Headphones are the new front door

I share a flat with three people, work in an open office and commute on a tram that is full from the second stop. Between leaving my bed and getting back into it, there is no door I can close. Except one. When I put my headphones on, the world understands that I have left the room.

I do not think I am unusual. Look at any train carriage and count the heads with headphones on. Most people are not even playing anything particularly important. They are playing a podcast they half follow, a playlist they have heard a hundred times, or nothing at all. The music is not the point. The door is.

A room you can carry

Big over-ear headphones have come back in the last few years, and I think this is why. Tiny earbuds are for listening. Big headphones are for being seen not to listen. They are a sign on the door that says do not disturb, and everybody on the street can read it.

Noise cancelling made the room real. The hum of the tram, the chatter, the builder’s radio across the road: it all drops away with one switch. What is left is not silence exactly, but a small, private space the exact size of your own head. For a lot of people, that is the only private space they get all day.

Nobody on the tram is listening to music. They are building a room to sit in.

What the door costs

There is a cost to living behind a door. You miss the conversation about the late tram. You do not hear the stranger who tells you that you have dropped your glove. The city becomes a silent film you move through, and silent films are lonely even when they are beautiful.

So I have started a small practice. For one stop every morning, I take the headphones off. I listen to the city the way it actually sounds: the bell, the doors, the man who sings under his breath near the back. Then I close the door again, because I need it. But I know what is outside now.

• Try one stop a day without headphones, and notice one sound you had forgotten.

• Keep a playlist for the door, songs you know so well they ask nothing of you.

• Take them off when someone speaks to you. All the way off, not one ear.

The front door is not a wall. You are allowed to open it.