Audio Note

9. June 2010

Let us start this year on a story. It's not a story with a punchline, a breathtaking ending or any kind of learning that can be drawn from it. It's just a story about what can happen when you open the door to others. Some of you might have heard it before, but this telling is for myself. It starts with a hunger and a trip to a series of sandwich shops, which all had run out of food due to a family festival on a particularly sunny day. Going further from the park than was needed, me Florian and Sanna found ourselves close to Granville Road in Brighton. Armed with sandwiches and drinks, we were headed back to the park when I notice this dusty grimey window. Looking closer into it I notice some valves (for high fidelity amplifiers), a broken violin and other junk. In all fairness I'd seen this window before and suspected it to be the casualty of a business horribly run and long dead. This time however the door that lead inside was ever so slightly ajar. Do you know those moments when you can see your immediate future fork off into two avenues of events, and that silent debate where the well brought up cautionary schoolboy and the reckless predatory hunter of adventures claw and scratch at each other for dominance. This was definitely one of those times. I pushed the door open and took a couple of steps inside. What greated me was a rather small space, each wall covered in wooden crates of vinyl record shelving, a grey couch, a grey chair and in the very back of the room a grey bearded man, hunched over some paperwork. I fully expected him to ask us what the hell we were doing in his living room. What I didn't expect was for him to smile and ask us whether we'd like to listen to some Sunn O))). He kindly offered us a seat on the grey couch, taking a seat in the worn but comfortable looking chair himself. Now pushing up the volume on what can only be described as the most impressive audio system I've ever encountered, I struggled with keeping my mouth closed, while wave after wave of sound surprised me! A man who has permanent grado headphone marks on his head. Pulling the volume back a little he started explaining things to us. How in the early nineties he'd gone a bit crazy from being an economists and decided that his future in lay making the best audio equipment in the world. The amplifier we were listening to, was of course powered by valves, the cd player he made as well, and even the digital to analouge converter was made by him and is the only of it's kind to include a valve in the process. Obviously this was nothing to the likes I expected. He went on to talk to us about democracy and anarchism, some of his stints in Nigeria as a grossly overpaid advisor to the local government ... it was like being in the presence of a wizard, a true magic vielder. Not only were we completely powerless in his spell of words but he stirred something within us as well. We'd challenge him, try and trip him and confuse but the easygoing Dane wasn't having any of it. He'd smile and cast another spell, this time a story of how an oil baron in Khazakstan would fly him over as a friendly gesture, stop by at the local police station to provide an armed high speed escort to his ridiculously large estate, just to make a suitable impression on this supplier of audio equipment. Like I said, this entry is for me to read and therefore my regular editor (who normally tries to limit these blog ventures) was given the night off and I try to ignore the pain in my hands so I can finish this. During our talk on the failure of democracy, how people can't be bothered to enlighten themselves on current affairs, his eyes lighted up. "I've kept this above my desk for fifteen years" he'd exclaim as he quickly made his way to the back of the office. This is what he read to us :

	A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government.

	It can only exist until the voters dicover that they can vote themselves 
	largesse from the public treasury.

	From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising
	the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy
	always collapses over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a 
	dictatorship.

	The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been two hundred
	years.

	These nations have progressed through this sequence.

	From bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage,
	from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to
	complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, 
	from depence back into bondage
		

After finishing the last sentence he looked up and told us that this had been written about a hundred and fifty years ago by an englis historian if I recall correctly. We talked on and on for over an hour on everything from whaling to facebook to current musical discoveries. Only once was there an interruption from some people outside vocalising the question of whether inside lay a record store. The amicable Dane quickly changed tune and shouted "this isn't a record store, go away" before they even had the chance of coming inside. I thought to myself, that could've happened to me, and why didn't it. We left with his card a book reference and a story to tell ourselves whenever we start giving in to the ordinary, the cautious, the pattern following everyday selves that occupy too much of our daily lives.