Amazing coffee and the power of ritual
May 31st, 2010This weekend I had the best coffee I’ve ever had. My good friend Wil has a large bag of unroasted, green coffee beans from Kenya, and I watched as he prepared a cup for me. The whole process took about 30 minutes — from roasting the beans in a popcorn maker, to grinding them as fine as possible, and then finally brewing the coffee in a stove top espresso maker. It was so much more than just another coffee.
I told this story to a friend at work today, and he sent me this quote in response (my emphasis added):
Another important element of addiction is ritual. Something as simple as eliminating the rituals that accompany the addiction can be enough to cause the addiction to lose appeal. Powerful aspects of the addiction are obtained from the ritual itself, such that without it, the behavior or substance no longer is accompanied by euphoria. Heroin is a good example. The ritual of injecting heroin and the lifestyle involved in the pursuit and use of the drug is a part of the addiction. Taking away these components, as is done in methadone clinics, often reforms addicts on these bases alone.
If I arrived too late to be there for the preparation of the coffee, would it have tasted differently? Would vinyl LP’s sound as good as they do if there wasn’t so much work involved in maintaining and playing them? Are we really this predictable, this easy to manipulate, that the lead-up to an event can have such a big impact on the enjoyment of it?
Yes, yes we are.
Roger Raffee May 31st, 2010 at 1:12 pm
Actually, well manufactured, well produced, vinyl records in mint or near mint condition do sound incredibibly much better than digital, and this should make sense if you stop and think about it. Records are analog. Well made stereo deep grooved records, mainly made in the 1950′s and 60′s, before pollution control measures, captured the entire sound as it was recorded. You could hear all the sound, from the highest highs to the lowest lows, and everything inbetween. Digital is bytes of information with spaces inbetween each byte, then compressed to fit within a limited space. Digitial has a bit of a noticeable muffled sound compared to vinyl. You’re not hearing the entire sound. Well made, well produced analog will sound as if you’re in the room with the musicians. Good quality vinyl records are often better sounding than the master tapes of the original recordings that have been locked in vaults. The problem is that most people didn’t take collector quality care of their vinyl and are used to vinyl having ticks and surface noise. Good vinyl records require tender loving care. If you’re really in to looking for vinyl try GEMM.com . It’s the best source to shop from sellers of music world-wide.
Annie June 6th, 2010 at 12:23 pm
The journey is as important as the destination (we roast our own coffee as well, incidentally).