It’s Too Bloody Hot To Listen
There’s this expectation, isn’t there, that if you’re a HiFi reviewer or one of those blogging types, you spend every waking hour listening to music. The image you probably have is of someone permanently sat in the sweet spot with a laptop or a notepad, and a mug of coffee, endlessly swapping amplifiers, speakers and cables while wiriting profound observations about soundstage depth and microdetail.
The reality is rather less glamorous than that…it really is.
Truth be told, over the past couple of months I’ve barely wanted to sit down and listen critically to anything at all. Not because the music has been boring, not because the equipment has been a bit rubbish or uninspiring, but because it’s just been too bloody hot.
Now, I know some of you reading this will be living in places where our little heatwave would barely register. I honestly don’t know how reviewers in permanently sweltering climates cope. Perhaps the answer is effective air conditioning. If so, I’m very jealous of folk with air con because our house has spent much of the summer feeling like the inside of a particularly well-insulated sauna.
Listening critically isn’t just a case of plonking yourself in a chair and pressing play. At least it isn’t for me. There’s a certain frame of mind I need to be in before I can properly assess a bit of kir. If I’m distracted, uncomfortable or constantly thinking about something else, then I’m no longer really listening. I’m hearing music, obviously, but I’m not engaging with it in the way a reviewer needs to. And I suspect that’s something many people outside this little hobby don’t really appreciate. They imagine reviewing as a technical exercise; compare A with B, note the differences, write them down and move on to the next box that’s arrived from the courier…who arrived days late and was particularly grumpy.
But it’s never worked like that for me. I can’t just treat reviewing as though it’s a nine-to-five office job where you switch into work mode at nine o’clock, complete the required tasks and clock off at five. I need actually to want to listen. I need to be curious about the new bit of kit. I need my head to be relatively free from all the other clutter that life insists on throwing at us. I’ve got one of those partially spicy brains that rarely turns off anyway, and I’m always thinking of new projects and ways of improving ongoing things. Perhaps I ought to become one of those people who meditate before every listening session. I could spend twenty minutes breathing deeply, emptying my mind and aligning my chakras before lowering the stylus onto a record. It sounds wonderfully civilised, if a bit hippy dippy for my advancing years – that said, never say never.
The reality has been not a little different to that. Most days recently have consisted of lukewarm showers that somehow manage to be both refreshing and disappointing at the same time, wandering around the house in little more than my underwear (my sincere apologies for that mental image on a Sunday morning but think The Dude but older, more portly, and without the White Russian), constantly filling water bottles, wondering whether another coffee is really sensible in this weather, and repeatedly hearing that little voice in the back of my head yaddering that, “It’s still too bloody hot… go and stand under the shower again.”
Productivity has, shall we say, been variable. It’s funny where the mind wanders during these periods of lethargy and being too bloody hot. I found myself thinking about Timothy Leary and his famous emphasis on set and setting before taking psychedelics. Whatever anyone thinks about Leary or his rather colourful life, he understood something quite fundamental. Your mindset matters. Your surroundings matter. The experience isn’t just about the chemical; it’s about everything that surrounds it. Obviously I’m not suggesting reviewing a pair of loudspeakers is quite the same as embarking on an expedition into inner space, although there are probably a few reviewers over the years who have blurred those lines somewhat…ahem. But the basic principle, though, feels somewhat similar. If your mind is elsewhere, if your body is uncomfortable and your environment is constantly demanding your attention, you’re unlikely to experience whatever you’re doing in quite the same way. You’re carrying mental and external noise into an activity that’s all about trying to remove noise… apart from the tunes, obviously.
The more I thought about it, the more I realised how much my own listening depends upon what musicians would probably call the atmosphere or vibe. My ideal reviewing afternoon isn’t one where the sun is blazing through the windows and the room resembles a greenhouse. Give me an autumn afternoon instead. Rain gently pattering against the double glazing. Low lights creating that cosy little cocoon. A decent cup of coffee within easy reach. The cat wandering around the room before eventually deciding that the most inconvenient place to settle is somewhere directly between me and my laptop. Outside can do whatever it likes because inside everything feels calm, comfortable and somehow disconnected from the rest of the world. That’s when I really listen.
Perhaps that’s why autumn and spring have always felt like HiFi season to me. Summer encourages movement and getting out. I feel a bit guilty sitting indoors when the weather’s good. Friends suggest barbecues – I never go. Gardens need attention – that can do one. Windows are open upstairs because of the fear of opening them downstairs and the aforementioned cat legging it. Chainsaws and farmers doing whatever it is that farmers do appear. Children are outside enjoying themselves on the old railway track behind the house. The whole world seems determined to make a whole load of noise. Autumn quietly tells you to retreat indoors again and relax in that cocoon of homeliness.
I also think there’s an important distinction between listening for pleasure and listening professionally, if that’s not too stuck-up a word for what I do. They’re related, but they’re not quite the same. When I’m sat enjoying music, I don’t particularly care if I drift off for a few minutes thinking about what’s for tea (now we have a Northerner in whichever Number 10 he’s in, you’ll all be made to call dinner tea), or whether I remembered to reply to a particularly persistent emailer. Music has always been the soundtrack to life as much as an activity in itself.
But reviewing demands something different. It requires sustained attention, and it asks you to notice tiny details, to compare memories, to question first impressions and sometimes to admit that what you thought you heard yesterday isn’t quite what you’re hearing today. That’s hard enough when you’re feeling your best, but it’s nigh on impossible when your brain is busy complaining about the ambient temperature every thirty milliseconds.
Which brings me to something I occasionally worry about. Now and again someone will ask how a review is coming along, or wonder why a particular product review hasn’t appeared yet. I completely understand that. Manufacturers lend equipment in good faith, and naturally they’re keen to see the finished article. I’d probably be the same in their position. But I honestly believe I’d be doing both them and you, our readers, a disservice if I simply churned out reviews because some real or imagined deadline was looming over me – I’ll leave that to others. If I know I’m not in the right place mentally, I’ll wait. If I know I’m not giving a product my full attention, I’ll wait. If I know that my judgement is being clouded by tiredness, distraction or, in this case, the overwhelming desire to climb into a cold bath when we don’t even have a bath and remain there until October, I’ll wait. That’s not laziness, I don’t think. It’s part of the process of properly reviewing something.
Exactly the same applies to writing these Sunday Thoughts pieces. They don’t arrive because it’s Sunday and therefore I must produce 1,500 vaguely amusing words before I post it and send out the accompanying newsletter. They arrive because something has been rattling around in my head for a while and eventually decides it’s ready to come out. Sometimes that’s sparked by a news story I’ve read or seen. Sometimes it’s a conversation at a HiFi show or on the blower. Sometimes it’s something completely trivial that gradually turns into something rather more interesting.
This week, it was simply being too hot, and that got under my skin, and so I thought I’d get it out of my head and let it do some low-level bothering of you instead. It turns out that a couple of months spent wishing for cooler weather made me realise that listening isn’t just something we do with our ears. We listen with our mood, our concentration, our surroundings and, perhaps most importantly, our willingness to give something our complete attention. Maybe that’s becoming an increasingly rare thing in itself, what with the gazillion and one distractions we have going on in everyday life. Perhaps that’s why those truly magical and memorable listening sessions stand out so clearly in our memories, not because the amp was superlative or the loudspeakers disappeared into the room (they never do that), but because, for an hour or two, all the audio ducks lined up perfectly. The music, the room, the mood, the ambience and the moment all pulled in the same direction to create an internal feeling that was just like the baby bears’ porridge…just right.
You can’t force that, I don’t think, and you can’t schedule it with any degree of certainty. And you definitely can’t hurry it along just because the calendar says you ought to.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, the weather forecast says it might actually rain this afternoon, which is sods law as we’re supposed to be going to an air show. I have a stack of review equipment patiently waiting, a fresh bag of coffee in the cupboard and a cat who, no doubt, will be more than happy to supervise proceedings.
At last, it might just be cool enough to listen. But you really ought to get that thought of ne as the Dude out of your head.
Stu
