Across the Sound Waves

I know little about sound. I am not an auditory predator. I forage mostly during the day time, picking assorted fruits and mushrooms in the forest. But for those who do know, for those who experience and sense tonal qualities at Chiropteran levels, there exists an alternative audio-sensory experience. An alternate reality of sound that is explored by audiophiles.

What the hell did you just call me?

An audiophile is not someone who merely appreciates quality sound. They are the intrepid explorers of a lost world. To them the perfect auditory experience is a hidden continent. A world whose true location is perpetually obscured by plastic ear cups with low-grade foam padding, a lack of gold-plating and of course ambient noise fornications generated from inversely charged ions. 


Their greatest goal in life - to crash onto this lost continent's shores, proclaiming themselves to be Scions of Symphony; Heralds of Harmony; Paladins of Pitch.

Sound the Hi-Definition Horns!

Alas, Mu, the lost continent, shall never be tread. And in their relentless journey our voyagers have slowly gone mad. On any given day in a self-proclaimed audiophile forum one will find countless threads discussing nuances of sound that are so ungrounded in reality they often tear at a laymen's perception of reality:


"Yeah, those are some pretty good cans, but the lows are too low and the highs are too low. They sound itchy. Almost like wood being melted by water."


"Listen, your pre-amp is fine. What's most likely causing the warble are micro-vibrations from your sound card improperly rendering the FLAC file. Were you sure to put it through FLAC at 96khz in 12 channels via TuneMeister's custom made sound drivers? The drivers will void your warranty, but there is no better way to experience Sting - Live at Pompeii, trust me!"


When the conquistadors dreamt of El Dorado they saw burgeoning coffers of gold and jewels. Riches beyond their wildest dreams. Audiophiles, in contrast, appear to already be in possession of the aforementioned monies. 

Where's the headphone jack?

While most of us would be content with a $3.00 roll of speaker cable, audiophiles would wail if such a barbarous tone were allowed to slam into their satin lined ears. What you really need is 15ft of some $21,000 speaker cable. You think you appreciate music because you have a pair of Skullcandy supraaurals? Heh! "But, but!" you stammer "I have some of the hyper-elite Bose Noise-Canceling ones from Skymall!" Impotent Fool! You haven't heard Californication until it's been piped through a pair of $15,000 Sennheiser Orpheus cans.  And while many of us would claim, "Snake Oil!"  The believers will beguile you away with tales of Audio Nirvana.


All of this begs the question, "What are these people listening to?" Surely it's limited to the highest quality recordings of Puccini's La Boheme,  Moonlight on a Spring River for the Chinese Guqin, or even perhaps a trance inducing Ravi Shankar sitar solo. 


Sadly - it is not.


Often audiophiles will list the musical selections they used to get a feel for their equipment's character. Those lists generally result in blasphemies such as: Goo Goo Dolls, Metallica, Alanis Morissette and REO Speedwagon.

Sorry the only character I hear is suck.

So if you find yourself tipping back Jägermeister at a house party, questioning the sound quality of a YouTube video the host is blaring over their Toshiba Laptop, be careful, the sirens might be calling you away.

What We Once Called A Home.

We had gears in our brains. They rust. They rust. We amassed stuff. The dust. The dust. Right now I feel like an immigrant on Ellis Island. I have a ramshackle of possessions, both tangible and emotional, spread across long lost homes. All of it is falling in the cracks and rolling under the door. I think by Chapter 10 I will be left with two double-A's, a single pair of junior high underwear and a crust of cheesy bread.

"Let's say grace."

                I am confined to crowded dirty living conditions like a old mutt in an inner-city pound needing a clean towel to sleep on.  I play my music so loud smoke fills my room. I hot box death metal. Then I study about Huntington's Disease and hope to get an A on someone's life-stealing illness. I hear my neighbors coughing through the door. Coughing or screaming. Probably screaming about emotional love tension. Emotional love tension or blue shells on Mario Kart.

Spring Break is a free sample at the grocery store. You take it, you give a grin for it, but just as fast as you got it you swallowed it. Nommed it. Then you're left to just push your cart around and buy corn-syrup in a jar, hoping you'll have the courage to humiliate yourself by throwing a last minute treat on the conveyor belt.

"Yeah I need all of this processed food matter. But I need this too."

Dorm rooms, old carpet, broken wood paneling, crumbs, lint, futons, plastic cups, single beds.  The other day I stared out the window and closed the blinds because a glare appeared on my desktop.  What I want is a piece of Gaia. Not that I can own Our Lady Planet Earth. But here is to hoping she will let me borrow her epidermis just long enough for me to get grass stains on my jeans.

I am pressing my face against the pound's window. My greasy smile smears it all up. Inside is summertime. A bunch of critters awaiting a new home.  In a month or so I will have saved enough money to buy one for myself. We grin. We grin. 

Bit By the Y2K Bug

 A time when screen savers were white pixels accelerating towards your face. When all computers were the color of dingy pit stains. When de-crumbing your ball mouse was common practice. A time when Netscape chaperoned you through your web journeys.

As a miscreant, whenever I was taken to an office supply store I would scuttle off to the computer section. Grinning wildly, hands barely reaching the keyboard, I would change the display computers' screen savers. Lord knows how many possible computer sales were botched when, in the middle of a sales pitch, the proclamation of "FARTS!!!" began to glide across the screen.

Unbeknownst to most students at the time, Mrs. Barnett's fourth grade class was the world leader in illegal poaching. Every day from 11:30 - 12:45 countless animals had their dwellings encroached upon by settlers, only to be greeted by a swift death. Crouched over my canoe, staring into the murky waters of the mighty Amazon, I waited with trident in hand. Unable to resist, Joey went for what was assuredly a lazy moving Garr. It was a soggy log. I caught a wild jungle carp. Sara, her body falling into the river, had stabbed an electric eel. 

One thing is fore sure, if you stab it, you gotta eat it. 

Meanwhile,  5,000 miles northwest, Timothy had just killed the last remaining Bison at Chimney Rock as he desperately tried to feed his daughter "Butt" who was slowly dying of dysentery. Next time he knew not to go with meager portions and grueling pace.

Fun fact, the lead gamer designer at MECC (the studio behind Amazon, Oregon and Yukon Trail) was actually the mustached guy from Jumanji.

In the school you must be, from the hours of eight til' three!

As a preteen, when I got home from school, only one noise could satisfy my insatiable social lust.

Good luck trying to sneak online at night.

The reason that our generation has retained so very little of their junior high education is to be blamed on  AOL instant messenger. My buddy list took up half my hard drive. Directly after school it was just the kids who got picked up by their parents and conversations were stale. Four thirty had the kids who rode the bus signing on. And by five o'clock the athletes and after school kids showed up. Come dinner time I had so many chat windows open, that the blend of slamming doors, bells chiming and hundreds of blinking blue tabs resembled Apollo 13's cockpit.

Uhhh Houston... ASL?

Between consuming pink syrup, being exposed to Magic Cards and staring at a computer screen for 3/4 of my adolescence it's no wonder that my brain constantly plays the theme song to Crash Bandicoot. 

Ambrosia Realized

My father and his father grew up in Belgium. At the time,  after a hard day of spelling tests and long division,  my father would belly up to the bar and order a few Trappist ales.  Nothing was strange about a young lad sitting on a barstool relaxing after a long school day. Brewing is the heritage and definition of Belgian culinary culture.  In Chapter 48 of the Rule of Benedict it states, "for then are they monks in truth, if they live by the work of their hands." And as you know from Sunday School, it was the Trappist monks who followed the Rule of Benedict. The earliest of these chaste chasers is Orval, founded in 1132. Even today Orval is readily available. Right now. Probably just a short drive from your door. And Orval, like all Trappist brews, stands as one of the greatest beers of all time. Decorated in countless honors and received by an endless malty flow of prestige, it is a masterpiece in the art of brewing. Yet its honor pales at the feet of a beer so complex, so lustrous, so mysterious and so divine its name only exists in whispers. A beer so rare it is traded on the black market world round. One Beer to rule them all, One Beer to crown them, One Beer to best them all and in the tavern down them. Westvleteren: The Best Beer in the World.

Nestled just outside the medieval city of Ypres lies the Trappist Abbey of Saint Sixtus of Westvleteren. The monastery has stated, "we are not brewers, we are monks." Indeed. The monks of Saint Sixtus have assuredly been rewarded by the Lord for their piety. Available in three world renowned varieties: Blonde, 8 and 12, is it the 12 which holds the title. Westvleteren 12 is a Quadruple style Belgian ale. Pouring a beautiful rich dark caramel color with a thick frothy head it's armoa is a mix between a bakery and a ripe orchard.  It tastes of fresh baked  wheat bread, honey coated cinnamon, sweet cloves, sticky molasses, ripe figs, Christmas-time, your first kiss, and ascension into eternal Paradise. At 10.20% ABV it is a forced to be reckoned with and demands patience and respect.

These beers, designated only by a distinctive cap on a plain brown bottle, defy labels, marketing and even traditional business practices. True to their devotion, Westvleteren produces only enough bottles to support their abbey and various philanthropic endeavors (as if crafting the world's greatest liquid wasn't enough).

To obtain Westvleteren 12, one has only two options: either go to the brewery or the black market. Originally, St. Sixtus generously allowed ten crates of 24 bottles per visitor. Then the word got out and people went totally berserk. Receiving a crate now is akin to getting a Golden Ticket to Wonka's Chocolate Factory. 

The bes...best... beer... in the world!

The limit first dropped to five crates, then two. Finally in 2009 each visitor was limited to only one crate of Westvleteren 12. Furthermore, you have to make a reservation with the abbey for a purchase  which is limited to one per month per customer.  Open receiving God's second gift to man, you are forbidden by the monks to resell it. It is for your consumption only (presumably while you contemplate burning your worldly possessions and joining the abbey.) Usually such a pithy warning wouldn't deter resellers. Yet imagine, there you are Judas, your single crate of Westvleteren 12  and only the promise of 30 pieces of silver in return.  

Let us take a moment to evaluate the economics of this whole debacle. Here you are, blessed with the rare ability to create a good that is literally the best of its kind. You look at the demand, the hordes of thirsty heathens throwing themselves at your gates, screaming for a single drop. You limit your supply to a measly 14,000 bottles a year. At this point businessmen begin to salivate. You could charge exorbitant prices for your good. The demand is literally knocking down your door, and you're supply is only a trickle. But these are monks not Wall-Street brokers. The cost of a bottle of Westvleteren direct from the Abbey? About $2.20. But you don't have a crate, and Warren Buffet does. The average cost of a bottle on the black market? About $30. Have I paid that? Yes, many many times. I have since washed my hands.

Tomes could be filled with the lore and etiquette of Belgian beers. Until then we make note of Proverbs 31:6 "Give beer to those who are perishing, wine to those who are in anguish."

Synthetic Memories

I am of the Chemical Generation. In 1998 you could wake up and pour nearly luminous pink syrup onto frozen waffles. You could squirt blue and green ketchup all over your processed pork logs.

 At school I would gleefully plop down at lunchtime, tear open my hermetically sealed sustenance package, and squeeze room temperature meat-paste out of a tube onto mini-tortillas. 

*Purple-Nerds are part of a balanced diet.

At my pee-wee soccer games we would re-fuel with Sunny-Delight, a liquid so saturated with chemicals, that spilling it is akin to toxic dumping. 


During art class I drew camels that smelled like chocolate and licorice. 

I remember when Thomas was sent to the nurse's office after returning from a bathroom break looking like a bloody jowled  hyena, but smelling like a cherry limeade. After school I would watch shows wherein the contestants were doused in neon green sludge as it spewed out of a steel pipe like some sort of Soviet-era industrial accident. After which we all giggled and rolled around like noodles on the carpet. 

We used to play with electric ovens that smelted molten hot plastic into centipedes and scorpions. In almost unbearable anticipation, Peter and I would scrunch our little faces up to the vent and breath in the fumes as we re-wrote the book of Genesis with our creations. 

As a country we became so adept at microwavable insta-cuisine, that baking things would take less time to delicately nuke than they would to cool. 

And when all us Chemo-kids die of either Poptart cancer or chronic Gogurt Syndrome, don't worry, you're burial and embalming will be cheap, because inside you're already a chemical éclair.

A Mouthful

Do you remember the first time you had coffee? Of course you do! Your tastebuds caterwauled in agony and asked your snout why something so sweet smelling tasted like a mouthful of piping hot soil. Do you remember the first time you heard death metal? Probably not. But you might recall the horrible cacophony of pots and pans banging together and the endless steel rain of a blitzkrieg of guitars that assaulted your ears while you envisioned a sweaty meat fisted man grunting and squealing what was most assuredly the praise of Satan and the occult into a microphone while a riptide of greasy bodies swayed in sync with thumping double bass tremblings tearing the wood floors apart of the local music hall that those nice Amish people built back in the 80's.

Well you drank that coffee when you grew up to be big and strong, and to be important enough to tie your shoes correctly. You might've eased in slurping a Latte or with a pouring of sugar and cream. You probably cheated though with your iced Largo black Puerto Rican, while mom and dad wiped the rock slides from their slumber rings and slogged down coffee black as scary closet spiders.

Well you might also like the heavier bits of your mellow album. You might like it when they scream on the radio a bit, and you even enjoyed hearing your brother's hard rock when Andy stood you up because your forehead was furled and fuming. It fit the mood. It fits the mood like a Triple Tall Red Eye fits finals week. It gets your body out of the ethereal mayonnaise of a TGI Friday's American lifestyle. Well so does death metal. It's a progression. It's a realization that core noises and tempos get you living in a Neolithic way. Its animalistic and pure like dirty hands and camp fires. It can and cannot be whatever you want. It can be dark and foreboding, but it can be about your sweet- potato-cream-pie girl that your sweetin' on. It can even be about worshiping God with a double capital G. I challenge anyone who has ever been bored at a concert. Who has ever asked, "Why is no one grooving?" Who thought a concert was worth it because they used smoke and mirrors. I challenge them to run off the edge of a stage and backflip into a crowd of people who are ready for your every action. To get lost in a moshpit full of friendly crowd goers who know how to use those meat staffs you call legs. To actually be able to shake the performer's hand at the end of the show and tell them it was just dandy.

Opera and classical music is arguably timeless. It transcends total absorption and demands savoring and contemplation. Like a fine roast. Like a fine Swedish Deathcore album.  "Well I can't understand what they are going on about!" Yeah well neither can most of people listening to Opera. I spent 10,000 years in the Fatherland studying High German and I can barely get 20% on Wagner's Götterdämmerung. Metal follows the same principles. I am listening to albums I bought five years ago discovering nuances while on my way to class. (*Side note: the novelty of everyday activities performed to a backdrop of death metal is infinite like the love of a She Wolf.)  Meanwhile, you have to steal the music you like because you chew through it like a little-league team at Pizza Hut.

So you might be on the precipice, but take a swig from the mug. As Mindless Self Indulgence once put it, "I like my coffee black, just like my metal." 

I grew up in Childhood

As a child I had a beard. It would sop up my milk during snack time. I sprained my ankle 43,653 times playing hopscotch. I lost the spelling bee because I failed to spell squirrel correctly. As fate would have it I would later spell Eichhörnchen (squirrel) winning the 1994 Internationalbuchstabierwettbewerb in Berlin. I always got the turkey and swiss because it came with mustard. I would save the packets and twist them up into little landmines, burying them beneath the gravel, so kids playing tag would detonate them all over their teal windbreakers. I was sent to the principal's office during PE in 4th grade, because I gave a kid a scruff burn when I broke the line in Red-Rover. When Pokemon came around all I had were Magic cards. I was swiftly sent to the school counselor when a kid showed me a:

and I offered a:

When yo-yo's twirled their way onto our playgrounds, everyone wanted a Silver Bullet. Like the hairy moon creature I was, silver bullets would penetrate deep into my flesh. All I ever had was a soccer ball yo-yo I got at the Fall Carnival from throwing some bean bags into a pumpkin's eye-holes. Whoever thought it would be a good idea to reward first graders with Petco feeder fish which had the life-expectancy of a hot-pocket at a LAN party was a sadistic child feasting mongrel. I signed all my homeworks like this:

The PTA thought I was trying to start this:

I brought my camera to show and tell one day and took this picture:

They put me in GT.