Confessions of a Thrillseeking Audiophile
This quote comes courtesy of Shane Parrish’s Brain Food newsletter.
“Skateboarding is a game of failure. That’s what makes this sport so different. Skaters are willing to take a great deal of physical punishment. We’ll try something endlessly, weeks on end, painful failure after painful failure after painful failure.
“But for me, when it finally snaps together, when I’m really pushing the edge and skating beyond my abilities, there’s a zone I get into. Everything goes silent. Time slows down. My peripheral vision fades away. It’s the most peaceful state of mind I’ve ever known. I’ll take all the failures. As long as I know that feeling is coming, that’s enough to keep going.”
I expect that Danny would understand exactly why someone would want to go into a room to listen to a record by himself. Good sound tends to make everybody in the room stop talking.
Exceptional records take it to the next level. They cause those in the room to to go silent in order to listen more intently — because the music and the sound demand it.
If others in the room are talking, how is the spell to take hold?
If your goal is to be immersed in the music, better that they were never there in the first place.
Brain Food
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Expect to see more of his ideas and insights coming to this blog.
Further Reading
- Remember: music does the driving
- Obsession is the best predictor of audio evolution
- Hi-Fi beats My-Fi if you are at all serious about audio
I prefer to listen alone, but in this case I was happy to have Geoff Edgers with me to enjoy the exquisite sound of the Hot Stamper pressings we played, among them Carole King’s Masterpiece, Tapestry.
