Stereophile has discussed the pandemic occasionally because of its relevance to our industry and our listening lives. But for the most part, I’ve steered the magazine away from politics and current events, and I will continue to do so. In this essay, though, I will engage, glancingly, not with politics or current events but with an idea that’s drawn from them. I’m doing it to make a point about audio.
It’s hard to believe that it’s been 15 years since Stephen Colbert—then of The Colbert Report (pronounced in the French style)—coined the word “truthiness” to describe statements that feel true without actually being true. Colbert, in his right-wing media-figure guise, told viewers that truth “comes from the gut” and not, for example, from books. He ended the segment with a promise “not to read the news to you” but to “feel the news at you.”
Writer Joan Didion was expressing a similar idea when she wrote, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” The essay that comes from is called “The White Album.” It’s not about the Beatles, but it is about the culture that album arose from (footnote 1).
Colbert’s segment, which became a pre–”fake-news” meme, was funny, but Colbert failed to acknowledge how deeply human the impulse he was describing is. Didion’s seminal essay, which was written in the late 1970s, was more sympathetic to the human plight. For people seeking meaning and fulfillment, facts can seem cold and unwelcoming. We want our lives to feel like a coherent, meaningful story, as if it all fits together somehow. We work at that, not always consciously.
Music—including the music we enjoy at home on our audio systems—is a part of life. Many of the same considerations apply. We want our musical experiences to have meaning. We work to find ways to relate to our music, to feel connections to it. We tell ourselves stories to make our listening better.
I own a Thorens TD-124 turntable. I bought it years ago from a guy who ran the movie theater in a small Alabama town, near the small town I was born in. He got it from his father, who bought it when it was new in 1957 or ’58. The father had died years before, but his listening room remained untouched until his mother passed.
As connections go, this one’s kind of sad, frankly. The Thorens ‘table belonged to his father, not mine. I own it only because I was able to work a slightly illicit, off-eBay deal with a stranger. (I hate auctions.) I’m a first-generation audiophile, with no childhood audio stories of my own, no memories of hanging out with my dad listening to old jazz records. It’s not much of a story, but it will have to do.
In his first Gramophone Dreams column, Herb Reichert wrote about his thrift-store acquisition of a 7″ single by the Animals, which helped reconnect him to vinyl. That’s just one of Herb’s stories; he has more than I do. Herb has since told many of his audiophile stories in these pages. Telling audio-related stories is a big part of the job of Stereophile contributors, especially columnists.
There are many kinds of audio stories. Tubes is a story. Class-A is a story. Analog is a story. Zero-feedback is a story. Each of these things has, in our minds, certain associations. Assembling an audio system is partly a matter of assembling our preferred associations into a coherent, meaningful whole we can believe in and feel good about. A story.
A life lived strictly according to fact, with no enfolding narrative, feels sterile, alienating, devoid of feeling. Stories deepen our relationships, including our relationships with our audio systems and the music they make.
It’s implied, I think, in that Joan Didion quote that while there is truth in the stories we tell ourselves, our stories are never entirely true.
This is a good place to express my belief that those who would deny us our pleasure and meaning by insisting we test our listening against hardcore fact—against statistically valid listening tests and proven theories of physics—are doing a disservice to us and our hobby. Please don’t try to save me from myself. I embrace this perspective consciously. I know what I’m doing.
It’s true that, in audio as in life, we must do some work to remain tethered to reality. “Truthiness” is dangerous in politics, even more so in medicine. When you’re choosing a treatment for a disease, I strongly encourage you to listen to scientists. When lives are at stake, do not do as Colbert satirically suggested and go with your gut. Our hobby, though, is more forgiving. We’re all consenting adults; there really aren’t any victims. Maybe some undeserving entrepreneur gets a little bit richer at our expense. I can live with that.
Balance is important, though, even in audio. In fact, much of the time, in audio as in other fields, science and fact are our best guides. That doesn’t mean you have to give up your stories, though, to set them aside because they don’t meet the criteria for strict objectivity.
I’m a scientist by training; I respect fact and evidence. I also understand that life is hard. Music is an escape. I’m sympathetic to the impulse to find ways to feel good about it. Keep your stories, but also keep your moorings.
The best way to keep your moorings, I’ve found, is simply to remain skeptical, in a good-humored way—skeptical, not cynical. Believe in your stories, but don’t take them too seriously. Subject them to scrutiny and revise them as needed. Don’t take yourself too seriously, either.
Trust your ears, but verify. If you hear something that you can’t explain—some improvement, say—don’t reject it outright. Instead, ask yourself, “Are you sure you heard that?” and listen again.
Or don’t—it’s up to you.—Jim Austin
Footnote 1: I encountered this quote in a review in The New Yorker by Rachel Syme of a podcast series called You’re Wrong About, which, The New Yorker tagline says, is about “the battle between fact and feeling.”
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