ABSTRACT
I spent the most memorable moments of my youth listening to hip hop music through a portable tape player with oversized stereo headphones. I would wrap the long cord of the headphones around the tape player to keep its broken cassette player door in place and would hold the door shut with my hands to keep the music pouring through the headphones. Over time, the constant use of the tape player caused the headphones to develop an electrical short, leaving me with music only coming through one earphone port and forcing me to constantly twist the cord until I could bend it at the perfect angle that would allow the music to flow through both ears. The more quickly I could get the music drifting through both headphones, the shorter the time it would take for me to get lost in the sounds and words that poured through the player, and the easier it became to find solace in a world, where being from a certain neighborhood or of a certain race and class meant being accepted and loved in some worlds but almost invisible in others.
