Listening 💫

 

After several years - decades, maybe - of audio peregrinations, I arrived at a Zen-like conclusion: I’m happy to be wrong every day, so I’m able to correct myself, learn more… sleep well, and discover to be wrong, again, tomorrow.

My humble, fragile humanity isn’t designed for self-satisfaction but for endlessly searching for that emotional seed which makes life worth to be lived.

I’ve not The Truth about stuffs and life: I’m just a scholar, not a master.

Audio-wise, I’m sincerely happy and satisfied (for awhile) only at home and at two/three friends’ places… otherwise, I’m truly feeling a deep sense of boredom when visiting this or that audio fair, this or that demo: nobody is listening to music, as everybody is too busy in chatting about the hideous, justified or not, cost of this or that.

People is just listening to expensively reproduced noises, a loud background mess of bangs & barrooms.

Prices fetched a zenith, maybe… and this makes a social gap of sort, as everyone’s judged not for his personality, knowledge, skills but on an invisible scale where the total cost of a stereo system is a source of self-celebration and emancipation; any boastful talk from the biggest spendthrift is taken as gospel.

… or so.

A recent trending concerns compulsive changing phono equalizations to “optimize” any disc, but always doubting a Decca is… a Decca eq. and not an EMI or a Teldec… an RCA Shaded Dog as a Blue Note or an Impulse or… a syndrome which severely worsened the already feeble musical attention of these wannabes sound engineers.

I fondly remember and miss when, as a poor as a church-mouse teenager, a radio was enough to enjoy music, late in the night; later, chatting with friends about a record or an artist was a matter of empathy and pure joy, at the core of the emotional content and significance of any music.

A stereo system - cheap or more expensive, as every family budget allowed - was in almost every house and music was a common, cultural good... a record was like a book: a medium that allowed you to enjoy art and beauty, to grow and feel part of a community… not a “collector’s item” or an investment.

What happened at some point is something which will perhaps be the subject of study in the future: audio magazines, audio fairs, reviews and reviewers, rankings .

The disaster, the end, a short circuit, but I’m over-simplifying.

Where is the sheer musical enthusiasm and enjoyment, these days?

Audio industry - more and more -  became a luxury playground for the happy few!

… but… BUT: I’m still that (maybe slightly wealthier) church mouse, now an old kid of-sort, who feverishly browse discs bins at flea-markets and shops, searching for “that” emotional seed, seeking the elusive joy and insightful pleasure of discovering and understanding what an artist wished to share with the world.

Wherever the world is and will be going, I’ll walk my path made of small pleasures, music-induced goosebumps and random rants about the worrying vilification of music at audio fairs where packs of zombies “listen” to the holographic image and the depth of the soundstage, without even recognizing a C major chord… or the art instead of the far too common auto tune shit!

Hopefully, I’m not alone 😉

Music is Best! (Frank Zappa)