I dreamt last night
that we meditated on a kiss.

Minutes
spent as we leaned toward each other
skin to skin.
Arms surrounding like fire.

Hours
passed while lips felt the fabric of other
warmth.
Breathing, we filled the lungs of one another.

Tingled days
of starbursts we spent as our embrace shocked us
from neck to loins.
Bodies alive with a desire almost torturous.

Weeks
floating as we pulled apart in that one, long, magical moment
eyes locked.

A month
A mystic kiss that lasted
a whole month.

I dreamt last night
that we meditated on a kiss.

The truth, sadly, is much faster.

Seconds
Lips brushing in an open doorway.

Moments
A quick peck in the car.

The truth, sadly, is much faster.

But I dreamt last night
that we meditated on our kiss.

Has it been that long?

This is crazy. I love writing so much, and yet haven’t written anything since before freakin’ BELTANE!!

I’ve got lots of stuff in my head, it’s just that I haven’t taken the time to actually write it. The reason for this is actually the topic of a blog post I’m, well, writing in my head. It’s called “The Off Switch” and it’s about the fact that I don’t seem to have one.

Anyway, I’ve updated to WordPress 3.0, but still have yet to finish some posts. Hopefully, I’ll get to that soon.

Another note about the 8 spoke wheel from the glorious Anne Key:

Greetings! Today is the First Day of Summer,  the cross-quarter day between Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice. If we think of the summer as the Season of the Light, then we can see that now it is definitely lighter in the mornings (am I the only one waking up at 5am?).  This holiday is usually called Beltane, but I’ve been thinking of it as the  Greeting of the Flame because it heralds the beginning of the long bright days.

I feel a sense of relief  and respite at this point of the year after this busy and intense Spring. Though the sun has me up and working earlier and earlier, I find myself mid-day searching out the sunny spot on the couch, reveling in the light. Take a moment at this cross-point in the year to revel in the light of your own accomplishments, and give a word of thanks to those whose light has warmed and illuminated your life.

Note on Dates: Traditionally Beltane is celebrated on May 1st or the eve before. Astrologically, the First Day of Summer may be calculated as the date the Sun is at 15° Taurus (Tropical system), which currently Falls around May 4th to 5th.

This is one of those posts that I could write up on mettadore.com, because it seems techy, but that’s precisely the reason I’m writing it up here, because it’s not. This is something better suited to the general public, so here.

Jess and I recently got cell phones. After some initial difficulties with service we went with Verizon. Immediately after starting service, I noticed that Verizon was charging $4/month for a service they call “visual voicemail.”

For those who don’t know, visual voicemail is a “special service” where they record the voicemail, transcribe it into text, and store it in an email-like account that you can read, or play back, at will– without the need to call into your voicemail.

Hrm… sounds like the free service called Google Voice to me.

All sorts of win

Look, head over to the site if you don’t know what I’m talking about because I’m only going to skim the surface here.

The basic deal is that Google Voice lets you have:

1. One number that is forwarded to multiple phones
2. Recorded, transcribed voicemails that can be emailed to you.
3. Different messages and different phone forwarding rules based on individual callers.
4. SPAM protection for bad callers (can reject or automatically voicemail callers)
5. Connection to your Google Contacts list
6. You can also use it to call internationally, and can even send free SMS messages.
7. Good integration with your Google Account.
8. Hell, they will even give you a freakin’ phone number if you don’t have a cell.

In short, Google Voice is all sorts of win.

The Google Voice Interface

In fact, it’s so win, that I’ve had it for almost a year now. I have a phone number for my business that people could call that would forward to my home and to voicemail automatically. Now that I have a cell, it forwards to all three, and I can set it up to ring straight through to any one of them.

So, I sat there and asked Jessica “Why the hell would anyone pay Verizon an extra $4/month to have this stupid ‘visual voicemail’ when it’s basically a crappy subset of what Google gives you for free?”

Then I said “Well, I guess some people don’t know about Google Voice.”

She said “John, most people don’t know about Google Voice.”

The In Crowd

So, the deal is, I’m a consummate “early adopter.” I’m tied into tech, and tied into people who are tied into tech, so I end up knowing about techy stuff. That sort of puts me in the weird “in crowd” situation when, in reality, there’s really no crowd, and really no in either.

Anyway, whatever the reason, I’ve had Google Voice for a while in “tech time,” and hadn’t really thought about the fact that it’s still in the initial “invitation only” phase. And that’s the problem, I guess. Since it’s “invitation only,” you don’t get the kind of mainstream media coverage that would bring it to the not-ridiculously-geeky crowd.

But the mainstream not-ridiculously-geeky crowd needs to hear about it, so they stop spending $4/month on freakin’ Verizon crappy Visual Voicemail.

So, now, you can be part of the ridiculously-geeky crowd because invites! I haz dem!

I only have three, but that’s more than you need, right? And since there’s only about 3 people who read this blog, that works out perfectly. So, send me a message if:

1. You’ll actually use it and won’t just sit on it, preventing someone else from using it.
2. You have a Google Account (like Gmail, or even without the Gmail part), or are willing to get one. You need one to use the service.
3. I know you. Sorry, but with 3 invites, I’m not really ready to dump them on anyone who does a search for “Google Voice.”
4. You are not terrified of technology, specifically that nebulous “Cloud” everyone keeps freaking out about, because this is a Google service, people. That’s Cyberdyne Version 0.1, and Skynet is coming fast.

I’ll wait like a week or so. If I get more than three requests, I’ll draw at random (that’s fair, right?). If I get less than three, I’ll dump the extras on teh tweebers.

Seriously, it’s a great service, so I hope there are people out there who could use it well.

Recently, Jessica and I took the plunge into Cell Phone land. After years of working without them, it was becoming evident that my business work was suffering a bit. Also, since we don’t have long distance on our house phone, Jessica wasn’t talking with her family as much as she wanted. So, after a grudging decision, we jumped in.

Jess didn’t want a smart phone. Just a regular phone without a bunch of bells and whistles. Me? Because I’m such a geek, I jumped straight into the Android Open Source operating system world with a Motorola Cliq.

Mostly, it’s because I do a lot of things that warrant a certain amount of information accessibility. But it’s also because I just like to play with computers, and the smart phones of today are more powerful computers than I was programming on 15 years ago. Amazing.

Still, the most fun I’ve had with it so far is not really techy at all. It’s something that phones have had for a long time: Custom ringtones.

Irish Music Immersion

Because I tend to talk about it all the time,¹ everyone who knows me is aware that I’m studying the Irish Flute.² Because traditional Celtic music is not something that I have in the “intuitive, gut-part” of my musical soul the way I do things like Blues and Jazz, I’m generally listening to as much Celtic music as I can. Music is like a language, you won’t learn it by removing yourself from it– the best way is to immerse.

So, as a way to keep swimming in Celtic music, I though I’d look at making some Irish Flute music ringtones. Quickly whipping out a CD of arguably one of the greatest Irish Flute players who’s ever lived (Conal Ó Gráda. Jesus, what that man can do with a holey tube of wood!) and dumping some tunes into Audacity, I came up with a few tests.

The nice thing about Traditional Irish tunes is that they often have a relatively short A part which is played twice, followed by a relatively short B part played twice. Thus, it makes a surprisingly nice ringtone to cut the first repetition out of the A part into a ring, because it’ll be repeated when the phone rings again. Since you’ll likely answer before a third or forth time, you end up with the beginning of a tune!

A few Irish polka ringtones

This first suite of ringtones I’ve done is from Conal’s 2008 album Cnoc Bui. I chose three polkas because they are a relatively simple form that I’m currently working on (not that I’ll ever play this well, especially on my $100 PVC flute, but it’s something to aspire to).

The Tunes:³

1. The Church Street Polka: Track 1
2. Maurice O’Keeffe’s: Track 6
3. Mickey Duggan’s: Track 10

I’m not sure if anyone else is interested in these, but I thought I’d post them. In the future, I may create some more from B parts of songs (which are often more upbeat and/or complex) and maybe grab some samples from Michael McGoldrick, Matt Molloy and Liam Kelly (who’s the flute player for my absolutely favorite Irish band, the Sligo-based Dervish).

Someday, of course, I hope to post my own flute playing, but I fear that’s a ways off, yet.

1. one time, at band camp…!
2. For those who don’t know, it’s not your boring, metal classical flute. Like most things Irish, it’s an upbeat folk instrument that you can actually drink and dance to!
3. For some reason, these cut off short for some people when clicking, but if you download them, they are complete

So I’m walking down the street last night. It’s dark, and I’m walking fast because I’m meeting my fair Jessica at a restaurant and want to be there before her, because I don’t mind waiting for her, but I know she doesn’t like waiting for me.

So, I’m walking faster than usual.

It was a beautiful night, actually. Pretty warm. I had my favorite brown leather “not used for a motorcycle anymore because I sold that to Jessie’s father” jacket and a new pair of  “original, hard as freakin cardboard because I’m not buying any of that ‘about to break down pre-washed’ crap” Levi jeans.

So there I am, hair down and flowing, all 6+ foot of me, striding down the hill thinking “I can’t wait to get to the restaurant and read my book until Jessie shows up.”

But that’s not what other people were thinking, I guess.

I’m not my inner geek

As it turns out, despite my inner “scared, scrawny, geeky Indian kid who gets beaten up everyday after school” view of myself, other people have a rather different view. Sometimes, that view is something like “huge, imposing, scary long-haired guy that’s going to steal my wallet and beat me up.”

This pretty much always freaks me out.

So, I’m walking down the right side of the street and about two blocks ahead of me is a woman talking on a cell phone. At least, I figure she’s talking on a cell phone, because Hood River is a quiet enough town that I can hear– at two blocks away– that she’s talking.

She keeps looking around, and I eventually settle on the question of whether or not she’s looking at me. “Why would she look at scrawny, geeky me?” I think, immediately– as I often must do– reminding myself that I’m not “scrawny, geeky me” to, well, anyone but me, really.

So, then I’m all worried. What if she actually is looking at me? At that point, I feel something of a responsibility. I don’t want to frighten this woman, Jessica says that I’m big and scary (calling me “the big, scary monster” often). Should I cross the street and give her room?

Of course, I also don’t want to think that the entire world revolves around me. “It’s not about you, John” is something I remind myself all the time. I mean, how ridiculously arrogant to assume that this woman, blocks ahead of me, cares one way or another about me. Talk about egocentric!

But I’m still worried. I don’t want to slow down because I want to get to the restaurant, I don’t want to speed up and get it over with either. I don’t want scare someone, but I don’t want to needlessly worry about scaring someone either. I have to cross the street eventually, so I could do it now, but this side of State street is much nicer to walk on, so I don’t want to cross until much later.

What to do?¹

The crossing

By then, I’d reached a bit less than a block behind her. She turned around and looked at me again– about the 4th or 5th time– and crossed the street. I was relieved, because now I didn’t have to go through that whole “how do I pass this woman, do I cross, do I not cross?” series of questioning.

I kept walking, eventually passed her on the other side of the street, and would have thought nothing more of it. I went on, about two blocks more, and then decided to cross, well in front of her to continue down to the restaurant. I would have thought nothing more of the event except that when I turned to look in the road before I crossed I noticed her, about a block behind me, crossing back to the right side of the street.

The world in which we live

That’s it then.

Am I the guy your mother warned you about? That guy on a dark street that will do bad things to you? That guy that– even while he’s all worried and concerned that he’s being too ecocentric about people noticing him– you will cross the street to avoid?

It made me really sad. Not because this woman would avoid me. That’s a small thing, really, and who am I to complain about it.

It made me sad that the world is such that any woman would avoid anyone. Just the fact that a woman walking down a street always needs to be conscious of that. That we live in a world where women might routinely cross to the other side of the street so much that it actually becomes, well, routine.

It just saddens me to see that happen, and know that it’s the case, and know that I’m actually one of the reasons that it’s the case. Not because I’d ever do anything, but just because I’m there, and big, and walking fast.

And a man.

It just made me so sad. So I looked things up. Here are some fun facts to cheer you up:²

• 1 out of 4 women is sexually assaulted at some point in her life.
• Every 15 seconds a woman is beaten by her husband or boyfriend. (FBI Uniform Crime Report, 1991)
• 2-4 million women are abused every year. (American Medical Association)
• 95-98% of victims of domestic violence are women. (Bureau of Statistics)
• Approximately 25% of all women in the U.S. will be abused by current or former partners some time during their lives. (American Medical Association)
• 82.8% of sexual assaults occur before the victim reaches the age of 25.
• 78% of sexual assault victims were assaulted by someone they knew.
• Over 50% of victims and 70% of assailants had used drugs or alcohol prior to the assault..
• Fewer than 20% of crimes of sexual violence are reported to the police.
• Approximately 2% of acquaintance rapes are reported to the police.
• Only 2% of reported sexual assaults have been determined to be false reports.
• 1 in 8 college women is the victim of rape during her college years. 1 in 4 is the victim of attempted rape.
• 95% of these rape victims did not report the rape to officials.
• 25% percent of women were raped and/or physically assaulted by a current or former spouse, partner or date during their lifetime.
• 84% of the women knew the men who raped them; 57% were on dates.

The emphasis is mine, but probably not for the reason you think. On the surface, I could be upset that this woman might have been afraid of me when all the evidence points to her being extremely more likely to get assaulted by someone she knows. It would be easy for me to pull out the “what the hell is she worried about me for?” card, but that’s not where I’m going at all.

My point? What the fuck kind of world do we live in that fully 25% of women are sexually assaulted and 85% of them by someone they know?

Yet women still have to be afraid on the street of people they don’t know?

You mean, basically, women are pretty much unsafe at home and unsafe on the street?!

What. The. Fuck. World?

It made me so sad to think about this that I actually started to cry.

For the most part, I love life, and love people.

Sometimes, however, I just feel physically sick.

And sadly, sometimes I feel ashamed and depressed that I’m a man.

1. Yeah, it’s pretty funny that this “woman walking on a dark street” scared me so much.
2. http://www.rwu.edu/studentlife/studentservices/counselingcenter/sexualassault/rapemyths.htm

Here’s a story. It’s apropos of nothing, but I’ve been too busy to write enough here, so I thought this would make people smile.

I could go on and on about how it’s a story of Social Networking, and how sometimes the world is a better place because we’re closer, or at least more able to contact people for random bits of meaningless and make friends.

It could be a story about how we’re not so distant, or maybe how we’re differently distant.

But it’s not, because then I’d feel the need to actually do a bit of research to support my theory, and post it on mettadore.com, which I know plenty of people are sick of. So, rather than anything meaningful, it’s merely an amusing anecdote.

I was at work, drinking maté, typing away, la la la, work work work, data data data, la la l–

AHH!

I spilled maté on my mac!

Well, the story’s a happy one, because, as you can see from the image of my tweet, physics saved me. That’s not always the case. At certain times, physics is a right bastard, particularly when I’m on my skateboard, or ice skates, or standing on my roof trying one more time to get my Superman Underroos to do their damn job!

Anyway, physics is sometimes a bastard, but this time it was cool.

So today, I got an email message from someone that made me chuckle:

Hi John-

Google led me to your tweet from 1/28: “The surface tension of water is strong enough that water won’t flow into certain sized holes… like those of a MacBook Pro’s speaker.”

I just spilled a (small) bit of iced coffee onto my 15″ 2008 MBP left speaker grill, so the topic is near to me… The coffee seemed to just sit on the grill for the couple of seconds it took me to wipe it off. My empirical evidence supports you theory.

First, I looked on the web for teardown photos to see where the microphone was. No luck. Since I’m wondering if I might have any trouble, I was wondering if you had any more background for your MBP speaker/surface tension info.

Thanks!

I thought it was pretty funny that someone would actually look up “surface tension” or something like that- what a total geek. What was funnier was that I actually looked it up, and started to do a calculation the day it happened, just to see. Now “that’s” a total geek!

Anyway, I sent a message back, mostly to be funny, because I always feel both funnier and more helpful when I connect to someone through social networking.

Hi! Wow, pretty funny connection. Social Networking FTW!

So, no, nothing. No problems and no later developments. I did calculations of surface tension in grad school and the size of those holes are, in fact, too small. However, I will give the caveat that certain things increase or decrease the surface tension of water. “Uh oh? Where’s he going with this?” You ask.

For instance, cat spit. I have some knowledge of cat spit, and it decreases water’s surface tension. Don’t ask me how I know this, it’s an embarrassing situation that I’m still in counseling for. Suffice it to say that if you have a cat, you may want to be careful letting him drink beverages around your laptop (The whole “lack of a thumb” thing is hard for them, but I’ve learned that now, and we’re moving on)

Anyway, I’m not sure where coffee is on this. Whether it increases or decreases it. However, even if it decreased it, it would have to be an insane amount to get into that grill. My suspicion is that the Apple engineers are somewhat sloppy drinkers, and have thought about everything– based on they’re own klutsy habits!

I think your safe. Yay Mac!

Hope everything else is equally peachy.
-J

The whole exchange got me thinking about my New Year’s Resolution for 2009, which I’ve re-resolved for 2010. That was “to be more Irish.” It’s a tough goal. Being Irish is nothing to sniff at. It’s no easy feat, but I’m convinced I can do it if I work hard enough. This exchange bodes well, because the Irish have a saying that a stranger is just a friend you haven’t met yet.

This person shot me an email out of the blue, and email to a stranger, and email to a friend she hasn’t met yet. That’s the cool thing about social networking. We’re all friends.

Yay for Social Networking! (and yay for the Irish, too!)

I have this habit of playing a silly game that I call “The Deep Joke.” The name is a bit of a “thought train,” but basically comes out of a childhood search for meaning and an album called “Deep Breakfast,” itself named after a book.

Anyway, when I was a child, I learned something about comedy. I learned that there were things called “jokes.” I know, it’s not revolutionary, but to me it was pretty amazing, because as soon as I learned about jokes, I started– as is my wont– pushing the boundaries of them.

Very quickly I found that the concept went deeper than I thought. Because most jokes were about something. That’s like the fundamenal joke. The simple joke. A comment about something. They’re fun, sure, but I wanted more.

Maybe it’s because of my father, and his semi-Indian-incredibly-subtle-always-multiple-meanings form of communication, or maybe it’s just because I really liked jokes. Whatever the reason, slowly, I came to realize that it was much more fun to be had if you didn’t limit yourself to simply making jokes about something. It was possible to make jokes about about something.

It became my habit to make what I started to call “deep jokes.”

I know, it always confused my family too, and still confuses many people. To me, though, it’s the natural way to make a joke.

Jokes About About Something

You see, most jokes are about something, and the joke itself is a comment on that something. It’s a way that everyone can laugh about that something, whatever the something is. Sometimes, the something is a someone, and the joke is a way for everyone to laugh at that someone.

Sometime in high school, I started practicing subtle jokes about things and people that were aimed not at pointing out the flaw in that thing or person, but in pointing out something funny about the people laughing about that thing or person. It was a joke about the joke.¹

My first attempts, as any first attempts are, were clumsy. But quite soon, I was able to craft a joke that seemed to make fun of something or someone on the surface, while in reality it was actually questioning the very opposite.

Now, this got me into a lot of difficulty with my family, and not a few arguments were had with immediate and extended family and friends because of it. The problem: While it was becoming more and more natural (and automatic) with me, it was still a concept foreign to them. So I’d make a joke or comment that, deep down, supported someone and that someone would take it as an insult.

The Deep Joke and Social Media

This part of communication is now as much a part of me as any. Both in joking and in seriousness, I’m a really subtle, multiple meaning thinker who weighs words more heavily than he would gold. This is becoming something of a comic situation lately because of the phenomena of social media.

The general rule for me is “take everything someone says, turn it around at look at it from the back, then turn it upside down, after you do that, you have the meaning.” The general rule for social media is “take those 6 words completely on the surface, and immediately move on to the next thing.” The problem, of course, is that there’s little time– and no body language– to put things in context with social media.

Despite that, however, I still do the same thing I’ve always done. I’ve been pretty good at keeping things on the surface, but often, I forget.

Today I made a joke that’s meant mostly to laugh at a fundamentalist view of some ridiculous thing that I don’t think anyone should really care about. Yet, thinking about that in the context of social media, I really suspect that nobody got the joke.

It’s not really a deep joke kind of situation, social media.

A Question of Responsibly

This is the reason that I’ve been reluctant recently to friend certain people on Facebook, and why I’ve even considered making two accounts. Because I really like a deep form of communication. I like the play on words and meaning. I like saying multiple things with one statement, and turning things upside down.

I like the deep joke.

Apparently, Jessie’s mom was upset when I wouldn’t friend her on Facebook– even though not doing so was Jessie’s request. Through the family grapevine, I’ve found that I’m not a nice person for refusing.

Should I have accepted? A difficult question. I know from our regular communication that 60% of what I write will either offend or upset her even though barely 5% would have anything at all to do with her².

So, where’s the responsibility of communication? Am I to communicate as myself, or as something that I think others want? We are all part of a society, of course, so it is our responsibility to not to go out of our way to hurt other people’s feelings, but is the responsibility solely on the writer?

I mean, I understand that it’s my responsibility to say “You know, this is a direct attack on so-and-so, maybe that’s not the best thing to write.” But is that the end of the responsibility? That’s a hard line for a writer to stay behind because heading down the “this may possibly offend so-and-so, but that may also not sit well with such-and-such” would lead a writer to just stop writing.

I’m not sure which way to go on this. It’s something that, lately, has been causing me to write less on Positively Glorious! and more about programming, just because I know I’m safer, and not likely to offend someone with a post that has nothing to do with them.

I’ve written on this before, of course, but it’s still something I’m trying to come to grips with. Sometimes in social media, it seems that The Deep Joke just may not be funny to anyone.

1. Funny that I changed my name so late in life, because at that early age I was training to be a metta-comic… Wa-wa-waaaa
2. likely, that 5% wouldn’t actually overlap with the 60%, ironically

I have this common statement that I make that’s actually an inside joke that I think only I get. Whenever I’m ending something, I say “Well, you know what the music means.” I’ve been given cause recently to wonder that some people might not.

I had a wonderful dinner the other evening with a friend that Jessica and I’ve met through our local community theater. We’ve been wanting to get together to chat for a while, and finally had the chance to visit them for dinner. It was a really exciting night for me because her husband is a bagpiper, and I really, really love the bagpipes. Not the Great Highland Bagpipes (The “GHB,” as they say), I love small pipes.¹ That small, very ancient instrument that you can safely listen to in the intimacy of a small room and which rarely fail to touch pluck my heartstrings.

This man was a small piper, and I was really excited to finally be in the same room with this great instrument. I was even honored by being allowed to play them! For the first time in my life, I held this wonderful instrument in my hand and managed to get out the few first bars of “Mary Had A Little Lamb” before collapsing into laughter.

What bliss! It was as night filled with music and conversation, but there was one interesting conversation that the night brought on which I thought about long after the night was over. In fact, I thought about it all that night, and all the next day.

Why Do People Want This?

Our friendly piper made the comment quite a few times that he didn’t understand why people wanted to hear the bagpipes. He’s a multi-instrumental player who is much more proficient on many other instruments than he is on the pipes, and is much more tied to other music than he is to pipe music. Basically, he can do a lot of things better than the bagpipes. Despite this, he is hired all the time to play the pipes.

By his own admission, he’s pretty grumpy about this, because he wants people to hire and appreciate him for his technical prowess on other instruments. Nope, people don’t want that, they want the bagpipes. Dammit, why do they want that?

It was interesting to hear his annoyance of this fact, because I’ve noticed the same thing. You are really good at one thing, and maybe just barely adequate at another. Despite this, people want what they want, and your ‘adequacy’ is enough for them. You play your unfortunate instrument adequately, thinking all the while how much better this would all be if you could play [the other thing]. And at the end, you have people in tears thanking you four touching them so deeply.

WTH?

All The Air Out Of A Room

A bit later in the evening, we were talking about other instruments and Jessica asked him if he had a guitar. His response was quite surprising and paraphrased as:

The guitar is the only instrument that I don’t care to have in my house, because it takes all the air out of a room… The guitar is that instrument that everyone says they can play, but do you know any guitarists who can actually play it? It’s always the same folky songs with three chords… they all play the same thing!

I was surprised by this, very surprised, and I’ve thought about it for a long time before coming up with a possible understanding. Putting it all together, it seems like the argument is fundamentally about what music means. Specifically, it is about what is supposed to be appreciated within the realm of music.

I actually agree with him that so many people who say they play guitar just play those same three chords and the same folky songs all the time. In fact, Jessica and I are two of those people. I know that I can just-barely-skin-of-my-teeth say that I can play the guitar. My technical abilities on the guitar are about equal to those of a 2 year-old with a dull knife.

Despite that, I find quite the opposite reaction when my, or any, guitar is brought into a room at a party. It doesn’t take the wind out of the room, it fills the room.

Music as Emotion

I think this is the answer: Music is not about technical proficiency, it’s about emotion.

Now, before I get beaten to a pulp by technically proficient musicians, allow me to clarify.

Music is art, and art is an emotional expression. Music connects us, human to human, soul to soul, with each other. Because of that, it’s a conversation of the heart, and in a conversation, both people are there, communicating. That’s why people react to music so strongly, and why people (in my experience) love nearly any kind of music. Because it’s not about “How perfect is this performer” but about “How closely can I connect emotionally with this person.”

Technical proficiency is absolutely necessary to play an instrument well, of course, and it’s something that we should all strive for in the instruments we play. Despite this, I think we do ourselves a great injustice when we suggest that technical proficiency is everything.²

It explains why people hiring him for a funeral want the bagpipes and not another instrument that he plays better. They don’t want technical proficiency, they want emotional connection. You could probably play an old shoe and it would be good if you connected with them emotionally. It explains why so many barely guitarists can get a whole room to sing songs– the same worn-out old folky, three chord songs that they always play. Because people are emotionally connected to those folky, three chord songs. Because it connects us.

It seems to me that his argument is that the goal of a musical performance should fundamentally be the admiration of technical merit. I disagree. The goal of any musical performance, as in any work of art, should be the connection to the emotions of another person. As much as we perfectionists (and I am one) don’t want to hear this, technical prowess is, unfortunately, secondary.

I offer the success of pop music as evidence. If technical prowess were the fundamental goal, would most pop music exist?

I also offer an example. Think about going to two musical performances. In the first, the artist says “I chose this piece because it is incredibly technically difficult, and here is why… I’m very good on this instrument, so this is where my abilities shine.”

Contrast that with the second, a performance where the artist says “This is a song that that someone in the audience wanted to hear. I’m not good enough to do it justice, but it’s such a beautiful song because… I’ll do my best, sing along if you like.”

The difference? One is a lecture. It is a one-way transmission of what the artist wants the people to hear. It’s an artist telling me what to appreciate and respond to.³

The other is a conversation. The other is an attempt to connect to people through art. They are not telling me what to appreciate, but rather journeying together with me to a mutual destination. Both of these examples are actual performances I’ve been to, and both were wonderful performances. But only one of them was one where I felt moved, touched, even loved.

Only one of them I remember fondly.

Coda

It’s often the case that the technically proficient musician is able to move people because they are so capable of expressing that emotion. And of course technical proficiency and emotional connection are not exclusive. In the perfect world, they are commensurate. Hopefully, the technical musician does connect with his audience.

But just as often, or maybe even more often on a smaller– living room– scale, it’s the imperfect musician who moves people. It’s not the lecturer, but the entertainer, who connects with people. The entertainer says:

We are on a journey together, and because we are together, I can’t tell you what to enjoy. We have to communicate. I loose control when we do this, I’m no longer able to tell you what to listen to. I am merely here to respond to what you want, and to listen to you just as much, if not more than, you are able to listen to me. Because conversation is not about speaking, but about listening. That’s scary for me, because I’m up here on stage, and I may be listening to things that I don’t want to hear, but I will do that. I will live with that fear, I will listen to you, because we are on a journey together. My only hope is that we touch the souls of one another in this experience.

That, I think, is why people always want to hire him for the bagpipes and not the trumpet or another instrument. Because they want the connection, and especially at funerals and other emotional events, they don’t want technical prowess.

And they don’t necessarily want to be spoken to.

But they do need to be listened to.

1. And there are a lot of small pipes. In fact there’s a list of bagpipes that shows that they are ridiculously culturally ubiquitous in Europe, Asia, and Northern Africa.
2. Yes, I know that every teacher in the world is going to call me and complain that I’m an idiot. That’s fine.
3. Even at the best of times, most of us have a problem being told what to think.

Yesterday, I saw an interesting snippet on Manton Reece’s blog. It’s actually a snippet of a snippet, because it was originally written by Seth Godin:

When I was at MOMA last week, I saw a list of director and artist Tim Burton’s projects. Here’s the guy who’s responsible for some of the most breathtaking movies of his generation, and the real surprise is this: almost every year over the last thirty, he worked on one or more exciting projects that were never green lighted and produced. Every year, he spent an enormous amount of time on failed projects.

This is not at all a surprise to me, because I do the same thing.

Dead Parrots

One year, while still at the College of Charleston and back when my name was still Pennington, I counted 10 projects that I was working/had worked on.

One was an autonomous underwater vehicle, created from a radio controlled submarine and designed to sample water quality.¹

Another project was coastalgeology.org, a site dedicated to promoting coastal geology data collection and stewardship.² That project is now just an undead part of Project Oceanica.

Another was the Egg0 programming framework, a Python-based robotics language for teaching robotics to children. That project was coincident with another project to design a new “better than mindstorms” robotics system. It was a Handy Board-inspired robotics board that I designed the electronics for, but which I never produced beyond prototype.

There were others, like the zero-gravity particle separator that allowed me and a team of CofC students to go to Houston and fly on NASA’s zero-gravity plane.³

The common thread with all of those projects is this: They all died.

I had 10 projects I tried in undergrad– Ten– and all but one of them died.

That’s a 90% loss ratio.

This, in my opinion, is A Good Thing™.

Wasted Time

During this same time, I had an argument with my (very soon to be ex-)girlfriend at the time once that went something like this:

Her: “You never finish anything you start!”

Me: “Sure I do, I just don’t finish everything I start. I’m happy if I finish about 10% of what I start.”

Her (cynically): “So, you’re happy just throwing everything away? You waste 90% of your time! I’m not happy with that!”

Me: “I’m not wasting 90% of my time. I’m spending 90% of my time learning. Some things work, some don’t. If I don’t try, then I won’t know which ones will.”

It’s something that I have a problem explaining to people often, and it’s even caused issues with my lovely wife. The problem is that I’m a failure, and that most people have a view that “you have to finish what you start.”

More importantly, they have the view that “If you’re not going to finish it, then don’t start it.”

I agree with this, partially. I think it’s important to finish what you start. But there’s a subtle difference in that I also believe that you should let things die if they are going to become the undead⁴. Also, you should not ever be afraid to start things that probably won’t work.

In short, I believe strongly that you should set yourself up for failure. Because it’s by exploring the boundaries of what you can accomplish that you find out what your boundaries truly are.

Here’s a hint: Your boundaries are, without exception, far beyond what you think they are.

An Example From Pottery

If you learn to learn from what you fail at, then failure is the greatest tool you have.

As an example: I used to be a potter, and I would purposely make pottery on my wheel that would collapse while I was spinning it. Purposely. Why? Because I came so familiar with the failure-point of clay that I could push that clay right to the edge with confidence.

I made pottery that most others in my pottery classes couldn’t, or wouldn’t, because they were afraid it would collapse. I, on the other hand, went straight for collapse. I set myself up for failure.

It’s a common habit of mine. I fail about 90% of the time.

So, what was the one project that was a success during those years?

A robotics program for 8th grade students that became a 3 year program in the Charleston school district. There was also a spinoff “introduction to programming” class that I offered through community education.

Keep this in mind, I was an undergrad in college, without a teaching degree, who’d never taught before, who’d recently taught himself about robotics so was at best dubiously qualified to know anything about them.

Despite this, I decided to build a middle school instructional curriculum and offer it to the school district. If anyone was setting themselves up for failure, I was.

I was reaching for a goal that was ridiculously far beyond my own boundaries, and I found that my boundaries were much farther than I thought.

Nothing special

The important point here is that I’m nothing special. I don’t relate this to talk about the greatness that is me. I’m not great at all. I’m just as mediocre as anyone else out there with the exception of one simple thing:

I’m willing to fail.

That project was certain to fail. But I said “what the hell?” and I tried it out.

And the other projects? The ones that did fail?

What is failure?

I learned a ton about robotics, flew in the Zero-G plane, learned two new programming languages, and at the end of it taught a bunch of kids and adults programming and robotics.

If that’s failure, I say “bring it on!”

Someone once said that 90% of success is just showing up. I think it’s even easier than that.

I think that 90% of success is just failing.

1. It worked, somewhat. It’s now somewhere at the bottom of the Charleston harbor.
2. and now available only as a shadow of a memory on The Wayback Machine
3. That was fun, but the particle separator was shite, and luckily buried before embarrassment struck.
4. what I call vampireware, projects that are not dead, but which still walk the earth sucking the life of out everyone they touch.