A Bittersweet, Keening Goneness, Part 6: Nothing Can Prepare You

On the Hunger For and Possibility of Shared Rapture.

Below is the sixth installment in my summer-long series of posts about my relationship with my late father, Jerry Hirshberg, and our shared and separate relationships to art we loved and/or made. Each essay responds to a selection from my dad’s homemade card catalog, which documents his lifelong music collecting habit. I want each of these pieces to stand on its own, but suspect their effect will be cumulative. If you’re new to the series, you might want to start with Pt. 1.

If you’re enjoying this work and would like to support it, please consider clicking the subscribe button:

Or, If that seems too much of a commitment or just too expensive— which I so, so get—but you want to show appreciation… want to buy me a cup of coffee?

On to Part 6…

Nothing Can Prepare You

Certain words appear over and over on my father’s notecards:

“Limpid.” He was big on the limpid. Ironically, I think he may have been a little fuzzy on the meaning. Or maybe just liberal with it. Clarity and ease of intelligibility were not his touchstones. But if I ever do the data on most used verbiage in his catalog, my money’s on “limpid.”

Other contenders: “Profound.” “Awesome.” “Crystalline.” “Thunderous.” “Shimmering.” “Wondrous.” Whatever those words mean or signal to you, I’m pretty sure they were synonyms for him. Different shades of the same exalted music-listening state.

And then there’s “Demo!” Or sometimes, “DEMO.” Which, as defined my father, means record or cd he could place in or on its appropriate player, then commence heating up the pre-amps, amps, cables, and speakers he’d spent his whole adult life saving up for, hunting, researching, mixing, matching, combining, retooling, adjusting, learning how to work. All in preparation for the moment when, simply by lowering a needle or pressing play, he could blow the ears and minds of any unsuspecting listener he’d lured into his lair.

Or—more often, maybe most of the time—his own, if no one else was handy or willing.

It’s funny. As in, funny. My father designed cars for 40 years. He was very, very good at it. Was a significant player on the teams that developed the first Firebird, the GTO. He headed Pontiac and Buick design studios at General Motors, and eventually Nissan Design International, where he and the blazing talents he assembled and directed came up with the 300Z, the Pulsar, the Pathfinder.

I’m pretty sure he couldn’t have changed a tire. Definitely not oil. It’s possible that he knew where to find a carburetor. But only just.

And yet he worked that stereo, with its multiple components, its knobs and dials, its precise and fiddly tone arms and vacuum tubes and switches, like an astronaut. Like a “Star Trek” helmsman. He kept a notecard chart taped to the inside of his equipment cabinet with exacting instructions for the order of switch throwing and dial turning, just in case his wife or sons or guests got brave or desperate enough, and tried to turn the whole thing on without him.

Few dared. Not all who did came back.

As for the speakers themselves—the featured soloists of his ensemble—they were much more his friends than his gear. They may have been his closest friends.

My brother shared this passion with him much more than I did. For the gear, and even more for the quality of sound. Which, as defined by my father, meant the closest possible approximation of the experience of being in a room with performers as they perform. He grew up in working-class Cleveland. His dad was a postal worker; his mom kept books in their cousin’s office. The miracle of bringing music home—of being able to switch on a machine and hear conductors and orchestras whose names themselves (I’m talking Reiner/Chicago, let alone Haitink and Concertgebouw) must have seemed as mythic and exotic as Saturn’s moons—remained miraculous to him all his life.

The first speakers I remember were his XAMs. I think they cost him $35, and came from the Korvettes department store. He learned about them at the “on a budget” presentations at one of the audio shows he used to cart my brother and me to on weekends. I suspect he liked the design—very Dieter Rams/as-little-design-as-possible, form not just following but accentuating function—as much as the sound. A few years later, when I was maybe nine, he upgraded, and deposited the cast-off XAMs in my room. Just in case I knew some other fourth graders who needed DEMO-ing.

The procession of speaker upgrades continued over the next few decades. Transitions typically happened on birthdays, or anniversaries. Or to mark occasions. There were the Celestion 105s, the first speakers he owned that merited mention in Absolute Sound or Stereophile (the Gramophone or Penguin Guide for the audioheads crowd). In the “on a budget” section, again, but still. Those were the first speakers that actually wowed him, I think. He got me a pair as a grad school graduation present thirty years ago. They’re still my speakers. They sound spectacular.

Meaning, to me, they do justice to music.

After those came the Dahlquists, which looked a little like giant black Pop Tarts with feet. Those were the first to require special cables, pre-amps. Plus some new language categories for describing their effects (“imaging”, “hotness”, “presence”, etc.). My father, of course, added vocabulary of his own. Mostly yips. Some gasps. A whole-gut rumble.

After the Dahlquists came the Martin Logans. Those really were his friends. Misters Martin and Logan. He referred to them that way. Martin was the one on the left. They were my favorites, too, at least in part for their appearance: translucent mylar sheets suspended in a sort of grille, in gorgeous wooden frames. Electrostatic. I never totally understood how they worked. Neither did he. Not really. But the sound did match the appearance: “Crystalline,” as my father would have said. Said. “It’s like they’re not even there!!!...(whistling yip)...(whole-gut rumble)...”

I thought he’d have the Misters forever. Then he turned sixty, and my mom told him he could go to town. Do something special for his stereo. I think she expected more cables. A new tone arm for the turntable. Off he went to Stereo Unlimited, his favorite shop, to confer with his favorite dudes.

The way I heard it, my mom came home that evening with groceries. Made her way up the stairs, calling his name, and reached the living room. The sound she made, as reported afterward, was mostly gargle.

Where the Martin Logans had resided for almost twenty years stood what looked like matching sea chests propped up on their ends. Atop those stood two giant sculpted funnels that could have been the bells of tubas. Or, more poetically, the horns on the first gramophone cabinets.

Except green.

If my mom had objections, they vanished the moment my father twiddled the knobs, flipped the switches on his newly retooled system, and lit it.

They do sound astonishing, the greenhorns. Whether you’re an audiohead or not.

My father kept them the rest of his life. I’m not sure I ever knew their names, and I don’t remember his uttering them. I had to get help from my brother to identify them for this piece. They’re Avantgardes. They were granted DEMO preeminence in my father’s pantheon that very first day in his house, and retained it for the rest of his life.

He did not pass Misters Martin and Logan on to my brother or me. I suspect he had to include them as trade-ins to get the Avantgardes. I sometimes imagine them trundling sadly in single file down my parents’ driveway, mylar drooping, like the bar-ba-loots in The Lorax after the Once-ler chops down all the truffula trees.

From that day on, almost every visit to my parents’ house involved what my dad called “a session.” If he got his way, guests would simply drop their suitcases or any other unnecessary impediments in the front hall and come directly upstairs, so he could commence placement. Direct us, one by one, to the sweet spot, dead center between the speakers. at exactly the ideal distance. There was definitely a preferred posture: backs straight against the gray pillows of the couch, feet flat on floor. Often, he fidgeted for several minutes over this step. Nudged us a little left or right. Tilted our heads up or down a touch, as if we were dolls. Or crash dummies.

I don’t remember him ever actually saying, “Okay. Don’t move.” But if we moved, he’d come back. Fuss some more.

Only when he had us placed, and was convinced we’d stay, would he turn to the cabinet. He never identified the record or CD he’d chosen for your personal session. He would occasionally shoot a glance over his shoulder as he flicked the switches, dialed the controls. Grin, with his mouth closed.

“You’re not ready,” he’d say.

“We’re ready,” we’d promise.

“You can’t be. Your life has not prepared you.”

“Oh my God, Dad.”

“God cannot prepare you. Nothing can prepare you.”

In the end, it wasn’t preparation or positioning or assurances that got him to drop needle into grove or laser onto disc. He just finally reached a point where he couldn’t control himself anymore.

I do think he tailored DEMOs to his listeners. For fellow cherishers of the classics, one of his treasured Lyrita LPs, of British composers like Bax or Arnold. For the heads, there was a specific sound-effects album. I don’t remember that one very well. It had tap dancing at one point. Full-throated foghorn blats. For the general public, he always chose something that went low, showed off the subwoofer. Punters, he’d long since decided, responded to low. That Stanley Clarke slap-bass record, perhaps, that really did erupt from those green horns and rattle the windows like a frantic, trapped bird. Or the Sheffield Labs version of Thelma Houston & Pressure Cooker’s “I Got the Music in Me”.

At the time, I’m not sure I noticed the tailoring. Thought my dad simply picked either the most recent great-sounding thing he’d found or the recording best suited to new speakers or pre-amp or room configuration. Only later did I realize how essential fellow listeners were to his experience. How much he longed for the dropped jaw (which would cause his own jaw to drop all over again, as though he were experiencing the sound anew). The astonished giggle. The “Oh, Jer, play it again.”

My father didn’t just crave rapture; he craved sharing it.

I wonder how often he got the response he wanted. Even from me, or my brother, or his (very few) music-passionate friends or brothers-in-law, or (even fewer) fellow sound devotees. How many times is it really possible for two people to be that wide open to the same experience in the same instant? Looking back, I think I sometimes resisted giving him the jaw drop, even when I felt it.

Why did I do that?

Not to be mean. Not to spite him, why would I ever?

There was a lot of my dad, though. Sometimes, you had to kick hard just to keep the undertow of being near him from sucking you completely out of your life into his.

Also, there was a selfishness, and definitely some limits, to my father’s yearning. If you had something you loved and wanted to share—a metaphorical couch on which you wanted to plant him, an experience you hoped to wow him with—he was an unlikely candidate, unless your interests and his overlapped.

On the other hand, his selfishness was the most generous kind. Yes, he hungered to be the person that brought (or made) the thing that electrified you. But he desperately wanted you electrified. Never mind breaking bread. My dad wanted to break joy with you.

But it’s funny. As in, strange. For such a loved, loving, admired, and socially graceful person, he didn’t have many close friends. Very few, in fact. Partly, that was choice. He was busy; he had his art, dog, music, kids, coffee, walks, books, stereo equipment, collection, notecards to tend.

He did love people, but sometimes (and maybe primarily) as puzzles to assemble, Rubik’s Cubes to solve. Circuits to close. In consequence, though, when he was with you—when you were in his sphere—you had his total, undivided attention, in a way and to a degree that few of your (or my, or anyone’s) close friends and loved ones generally offer.

He passed on some of that yearning for shared rapture to me. But not the unshakable optimism that went with it. I’m not so sure anymore that all or even most people really do get swept up in experience—particularly art-driven experience— in the way my father dreamed. Or maybe I just never quite harbored his certainty that anything I might write or find or say could trigger it.

Conversely, in the face of a lifetime’s evidence, my father went to his grave believing he could get to almost anyone. Transmit at least a jolt of the joy that animated him to all the people he ever met, and switch us on, so he could see our faces in light.