valley of the Temples, just outside Agrigento in Sicily.
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