Detlof, as an analyst, perhaps my answer to the question "girlfriends and wife, how do you cope?" will interest you because it relies on the difference between masculine and feminine attitudes towards listening pleasure. I can clarify this apropos of the psychoanalytic opposition between "enjoyment of drives" and "enjoyment of the other," since this opposition is sexualized. On the one hand, men follow the closed, ultimately solipsistic, circuit of drives which find their satisfaction in idiotic masturbatory (autoerotic) activity, in the perverse circulating around an object (e.g. a piece of music) as an object of drive. On the other hand, women are subjects for whom access to enjoyment is much more closely linked to the domain of other people's discourse, to how they not so much talk, as are talked about: say, musical pleasure hinges on the animated talk of the co-listener, on the satisfaction provided by speech itself and not just the act of listening in its infantile and onanistic stupidity. And does not this contrast explain the long-observed difference in how the two sexes relate to the "listening room"? Men are much more prone to use the listening room as a masturbatory device for their solitary listening immersed in stupid repetitive pleasures playing their records, while women are more prone to participate in chat in the listening room, using the listening room for exchanges of speech. There is another--more radical--point to be made here: namely, a "true woman" is defined by a certain radical act: the act of taking from man, her partner, of obliterating--even destroying--that which means everything to him, and which is more important to him than his own life, the precious treasure around which his life resolves. As the exemplary figure of such an act in my life, I will mention my previous fiance who, upon learning that I was involved with another woman, appropriated my Jadis amplifiers, my most precious possession at the time, and donated it to a Salvation Army store in Manhattan--it is in this horrible act of destroying that which matters most to her partner (whether through chat in the listening room, or through appropriating his most treasured component or recording) that a woman acts as a true woman and copes with her partner's way of enjoying himself.
Girlfriends and wifes, how do YOU cope?
I would be very interested in finding out how one manages to justify (or sneak in the home) expensive audio equipment without having to sell your soul to the Devil? It's quite a challenge for many of us I think. I heard of someone buying a Bel Canto DAC and telling his girlfriend that " Oh it's just a $ 100.00 power conditionner", or whatever. Seem like we need to get creative here if we can pursue this crazy hobby much longer! Regards All...
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- 369 posts total
- 369 posts total