I am in my 40s and I am observing (in context of the subjects that might be related to this site) that my curiosity in audio more and more become self-centered. I am not taking about self-centrism as a selfish egocentric type but rather I talk about self-centrism as an exclusion of interest about experiences of others. The people who read my site regularly would anticipate that I would dive right here into a rant about my feeling that the majority people in audio are shallow, accidental and irrelevant. That all is correct, I do not step away from this position. However, by my diminishing curiosity about what others do in audio, does not only base upon boring experiences I got from others. I rather feel that “experiences of others” are generally not stimulate me as they use to do. As the result my curiosity about others is lower and instead, my curiosity is more turned intravertialy.

I begun to sense it a few years back and I feel that with time this is progressing.  I liked to “collect” what other do in audio. Formerly it was if not stimulating but at least educational. Lastly the educational aspect of the exposure to others is diminishing. Instead I more stimulated with discovery within myself the new things. Furthermore, I feel that I begin to experience great deal of annoyance when various experiences of others are presented to me in a format of “a message that intended to be delivered”.  I love when people talk about themselves. I adore autobiographies when people say “I” and when they indicate a distinctive stand. However, as soon people begin to shape own position as a significance specifically FOR ME then I would like to scream: “Go fuck yourself with your education!”

I very seldomly see people in audio who talk about themselves and own experiences of audio. In majority cases somebody always would like to teach somebody in audio and even if people have very best intentions I feel that it faulty direction, at least it does not work in my case. People hear the things and believe that they understand the things but the true understand is always comes from within, as own self-discovery…

In my past I read a lot of thing that might be considered by somebody as “philosophy”, even I do not like the word. A few years back I trashed all of it and nowadays I cannot digest a paragraph of philosophy – too annoying. I absolutely can’t read most works about music, not to mention musical reviews and analyses.  I do not like books about composers, singers and musicians. I love the books by composers, singers and musicians; I love their own dairies, own articles and reminiscences – I hate what somebody begin to interpret them for me.

In audio it is very much the same. People do not talk about own Sound and do not share own thoughts progress about Sound. They always try to shape own practice as some kind of educational tale for others – I have no idea why people do it but it turns me off. As the result, I have almost an unconditioned reflex that most of the experiences from others in audio will be associated with some kind of violation of my perceptional purity and with a need for me to discard 90% of what I learned as a sort of “artificial superstructure of audio intercourse”.  In the end, my curiosity in other audio people is running lower and lower and I feel that I can get more fruitful enrichment of my audio interests from within myself.

I wonder, if other people, specifically older them me, had experienced the same feeling in their 40s. If the Longfellow was right with his “Thy fate is the common fate of all”, then you the guys after 40s have passed over it before. So, I wonder: what is next? Will the curiosity about experiences of others continue to drop or it’ll get somehow returned back at another level?

Saturntube wrote:

When you begin to get inspired after looking at your own paintings and start to get new ideas and develop images further on different canvasses. What happens then is that you get isolated you dont want to see anything else that could corrupt the images you are following in you head.