GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site

In the Forum: Audio Discussions
In the Thread: The Classical Music Café syndrome...

Post Subject: Where are the smileys?Posted by Joe Roberts on: 6/1/2009

Yo Romy, face it... you need a smiley menu on this joint. For this exchange, I could use the one with rolling eyes and the one where one smiley whips out a hammer and konks the other smiley on the head with it a few times.

Your cat architecture parable illustrates my point perfectly, with minor modifications as follows...

Say you went off to the Munich cat architecture show last week, granted that cat architecture is a worthy endeavor, you have some useful ideas about practical cat architecture, and you're pretty excited about the whole event. Totally into cat architecture and all the heavy hitting cat architect nerds are in town, ready to get down on it. This is where you belong. Life, at this moment, is good.

Then as you leave the U bahn station in a crowd of fellow cat architects carrying portfolios and whatnot, you spy a beautiful naked blonde on the roof of a small house next to the station. Let's say she has a cat on her lap also, just to make it topical. The cat looks very happy and content, and obviously couldn't care less about the cat habitat planning summit taking place down the road because this cat already has it made.

Is this experience not all the better for springing into existence at an unexpected time and place, just to shake things up a bit? A bit of wry humour and timely commentary on the business of cat architecture, coming from outside the concerns numbered in the official program of the Munich Katzenhausfabrik 2009 show, but fully relevant to the topic at hand?

The emotion I'm trying to evoke is delight, perhaps most tasty when unexpected and taking you off to unexpected places. Surprise!

Hiraga spun some vinyl on the Altecs and voila--it was a delightful moment. Really a peak experience of the show for me.

I got a similar feeling of elation listening to Mr. Hwang's cafe system. Out of the ordinary and kind of left me in wonder.

I suppose what I am campaigning for --or cheerleading for-- is a rather obscure vision of the process of audio discovery that means a lot to me right now, having had a few mind expanding experiences in recent travel, after some years of being burned out on audio. I got where I wanted to be, or close enough, and got lazy. Being out there interacting with audio explorers perked up some dormant impulses, I guess.

This is about encountering human freedom and creativity, an inspiring flash of realization about what you and people like you are doing. A higher level of philosophy than mere cat architecture but one which includes it and governs it.

Appreciation of these unexpected lessons from actual happy cats, can only make for a better cat architect and ultimately better feline housing design, than modeling the Serenghetti Plain as an ideal cat domain, then trying to reproduce selected qualities of that environment using approved housing materials and a CAD program.

But I guess if you are committed to the Serengetti school of cat design, any successful and happy cat who has no need for your perspectives on the path to feline happiness because they found another way independently, is not only useless but subversive to the Serengetti school's message and self-image.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of cats care not a whit about swirling controversies in cat arhcitecture, being too busy being cats and doing alright without the self-enshrined experts who don't pay attention to what they want anyway.

A garden could have more than one flower, that's what I'm saying. It might be best to withold prejudgement and go around and try sniff them all before declaring which are the better varieites and individual specimens. There are a lot of flowers out there and there is always something nicer than what any of us are growing at home in any particular point in time.

For me, some of "those kind of people" you dismiss with a cryptic snort above provided valuable lessons. Just giving credit where it is due.

Alright now, back to the previously scheduled programming...who or what are we supposed to trashing this week?

Joe Roberts 2012

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