High Fidelity

“They’re as close to being mad as makes no difference.” 

Rob’s self-loathing manifests in several different ways, including his attitudes toward his customers. Rob criticizes the obsessive record collectors who visit his store, even though he is financially dependent on them for survival—and even though he is almost exactly the same as them. Rob hates the customers because he sees so much of himself in them; by turning his displeasure on the customers, he can criticize himself without the painful recognition of his own flaws. Rob projects his self-loathing onto others, even though he knows that he is not addressing his flaws in a healthy manner. 

“Tuesday night I reorganize my record collection; I often do this at periods of emotional stress.” 

Rob chooses to reorganize his record collection along autobiographical lines. He does this to reassert control over his life. With Laura gone and his business failing, Rob feels as though he has lost a grip on the direction of his life. He values his record collection more than anything else, so delving into the collection and imposing order on the records allows him to regain what he feels he has lost. Rob has complete control over the record collection in a way that he does not have control over his life. Reorganizing the records is a metaphorical attempt to regain control. 

“Have you got any soul?”

Rob has many obsessive tendencies, including an inclination to become hyper focused on the small details of someone’s words. When a customer asks him whether his store sells soul music, he turns this simple question into a debate on his own soul. He exaggerates the meaning of the question and turns it into a rigorous examination of his self-worth, dramatizing his life and his self-doubt to make himself seem more interesting. 

“To me, making a tape is like writing a letter.” 

Rob struggles to communicate with people. The music of other people becomes a way to reach out, and making a mixtape is the language Rob uses to speak to the world. He uses other people’s words to communicate how he really feels. However, this language is only spoken by a few people. Barry and Dick might have the musical obsessiveness that would allow them to understand the true meaning of Rob’s mixtapes, but most of that meaning is lost on people like Laura. Rob’s tragedy is that the only way he can communicate is with people who share his flaws. 

“These are my people, and I understand them better than I understand anybody in the world.” 

Rob’s criticisms of the people who come into his store are reflections of his self-loathing. He insults the manners and behaviors of his customers, even though he knows that he would act the same way. Rob is, at the very least, aware of this irony. That he is aware of this only makes him more annoyed because these people understand him better than any romantic partner ever will. Every time Rob interacts with the customers, he is reminded of how much he is like them, therefore convincing himself that he is doomed to be alone.

“We go quite deep, Rob, if only because we’ve been together a reasonable length of time.” 

Unlike Rob, Laura is aware of the complex relationship between the strengths and weaknesses of their relationship. They have been together for so long that they are comfortable and care deeply about one another, but the length of their relationship has caused Rob to grow bored and Laura to dislike Rob’s constant bitterness. For all the stability and familiarity which benefits their relationship, the time they have spent together has also bred contempt.

“Dick and Barry and I agreed that what really matters is what you like, not what you are like.” 

Rob and his employees all define themselves by curated collections of cultural interests. These carefully assembled lists help them avoid difficult questions about their own personalities. Instead of looking inward, they pick and choose their affections to impress other people. The lists become their personalities. The comfortable, easy existence they enjoy encourages no growth or development other than which songs, movies, or books are currently on their respective lists. This approach allows the men to exert a level of control over their lives which they could not achieve by studying their actual flaws. 

“If I was at all prone to self-pity, which I am, I would feel bad about the terrible irony of finding your parents out when, finally, you need them.” 

Rob returns home for a rare visit and discovers that his parents are out. After the initial burst of annoyance, Rob is almost happy. He has something new to feel annoyed and self-pitying about. Rob is so prone to self-loathing that he often repeats his own flaws to himself, but this is an entirely new way of being pathetic. This development gives Rob fresh annoyances to chew over, adding to his list of complaints and providing sustenance in a novel and interesting way. He is happy that he has something else to complain about. 

“He’s sharp, Barry. Sharp and nasty.” 

Rob acknowledges Barry’s ability to immediately identify and attack a person’s biggest fear. As Barry grills Dick about a new date, Rob watches on. Barry is “sharp and nasty,” but in this moment Rob is not the focus of Barry’s sharpness and his nastiness. He recognizes the power of Barry’s words but does little to help Dick because he is relieved that Barry is not focusing his powers elsewhere. 

“I’d like to phone all those people up and say good luck, and good-bye, and then they’d feel good and I’d feel good.” 

Rob decides to contact his former girlfriends to help him overcome his self-doubts. He frames this as though he is helping everyone, including the former girlfriends. However, Rob is being entirely self-serving. He feels the need to convince himself that everyone will benefit because otherwise he would only add to the list of traits he dislikes about himself. Rob tells himself comforting lies so as not to become even more self-loathing.

“But I find myself worrying away at that stuff about pop music again, whether I like it because I’m unhappy, or whether I’m unhappy because I like it.” 

Pop music and Rob are caught in a depressing loop, wherein he looks to pop music for emotional validation but can only view the world through the lens of pop music. He becomes unsure whether he is sad because he listens to pop music or whether he listens to pop music because he is sad. While Rob is caught in this trap, he slowly becomes aware of the unhealthy relationship he has with music. That he has begun to question his relationship to music suggests that he is willing to examine how he views the world. 

“She’s an extraterrestrial, a ghost, a myth, not a person with an answering machine and a rusting wok and a two-zone travel pass.” 

Charlie and the idea of Charlie that exists in Rob’s mind are almost entirely different people. The real version of Charlie that broke up with Rob many years ago has faded into the past. Rob has forgotten the normal, routine aspects of her character and turned her into a mythical figure which is separate from reality. Charlie has become more of an idea than a person in his head, without flaws or mundane, practical behaviors. When he looks her up in the phone book, he is forced to reconcile the mythical Charlie with the actual Charlie. The moment that Rob notices this difference is the moment in he begins to question his obsessions with the past and how they negatively affect his present. 

“I can see her looking round the flat, staring at the dusty, discolored spaces her things have left on the wall, so I feel I have to preempt criticism.” 

Laura takes her possessions away from the apartment and leaves behind empty spaces, which are discolored by the light. These spaces are symbols of Laura’s absence from his life. Her departure affects Rob like it affects his apartment, leaving behind huge gaps in his existence which are nevertheless colored by the memory of Laura. Everywhere Rob looks, he sees the space where Laura used to be, whether he is looking at the spot in an apartment where a certain chair was placed or whether he is examining his own emotional reality. Laura’s absence reveals the emptiness and discoloration of Rob’s life. 

“There aren’t really any pop songs about death.” 

Rob has constructed a life based on what he has learned from pop songs. When a catastrophic event like the death of Laura’s father occurs, he lacks the maturity or the experience to deal with it. He looks to pop music for the answers, hoping that he can learn about death from songs in the same way that he learned about love. However, the answers he finds are unsatisfying. The realization that pop music cannot teach Rob everything about the world will ultimately help him come to terms with his emotional immaturity and show him that he must develop outside of the confines of pop culture. 

“Is it better than lying face-down in a flower bed after Laura’s dad’s funeral?” 

The funeral of Laura’s father is Rob’s nadir. He reaches his lowest point after he storms out of the wake and hides in a muddy flower bed to avoid Laura. Rather than a moment of misery, Rob finds the situation useful. Even though he is a very pessimistic person, he cannot envision a way in which his life could be any worse. This moment becomes a point of reference for Rob: In the future, whenever he feels depressed, he can remember this moment and feel relieved. For a person with a negative outlook on life, Rob benefits from reaching his lowest point, as he believes that nothing else could ever be as bad as this moment. 

“We let the s hang in the air, watch it try to crawl back where it came from, and then forget it.” 

The death of Laura’s father lingers over the relationship, but neither Rob nor Laura wants to draw attention to the issue. When Laura accidently refers to her parents rather than her parent, both recognize what has been said but choose to remain silent. The conversation turns to music, and the bickering about such an inconsequential issue becomes a way to distract from the emotional ramifications of the death. While Laura wants to help Rob change, she uses his tendency to bicker about pop culture to avoid real emotion. Rob influences Laura’s behavior, just as his behavior is influenced by her.

“Each to his own, I say.” 

The dinner party is Laura’s attempt to measure Rob’s emotional development after their reunion. The old Rob would have chastised Paul for the paltry collection of records in his house. The new Rob happily dismisses the matter, claiming that everyone is entitled to their own taste. This moment of personal growth for Rob shows that he passes the challenge set for him by Laura, as he recognizes that there is more to life than the passive consumption of other people’s art. 

“For him, I think, a band is too much like action, and not enough like fandom.” 

Rob, Dick, and Barry are passive consumers of art. They discuss other people’s expressions of emotion to avoid discussing their own emotions. When Barry forms a band, he crosses the line from passive consumer to active participant. Dick is unsure of this transition. He prefers the safety of passive consumption, as he is never exposed to criticism. The difference between Dick and Barry is that one makes the leap from consumer to participant while the other does not. 

“It comes in at number five in your list of dream jobs, and as the other four are entirely impractical, you’re better off where you are.” 

Laura is an important figure in Rob’s life because she can totally realign his view of the world. She knows him well enough to use his tendency to make top five lists to show him a positive part of his life. She points out that he would rather be a record store owner than an architect and, since the other options are implausible, he essentially has one of his dream jobs. Rob is confused and shocked that Laura has been able to weaponize his neuroses to show him his potential. After so many years of using the lists and a love of pop culture to avoid the depressing parts of his life, Laura uses the lists to show Rob what he has to be happy about. 

“I’m happy Laura’s here.” 

Rob admits that he is “happy Laura’s here,” and the short, blunt statement is a moment of emotional sincerity that would have been impossible a few months earlier. Rob tends to deny himself happiness, purposefully obfuscating his words to make his life more difficult because he does not believe that he deserves to be happy. The admission that he is happy with Laura is a sign of personal growth. He allows himself to be happy, and, just as importantly, he allows himself to admit to being happy. 

“Laura is who I am now, and it’s no good pretending otherwise.” 

The tangle of lives is so complicated that Rob and Laura both recognize how invested they are in one another. While Rob is not quite ready to commit fully to Laura, he is beginning to value different qualities in their relationship. He dismisses the burning passions and manufactured version of desire that he has learned from songs and movies, choosing instead to value the familiarity, dedication, and constant love he feels for Laura. He is no longer going to pretend that he does not love her in the hope that he can keep his options open for the future. 

“I know that I’ll do it, tonight, probably, and I also know that when I’m peeling the wrapper off the cassette box and press the pause button, it will feel like a betrayal.” 

Rob understands making a mixtape for a person is a symbolic demonstration of romantic interest. He promises to make a tape for Caroline and begins to do so, even though he wants to be with Laura. This final temptation is the last challenge Rob must face before he accepts that Laura is the right person for him. However, he already knows that he is in danger of making the mistake. This self-awareness is a small sign of progress. Previously, he would feel no guilt about making a tape. Now, however, he immediately feels the shame of making the tape, even if he is consigned to doing so. 

“It was the asking that was the important thing.” 

Rob’s disastrous attempt to propose to Laura is met with laughter and a gentle refusal. However, as he tells Laura, the motivation behind the proposal is sincere. The fact that he asked the question and meant it shows that he has changed. Rob dismisses the idea of chasing other women and now understands the real benefits of his relationship with Laura. While they might not be engaged, they have grown enough to value one another in a way that they did not before.