Clairaudience

[rugerpc]

I subscribe to an email list called A Word A Day. The list maker is a fella named Anu Garg, a computer scientist turned author and speaker.

Each week, Mr. Garg picks a theme and once a day issues an email with a word conforming to the theme. Over the years, I have seen some pretty interesting words. I save the emails containing the really unique ones.

Today's word is a word everyone on this forum should appreciate.

Our host, Paul, has exemplary hearing. We joke about it, saying he can hear a mouse fart, but it is much more than that. His ability to discern minute differences in pitch, tone and timbre make him uniquely suited to being successful in an industry where those kinds of things matter.

So, I don't think it too startling that Mr. Smith is the very first person I thought of when I opened today's AWAD email...

This week's theme: Blend words

clairaudience (kler-AW-dee-uhns) noun

The supposed ability to hear what is inaudible.

[A blend of clairvoyance http://wordsmith.org/words/clairvoyance.html +
audience (the act of hearing), from audire (to hear). Ultimately from the
Indo-European root au- (to perceive), which also gave us audio, audit, obey,
auditorium, anesthesia, aesthetic, and synesthesia http://wordsmith.org/words/synesthesia.html .
Earliest documented use: 1864.]

To be fair, clairaudience is usually used somewhat abstractly referring to the ability to read unspoken thoughts, but in the case of Mr. Smith, I think a more literal interpretation is in order.

 

[László]

I like this Post!

And while I know it's meant to further the fun stuff here, I want to take the thought further for a moment, perhaps with a further twist back toward the original meaning of the word that was coined...

Just in this past few weeks I've seen videos in which folks like Tim Pierce and John Mayer say things like, "They get better every year." As a PRS player for 25 years, I have to agree. Anyone with a practiced ear can easily hear the changes in the tone of recent PRSes.

But that leads me to observe that if we can hear these tone differences -- after all, they're meant for our ears -- then Paul isn't hearing things we can't hear. Instead, I'd propose that Paul is unique among guitar makers in having the imagination to pursue and experiment all the time with the recipe, to keep improving it.

What he's doing is hearing something in his head, and not stopping until he gets the guitars closer and closer to the sound in his head. In that sense, he really is "hearing" what is inaudible.

How's that for some crazy talk?