Sound Walk

On Friday, March 9th I got on the B train in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn at approximately 9:30 am. When getting on the first stop on the B line, I witnessed majority of the people travelling on the train were Russians due to the neighborhood Brighton Beach being mostly of Russian or Eastern European descent. I would pick up Russian dialogue a lot more than English, it was as if we weren't in America anymore. The old ladies sitting across from me were talking really loud and obnoxious about the new restaurant on Brighton Beach, that is raking in a lot of money and their food isn't even that good. I watched them converse , as they both interrupted each other. If one was to watch them and not understand Russian they would think they were in a heated argument. In the first few stops, everyone had something in common with each other, their culture and ethnicity for the most part, as soon as we started travelling further away from King's Highway the racial pool began to diversify. The train cart was already packed and we’ve only reached four stops on this train, due it being a morning rush, people started tightening their space. The guy next to me was blasting Eminem in his headphones, it sounded as if he wasn't even wearing any headphones. The guy standing in front of me was so tall, his crotch aligned with my eyes, he was playing candy crush on his phone and left the volume on, so every few seconds you would hear a high pitch sound. It was so irritating, I don't understand why people can't turn the volume down when they play games.

We were all packed into one train car like sardines, shoulder to shoulder, sharing physical space, but simultaneously we are all immersed in our own worlds and not attempting to socialize with anyone. I have always been quite the observer, never being able to finish a chapter in a book in one sitting because I kept getting distracted, and the life around me always caught my attention more than the one written on those dull pages. I would simply identify anyone my eyes would fixate on, I observed the model’s  annoyance with her cell phone (looking as if she is arguing with a loved one) as she pouts and rolls her eyes. I watched how the mother across from me would attend delicately to her screaming child, I noticed how the Asian couple in the corner seemed to be having a light hearted conversation involving many small kisses in between. Commuters exchanged fleeting glances, or the flickers of emotion that can sometimes be detected behind the apparent blank faces of daydreamers. These silent acts show how much the subway is based on both peaceful co-existence and the impossibility of knowing anything about the lives of one’s fellow passengers. I’ve experienced a few challenges such as the racial hierarchy presented on the train; homeless people entering the train nearly every stop begging for money and starving artists playing rock n’ roll in exchange for money. I pity these people but don’t have much to offer, so I shy my gaze away and uncomfortably race my eyes to rest on something still and nonliving. This behavior has been so normalized on the trains that I see everyone following the same behavior as I and ignoring the impoverished state of other people, which is really quite unfortunate. These interactions reflect our social values and morals.