Experience vs analysis, love and hate, pleasure and pain.
Why is human experience always linked and limited in such opposing ways?
Why can't we simply enjoy books and films in a purely visceral way without worrying too much about plot, direction or themes?
Why can't we have drugs that give nothing but untrammelled pleasure without any fallout?
Or sufficient amounts of alcohol without a hangover?
Or unlimited fast food without weight gain or sugar issues?
Did God make a mistake or is evolution only a work in progress?
The only two great pleasures in life that we can luxuriate in that don't have unfortunate side effects seem to be sex and music, as long as we take a bit of care with cueing up.
Perhaps there's some common link between these two great passions.
I bet Freud would say that audiophilia is a mere fetish. What might he say about tonearms I don't want to know...or the audiophile games people play. Or maybe we should ask Eric Berne, or even Joe South?
Or perhaps, just maybe, as long we can concentrate mainly on the music and not the means, ultimately the love of music is the greatest, most universal, least harmful pleasure of them all?
Something worth getting just a little obsessed about. So I don't think we're necessarily masochists as we know what we want but we do seem to have a lot stacked against don't we?
Unfortunately that only becomes apparent at a later date as you eventually realise the record companies are not on your side, nor are most reviewers, and that the perfect playback you were looking for is not even a remote option, at any price.
Now if only you were aware of all that before you began...would you still do it?
