I was planning on writing another rant, this time aimed at “haute couture.”
But while tinkering with the idea, the post slowly started shifting into something else entirely:
an internal reflection about how my own factory, and my CEO Bob, seem to respond to everything “haute.”
Analogy
I think I finally found the perfect analogy for what happens inside my factory whenever it encounters haute couture, haute cuisine, pretentious wine tastings or the entire aura surrounding cigar smoking.
And more importantly:
why my factory and CEO Bob almost immediately start reporting:
“This does not compute.”
The perfect analogy?
Audio engineering
Yes!
Audio engineering!
Because audio, or more specifically music, is all about balance.
The bassline occupies its own space, slightly separated with proper EQ from the breakbeats and drums, which themselves live in a somewhat higher frequency range.
Every instrument is carefully EQ’ed, compressed, filtered and sometimes side-chained to another channel.
And then, once the entire mix is finished, the final result itself gets compressed, filtered and EQ’ed once again into balance.
And sometimes lucky accidents happen.
Like the famous gated reverb effect Phil Collins and his engineers accidentally discovered in the studio.
And as an amateur musician, I learned all this the hard way:
improper EQ will absolutely destroy an otherwise perfectly good track.
Because when every frequency band starts fighting for attention simultaneously, the end result turns into clipping, oversteering, distortion and ultimately…
noise.
Haute Cousine
And that is where this entire “haute” concept comes into play.
Let’s take this “haute cuisine” recipe for example:
Sea bass combined with:
- Conference pear,
- yuzu,
- Tomasu soy,
- black olive,
- Japanese wasabi
So now we suddenly have:
- fish
- sweetness from the pear
- salty flavors from the soy
- bitterness from the olives
- sour citrus notes from the yuzu
- and the burning sharpness of the wasabi
Audio engineering
In audio engineering this would be the equivalent of turning every channel to maximum gain and pushing every knob fully open.
Suddenly:
- the pear starts fighting the wasabi
- the olives start colliding with the soy
- the yuzu starts interfering with the sweetness of the pear
Every flavor starts demanding attention simultaneously.
My factory no longer experiences harmony.
It experiences sensory packet loss.
The result?
Complete mayhem.
Distortion.
Clipping.
Conflicting EQ channels.
Every instrument desperately fighting for attention at the exact same time and, even worse, entire frequency ranges colliding with or cancelling each other out until the original harmony completely disappears into noise.
And in order to still identify the individual sounds, your brain suddenly has to work overtime just to untangle the chaos.
That is not how music is supposed to sound.
And, therefore, in my humble opinion, not how enjoying food is supposed to work either.
Imagine
Imagine those exact same dishes suddenly being served during a normal lunch break inside a random corporate office cafeteria on a Tuesday.
John from accounting stares at his plate:
“What the actual fuck is this?”
Ronald, the logistics intern, quietly examines the sea bass combined with pear, olives and wasabi before reaching a very simple conclusion:
“Is this all?! I am still hungry.”
My suspicion is that many employees would stare at their plate in complete confusion before quietly deciding to get a sandwich somewhere else.
Haute couture
The same thing applies to haute couture as well.
I cannot post examples here because of copyright reasons, but honestly…
just open Google Images and search for:
“haute couture.”
Google will do the rest for you.
Dresses and outfits that make absolutely no practical sense.
Bright pink pants.
Half-open shirts.
Off-white jackets with asymmetrical nonsense attached to them.
Imagine
Now imagine for a second that you, as a man, actually wear something like that to your normal desk job.
Let’s say you are a software developer, like me.
Or imagine being a woman wearing one of those outrageous haute couture dresses while casually walking into the office for a normal workday.
Again:
as a software developer.
Unless the entire office collectively agreed to participate in the same fashion experiment, there is a very high probability your co-workers will end up crying from laughter underneath their desks.
And chances are you will either be sent home…
or get fitted with a nice white jacket with the sleeves tied together behind your back before being transported inside a white panel van to the nearest psychiatric ward.
HR may also become involved at that point.
Audio engineering
In this case the couture engineer simply started enabling random channels, boosting arbitrary frequencies and pushing sliders to maximum…
without ever listening to how the final mix actually sounded.
That has nothing to do with function, balance and ultimately the enjoyment of the end result.
And a lot of people pretend they like and understand it.
And admitting you do not fully understand, appreciate or enjoy it almost becomes socially unacceptable.
Like me….
Brain, the food barbarian.
Or perhaps:
Brain, the clothing barbarian.
But honestly?
Maybe my factory simply prefers balance over distortion.
Maybe it prefers coherence over complexity.
Or maybe my factory is just fundamentally allergic to systems where every sensory or social slider gets pushed to maximum simultaneously.
Happy accidents
Happy accidents absolutely do happen sometimes.
Gated reverb for that perfect snare sound is a perfect example.
And somewhere in history there must have been a person who looked at chocolate and bananas and thought:
“You know what? Let’s try this combination.”
And somehow…
it worked brilliantly.
But combining sea bass with pear, soy, olives, yuzu and wasabi does not feel like a happy accident to my factory.
It feels more like a full-scale sensory collision.
There is a major difference between one unexpected combination that creates harmony and five competing sensory signals all trying to become the lead instrument simultaneously.
Maybe my factory was simply never designed for systems where every slider gets pushed to maximum simultaneously.
Brain, the anti-overload barbarian, out!