After many years of thinking about reading Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance I finally got around to it about two years ago. One of a professor’s roles is grading, which at its heart is an assessment of quality. It is the hardest part of the job. Is quality just what I say it is? Would you assess quality in the same way? It is one of those ‘you know it when you see it’ kinds of things, but deep down that is not very satisfying. In Zen the protagonist Phaedrus goes down the rabbit hole trying to objectively define quality. In the process he loses his mind, or maybe he just becomes too sane to live in society.
I have made it my life’s work to seek quality music to share with you. Tune in to The Lion 90.7fm, Fridays 7-9pm, to hear what the madness of quality sounds like.