The Enigmatic Emile Berliner

Emile Berliner (1851-1929) is most eminent for the gramophone: the first widely accepted recording machine that transposed external acoustical vibrations into audible signals. The broadcasting of these audible signals was possible due to the tension existing between a needle, wax grooves, and a brass horn, which all served as sonic transducers and sonic distributors. Because of his ingenuity in the field of audio reproduction there have been, throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, accolades given to Berliner from audiophiles and inventors alike. However, the gramophone was not Berliner’s only accomplishment when it came to being a “maverick of disposition and invention.” Berliner, as elusive documents posit, was also able to travel into the future.

Graham Schroder, a pupil of Berliner’s private sect of inventional study in Washington, published a paper on his teacher’s inscrutable ability to move forward through time in 1933. Aptly titled, The Enigmatic Emile Berliner, the well-articulated paper deals with not only theoretical gobbledygook regarding Berliner’s uncanny ability, but as well it deals with Berliner’s empirical demonstrations of futuristic scenarios. “He would dance madly to the wavelengths of lush violins on the gramophone while drawing what seemed to be miniature discs made of shiny plastic,” Schroder candidly wrote. “When I openly asked him about what these discs were, he responded: what there is at our auditory disposal in the future.” Putting two and two together, it seems plausible that Berliner indeed foresaw the existence of compact discs.

The mysterious nimbus of intrigue surrounding Berliner’s proclamations and drawings prompted Schroder to delve deeper. In 1923, Schroder broke into his teacher’s private study in order to purloin some files from a cluttered Formica table. As The Enigmatic Emile Berliner enthusiastically tells, something monumental was found:

“Strange depictions were found in the scattered files. Confounding to behold in my nervous grip. Berliner, or so it seems pseudo-rationally true, has rendered things that modern know-how cannot grapple with. These pictures and descriptions come from either a universe awaiting all of us, or from a universe of an intangible genius.”

Schroder carbon copied the contents of the files, and then sneakily placed them back on the Formica table days later. The bulk of The Enigmatic Emile Berliner deals with the carefully observed analysis of three objects in particular, which, eluding even Schroder’s understanding, appear to be artifacts from the future. For our analysis now, Schroder supplied his carbon-copied drawings in his exegesis on Berliner, and the writings that went along with them:

“The first object has the look of a white void superimposed over dark material of some indescribable sort. The sound mimics this white void in the sense that it has a holy and ghostly presence to it. There seems to be four discernable instruments used in the recording itself. But I can safely say it isn’t the instrumentation that shivers me up. The crispness of the recording quality itself is what does the shivering. Not a cold shivering. A warm shivering that pervades me like an orgasmic flow of vital fluids. The airy wavering of the improvised pieces adds girth to the shivering. The pieces have the ability to melt the stern icebergs in the frostiest of waters…”

“The second object has a cryptic face on it. Clamshells sit beside the creaturely frame of the face. Arid tree branches come sputtering off the tongue of this creature. Emblematically, is this a look at how we speak: on the surface filled with coarseness, but beneath the dialectic dross filled with a malleable sap of artistry? Besides the look of the object, the object sounds very rustic. Sorrowful even. Revitalizing even. Paradoxical even. It reminds me of the mercurial walks my father and I used to partake in when I was but a sprouting go-getter. Really inspirational. Yes, this second object is quite the tasty treat…”

“The third object looks very ambiguous. A brownish picture covers the object. Nothing too interesting in this respect, yet I still cannot move away from the peculiarity of the object itself. The sound of the object is pulverizing and ethereal, ugly and beautiful. The sound is drenched in fuzz and feedback. It seems to slobber like a rabid dog, yet take you off guard like a soft fog over a pyre. Throughout the duration of the sound there is a hypnotic drawl to the instrumentation. This recording reminds me of what Heraclitus said when he mentioned that war is something like the mother in everything. There seems to be an underlying battle, filled with half-disaffection-half-affection. It is transcendentally sublime at times, sublimely transcendental at others. Perhaps, if it could speak, this is what charred saccharine would sound like? This third object intrigues me the most…”

Now, Derek Laxdal, my brother, by happenstance found Graham Schroder’s paper on Emile Berliner a couple weeks ago. Combing through the extensive paper (over 690 pages long), Derek was taken by surprise when he realized that the three objects Berliner described were three cd’s he had in his musicological collection at one point or another. The first object (cd) was by a band called Species Being—whom was named after a Marxist epithet. The second object was music made by a band called Akron/Family. Finally, the third object was a sludgy music concoction made by the infamous aural drone mastermind, Justin K. Broadrick. The project was called Jesu.

Having sold these cd’s months before in need of some surplus cash, Derek frantically went back to the music stores in search of these titles. Unfortunately, the stores didn’t carry them in stock anymore, but if by a stroke of serendipity they happened to come in, Derek would be informed. Even when utilizing the easily accessible cyberspatial screens of online retailers like Amazon.com, Derek couldn’t find a quantitative trace of the products in question. He concluded that the titles had disappeared from the multi-textured face of the earth. Derek at this point became very perplexed over what was happening in his life. He locked himself in his bedroom and thoroughly studied Schroder’s in-depth take on Berliner’s soothsaying.

One afternoon, with a strong cup of coffee pumping through his blood, my brother shouted out that he had solved the riddle of time travel, and thusly what Berliner could have done to mysteriously draw and describe these objects. He said, and I quote:

“He got into the chrono-sphere in the heart of the Great Pyramid. He took a calculation based off of the hieroglyphics and then went into it. The ‘it’ is what is debatable, but ‘it’ can go anywhere a mortal wants to go. This seems like the most reasonable explanation.”

I thought my brother had become intractably crazy. Then I saw a Stargate DVD box he had placed next to the DVD player. Thank God. He was just wired on too much coffee and too much Stargate. Despite the malarkey that just came out of his mouth, I, in my own inquisitive state, began to mentally look at the ‘it’ Derek alluded to. “Was the inscrutable it the thing Emile Berliner was able to see through, into, and across?” I ruminated. I joined Derek in his research.

Intensively going through some online files in the Washington University archives, Derek and I were able to locate a paper compiled by Thomas Edison called, Emile Berliner and His Dilemma. In the paper, Edison arguably questioned the existence of one “Graham Schroder,” and he elucidated his suspicion by providing some cunning flaws in Schroder’s lengthy paper. “Schroder seems to be a deceitful fantasy of my colleague,” Edison wrote. “For one, Schroder was never introduced to me by Berliner. Not even when I came over to his workshop to gab or eat cookies. As far as all this time travel stuff is concerned, I think Berliner’s conjectures and madness just got the best of him. Besides, I never let those get the best of me. This is why I am infallible and to be idolized by many.”

Clearly Edison’s hubris was mountainous when he compared himself to Berliner in the paper, but amidst it all Derek and I were able to find some edifying shrapnel in the heap of condescension.

“One day Berliner asked me about the nature of time and communication. He had a grin on his face like a reversed rainbow. As I looked at him in search of something valuable to contribute to the air between us, the reversed rainbow grin intensified. I stood there for a while tapping my foot with a look of philosophical decency on mine. Alas, as luck would have it, I was befuddled (perhaps it was the vodka stirring in my being that caused the befuddlement?). Berliner then claimed he could communicate to times that haven’t been born yet---times of new ages that will sing with an advancement in technology.

I immediately thought it was a bluff, so I took another shot of vodka and stared into his reversed rainbow grin. I liked the grin, but the words seemed patchy for a well-grounded man; a man I thought Berliner was. I stormed out in a huff. I didn’t understand Berliner anymore. Not because he was wrong. I stormed out because I couldn’t assess the situation. I was enraged in jealousy.

When I went back later in the day, Berliner claimed he had just come back from the future. To prove it, he pulled out a futuristic artifact of sheer strangeness: a paper written by a fellow by the name of Darryl Laxdal. It contained this very paragraph in it, but he said it was typed in a word processing document, and the author of the paper was bewildered over his existence as well. Just then, I knew he was no inventor. Berliner was a communicator with the inversing, reversing, and progressing strings of time. I looked at the paper from one Darryl Laxdal and laughed hysterically. How preposterous it all was.”