Viewing Category: Introspection
Last night I started reading What to Listen For in Music by American composer Aaron Copland. It's an introduction to musical theory for the interested layperson, lucidly written and filled with insight, "the only book of its kind written by a great composer".
I found an interesting passage in Chapter 3, The Creative Process In Music, which I thought might be univerally applicable to finding one's role in the world:
[...] The layman always finds it hard to realize how natural it is for the composer to compose. He has a tendency to put himself into the position of a composer and to visualize the problems involved, including that of inspiration, from the perspective of the layman. He forgets that composing to a composer is like fulfilling a natural function. It is like eating or sleeping. It is something that the composer happens to have been born to do; and, because of that, it loses the character of a special virtue in the composer's eyes.
A natural function! Do I even know what mine is? I suspect it might not actually be all those things I "do" like programming or interface design, despite all the energy I've put into this. What I appear to do the most these days is categorize experience and write it up, make connections, and communicate via a number of channels: email, this blog, and person-to-person contact.
Yesterday I was showing someone how to do something, and she commented that I was a good teacher. I seem to get this compliment quite a lot, and I am starting to wonder if this is a viable direction to move in. What makes for an excellent teacher? And what to teach? How much focus is necessary? And who do I talk to?
A longer excerpt from Copland's chapter on creativity is online at this person's site on music, if you'd like to read more.
Last Friday I was catching up with Duncan after lunch, and we got on the subject of music, and how hymns seem to have imprinted my subconscious though a lot of them were kinda dull. Which triggered a Whole Lotta Thoughts.
These days I don't go to church, but I grew up surrounded by it; Dad was an ordained minister in New Jersey, Mom played the organ, and we all moved to a seminary in Taiwan when I was 9 when Dad was called to serve as president there. I guess you could say I was raised in an "'academic church environment"...all of our family friends seemed to be professors or scholars of some kind. Professionals, if you will, on the front lines of Christian Education. I used to think that this mostly involved holding hands and praying before you got a big "C" stamped on your forehead, but it's actually quite rigorous. When you meet an ordained minister from one of the Mainline Protestant Churches, know that he or she's been through something akin to special forces training. Mental stamina and philosophical resolve are required on top of innate psychological stability...lots of people wash out.
Anyway, another big part of the Church is, of course, all the music and singing. My sis and I were exposed to quite a lot of it in the regular church services. Additionally, the seminary in Taiwan had a music department, with piano and and vocal practice at all hours of the day. When I opened a window, I could hear it in the distance. Mom taught organ at home sometimes too, practiced the piano, and we also sometimes attended the big choral recitals.
It's too bad I didn't actively enjoy that kind of music at the time...rather than bluesy Gospel music, it was a lot of the classic church stuff: 4/4 time, C Major scale. Over and over. But there were some strange connections I made with that. Although I wasn't very musically inclined on the piano, I did for a couple years play the harmonica. My grandpa had given me a tremelo-style one keyed in C Major, and I quickly discovered that the only music I could really play on it were hymns. Did I mention that grandpa was also an ordained minister? Coincidence? I think not! But this gave me an appreciation of how music was structured (mostly that Rock was somehow cooler and different). After a few years, I stopped playing, being drawn into the world of knock-off Apple II clones.
20 years go by.
Recently, I was attending Scott's graduation from Business School at UNH Durham, and at the end we had to sing the UNH College Anthem. I'd never heard it in my life, but as soon as it started up I recognized the tune and progression from some hymn I'd heard a long time ago, and am able to follow it through the various little tricky bits without stumbling. That was kind of cool. It struck me that a lot of old college and organizational anthems probably derive from hymnal melodies, deeply-rooted as these songs would be.
All that church music, I realize now, must have left some kind of musical imprint. I have a good sense of relative pitch and an innate sense of what scales are supposed to sound like...I can hear them in my head, though I don't know what the names are. It makes me wonder if I can actually get the music out in some expressive form. What would it be like?
I was mentioning all this to Duncan last Friday, and he made the comment that there was one performance by Sarah McLaughlin called The Prayer of St. Francis that he found particularly moving both lyrically and musically. He forwarded me the information: the verse apparently isn't written by St. Francis at all, but by an anonymous French Catholic priest during WWI:
O Lord, make me an instrument of Thy Peace!
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is discord, harmony.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Where there is despair, hope.
Where there is darkness, light.
Where there is sorrow, joy.
[...]
I can imagine a priest, surrounded by the wholesale slaughter that the Industrial Revolution made possible, penning this verse in defiance against the darkness. As a kid, I never would have appreciated this.
The combination of music, early recollections, reassessment, and affirmation of positive action...a good way to start off a reflective Sunday morning.
I am in a rather introspective mood. This past month has blessed me with a number of perspective-changing events. Some of them are related to work, as I revisit old working relationships to build future projects. Some events have triggered thoughts relating to the dynamic nature of friendship and cameraderie, and how there are entire rich worlds of social activity occuring all around me. There are a lot of positive things going on right now, the pressure to compete is on, and I am enjoying it.
So why do I feel on guard?
In a recent conversation, one of those mean-but-funny expressions came up: "In all of your failures, the only common factor is You." Funny because it's true, and still funny because we know it really isn't. It's an implied form of causal fallacy I believe, but the thought of my being the "common factor" in all my experiences, and what those experiences have been, gave rise to the following train of insights:
I am accustomed to thinking about my friends, my work, and my responsibilities in terms of many one-to-one relationships: it's me and someone else that I am establishing a connection with. Many of my principles are based on this, and it's probably one of the oldest parts of my personality.
I have never really thought about myself in relationship with groups of people or other social networks (a "one-to-group" relationship). The past year or so I've been working to expand social contact, first through online social networks and now through direct contact. My initial expectation was that meeting new people was like casting a net to find the kinds of people I need to pursue my work, with persistence and patience. Where do I fit? Where can I contribute? What kind of B.S. am I willing to put up with?
I discovered, with some surprise, that for all the technical / creative / intellectual effort that I've made, that it's actually people that motivate me. I used to think it was pure creative drive: to create an awesome video game, write an amazing book, draw a wonderful illustration, score that moving cinematic theme. So I spent 2003-2004 in a little hermitage of my own making, working on projects remotely and figuring I would start to build the tools to start doing these things. And you know what? Not a lot happened along these lines. While I did write some interesting code, start blogging, and relaxed a whole lot...I have not made much movement my larger goals. And so it is with a big "duh" that what I did gain from my sabbatical is that I really need to have people in my life, if I am to get anything done. Not from a production / manpower perspective, but for the sense of shared purpose and friendship.
Prior to the above insight, I used to perceive this need for people on my part to create as some kind of creative defect in my character. Surely, the master artist just creates, puts his head down and selflessly grinds away at his oevre until that which must be seen is revealed? For the past couple of weeks I've been readjusting this perspective, getting comfortable with the idea that the ability to organize and motivate people without necessarily doing the work myself is actually a good thing. And now that I've accepted this, I see it in the good things my friends are doing with their lives and businesses.
Anyway, the short version is that there are a lot of good things happening in my life and a lot of challenging things to do. I was feeling pretty good, thinking I had mastered yet another facet of myself and was ready to wrestle with the world again. I feel good, but there was something in the back of my mind that kept tickling, very lightly. I couldn't put my finger on it.
Then I saw Star Wars, Episode 3, and watched the fall of Anakin Skywalker. I followed this up by rewatching the original trilogy, my perspective altered by the Episode 3 experience. And I was humbled--not by the amazing production values as I have in the past--but of how Personal Character can be so, so fragile. The Star Wars saga is, under all the glitz, a story of passion, bad decisions, regret, and redemption. If only the acting and dialog lived up to the grand premise...but if you can just accept the characters as archetypes in our modern mythology and pretend they aren't really talking, then maybe you can see past it. I was unexpectedly deeply moved by the story, of an annoying-but-good kid full of promise ascending to the top, then crashing into a Hell of his own making, taking the hopes and dreams of not only the Galaxy with him, but of the people who were his closest friends and allies.
A note to myself: When momentously good things are happening in your life, it's more important than ever to maintain what you stand for, not what you hope to achieve or acquire. For me, that's maintaining the best possible relationships I can with the people in my life, to be a partner in achieving and sustaining that very value. It's easier to remember this when things are going bad; it's perhaps more difficult to act on it, but at least you know what you'd rather do. When things are going well, it is harder to see the line between self-empowerment and hubris.
I've been noticing a trend in many of my friends: they're ending one phase of their life, to start a new one that is "better". There's a feeling of optimism and renewal, the grim determination of post-bubble, post 9-11 survivalist thinking transmuted into desire to do something meaningful.
Po Bronson identified this trend a couple years ago in his book What Should I Do With My Life. It's an read that doesn't particularly go anywhere or give you a step-by-step. It doesn't make any grand claims or offer any profound insights. It's just the kind of book you read to trigger your own thoughts, sort of an "introspective spirit guide" to get you wandering on your own.
I wonder how common this is for Gen-Xers in their 30s...they've put in their dues, figured out what they're good at, and are ready to redirect their energy toward something that is more personally satisfying. Or it could just be that I tend to hang out with people who think like this. In other words: The training is over. We're ready to do something about ourselves to make the world rock a little more, free of the kind of crap that got us in the hole in the first place.
In the past, I think the "new phase" thing has been called a midlife crisis. Our generation grew up seeing the Boomers crash into theirs, desperately trying for a big course correction with kids, mortgage, and community in tow and not quite succeeding in making the turn. We decided we'd skate, surf, and slack instead. When we got into the job market, we went through an intense bubble-and-crash cycle to tempt then slap us upside the head. We thought we could rule-the-world-by-wire, and learned the hard way that to get anything done for sure, you need hard tangible assets, real numbers, and dedicated people to see things through. This reminds me a bit of McNamara's air war over Vietnam; it's a theme repeated throughout history. I believe Sun Tzu warns us of this very pitfall in The Art of War...wait, actually that was Vizzini in The Princess Bride:
You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is: Never get involved in a land war in Asia!, and only slightly less well known is this: Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!
But I digress...Along the lines of classic strategic thinking, Alen and I have finally culminated a discussion revolving around our creative work, Musashi's Book of Five Rings, and making a buck, over burgers at Ruby Tuesday:
In the past we've mistaken the Selling of the Way for the Way itself. In advertising, marketing, whatever we've been doing to make money: we've contextualized the job we're supposed to be doing. In advertising, for example, doing Nike ads that awe and inspire has a surface resemblance of the Way. There's the sense of having done something that's Good. However, this is not what we're supposed to be doing...it's a diversion from the path, because it is ultimately about Selling and Service. We need to get back on it, and start making again.
So I am inspired and happy to be back on that path. The difference between now and 8 years ago is that we've actually gotten some experience under our belt, slain some personal demons, and have personally confirmed what is Good For Us and what is Bullshit.
Coincidentally, I've just reread Neil Stephenson's Snow Crash. Plot aside, the ambiance of the characters functioning in a libertarian wonder/wasteland is still relevant for we who want to make things happen on our own terms by our own wits for the right reasons. Stephenson makes this theme a little more explicit in The Diamond Age: "how do you prevent your kids from becoming empty-headed tools?" And we see Stephenson bring it up again, as a character point, in Cryptonomicron. The specific passage eludes me, but there's the idea of "adaptability" that's at the heart of the Shaftoe clan. It's part Marine-think, part humorous acceptance of how crappy a hand Life can deal you. So you take it on, and do something stupendously unexpected and cool.
That's the way to do it.
It's been a pretty busy week...mostly work, doing ActionScript 2.0 programming. I've got a lot to catch up on:
I still need to write up my visit to Providence last week with me sis, complete with photos.
There's an update on the 10Games projects... the first game is out at www.ActiveEdge.com on the sidebar. I'm planning on dissecting the architecture of this Flash game in an online article.
The Interactive Media group is having its second meeting up at Manchester. Details to be found on the group wiki.
And there's all the personal chores, plus errands. And I still have to work for most of the weekend, so I'll probably not get as much done as I want.
This is a long, introspective post on personal happiness...I think. If you find long, introspective posts to be boring, go have a cookie or something instead!
...
I've been thinking about personal mottos for the past few days. Nothing! Zip! Bupkes! But today I took a trip to visit my sis in Providence. We also went out to eat at a 24-hour dim sum place and for bubble tea. Mmm! But the interesting event of the week occured when I got back in my car to head home. This is long, but I want to capture the memory while it's fresh...
On the drive home, I reflected on the warm feeling I held toward my family, and how I was looking forward to the challenge of self-inflicted behavior modification for the better. And I found it curious that I was calm about this. I've done it before, I reminded myself. Why shouldn't I be calm?
As I continued to drive, I kept awake by listening to popular music on the radio at high volume and high speed, singing (badly) along with the songs that I knew and paying attention to the lyrics. This was a new behavior, I noted to myself...; I usually don't hear lyrics in music. It must be due to a recent encounter with a karaoke game in which I could see how badly I was singing due to the vocal-tracking capabilities of the software. A slightly embarassing, but compelling experience. An experience that had, I realized, attuned my senses to something I hadn't been aware of before. With some lessons, perhaps actually getting off my butt and learning to play an instrument, it seemed possible that I could make some improvements in this area, and enjoy it. The initial embarassment of singing karaoke hadn't killed me. And while I hadn't found that I was the next American Idol, my outlook toward music had been changed, and possibilities that hadn't occured to me were now open. This was a wonderful thing, and I noted to myself that continued momentum in my new activities would lead to further revelation. This I found a bit more exciting, but nevertheless I remained somewhat calm. After all, I reasoned, this is something that I've known before about myself, when I've remembered to remember it.
But my gut was telling me there was something different about this chain of events. I've remade myself before, it's true, by jumping tracks to new careers with new directions. I've also benefited from experience before, thinking that everything somehow comes together and pays off in the end. However, I've been bothered by the sense that despite all this positiveness, my purpose was too random, without direction, and possibly self-defeating; an intricate form of fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
At that moment, the DJ on the radio was winding down the newly-annointed "Best New Act of 2005", Maroon5. I had been enjoying their boppy Jamiroquai-like style, and was impressed by how tight the production was without being too mechanical. But of course, I thought, there are excellent musicians and sound techs who labor unknown, whose special job it was to create and execute at a high level. Not unlike graphic designers and illustrators who create compelling new visual forms under the direction of corporate marketing, or the hoards of nameless experts employed by top film and video game companies to put substance behind the fantasy of a director. I reflexively felt a twinge of regret, having left that world behind to pursue an independent career free of management. Floating.
The next song was "Let's Go Crazy", by Prince. To lead it in, the DJ directed our attention to how "Purple Rain" made Prince the top grossing musical act of 1984. And again with Prince's 2004 tour, he was again as the top grossing musical act 20 years later. And then the song begins...you remember it, I hope:
Dearly beloved
We are gathered here today
2 get through this thing called life
Electric word life
It means forever and that's a mighty long time
But I'm here 2 tell u
There's something else
The afterworld
A world of never ending happiness
U can always see the sun, day or night
To be honest, I didn't in actuality hear that much of the lyrics (thank you, Mr. Gore, for inventing the Internet so I could look up Prince lyrics). I just love the way the song opens. But I heard the word "happiness", and I was feeling the music, and I was reminded that this is the way I want to feel. To create. To write. Now I was feeling inspired...but what was stopping me from following through?
Randomly, I thought of T.H. White's "The Sword in the Stone", which is the first volume of his Arthurian epic "The Once and Future King". "The Sword in the Stone" was one of my favorite books when I was 12 or 13, because of the playfulness of the language, which I then hadn't realized was allowed when writing grand legend. I was particularly delighted with the depiction of the future King Arthur, who as a young squire is called Wart by his betters. Wart is a pretty dull boy, but under Merlin's tutelage he is transformed into various animals to experience their daily lives. He develops a broad perspective and understanding as a result of this. By the end of the book, all his experiences whisper to him as he performs the sword-pulling act. He is not transformed into the heroic figure at that moment, mind you. He's still clumsy Wart, but it's enough to get the job done.
It's enough!
Through this, I realized that I know my default motto after all: "You can do anything you set your mind to." My body of experience and flexibility in shifting my perspective make this possible. There are problems, though...I could concentrate and figure my way past obstacles, when I really wanted to do so. My approach may not have been the most efficient, easy, or accepted way, but it was my way. What I found depressing, ironically, was lack of efficiency, frustration of dealing with material and personal obstacles, and a lack of acceptance of my way by other people. Thus, it was not a formula for happiness...it was a reminder of endless struggle.
However, I have two things going for me: I can shift my approach and perspective at the drop of a hat, and I can see chains of patterns in just about every experience I have. These are bizarre skills that don't categorize readily, but they are universal problem solvents that puts doing anything if I set my mind to it into the realm of possibility. This is, I believe, who I am.
And you know what? Knowing who I am makes me HAPPY. It took a drive late at night listening to the radio, plus a lot of random interaction with people over the past few weeks, to trigger this. Knowing who I am goes beyond mere labeling...knowing who I am gives me the strength to face challenges straight on. And in an odd way, it removes feelings of guilt from not being "efficient enough", "competitive enough", or "good enough"...there are ways around these shortcomings, and I know I can find either a workaround or a person to address them. Because after all, that's "who I am, and what I do".
It still doesn't solve the "problem" of what I should be doing with my life, but knowing who I am gives me an incredible anchor to ground myself to, and I think that this is an important turning point. Who knows what I'll think two weeks or two years from now, but right now...I feel pretty good. The moment must be marked.
"You're a libertarian!" someone exclaimed. I wasn't sure if that was true, so I had to find out where I fell on the political spectrum.
The check: Taking the world's smallest political quiz, I scored as a "liberal libertarian".
The double-check: Taking the political compass quiz, I scored as "left 1, libertarian 3" (as opposed to right/authoritarian), which seems to confirm the results of quiz 1.
If I were to sum up how I feel about things, it would be thus:
Keep the government out of my face. Provide basic services for a stable society. Don't legislate responsibility away from the individual. Don't let fear/uncertainty/doubt lead to infringement on our Constitutional rights.
On the other hand, I don't entirely trust people to be honest about their motivations, so government oversight may be necessary if they have the power to legislate. A free market economy might have a similar corrective effect on the most blatant abuses of corporate power, but I haven't thought too much on this.
I came across this link via a friend. It tells this parable:
The Wolves Within
An old Grandfather, whose grandson came to him with anger at a schoolmate who had done him an injustice, said, "Let me tell you a story. I too, at times, have felt a great hate for those that have taken so much, with no sorrow for what they do. But hate wears you down, and does not hurt your enemy. It is like taking poison and wishing your enemy would die. I have struggled with these feelings many times."
He continued, "It is as if there are two wolves inside me; one is good and does no harm. He lives in harmony with all around him and does not take offense when no offense was intended. He will only fight when it is right to do so, and in the right way."
"But the other wolf, ah! He is full of anger. The littlest thing will set him into a fit of temper. He fights everyone, all the time, for no reason. He cannot think because his anger and hate are so great. It is hard to live with these two wolves inside me, for both of them try to dominate my spirit."
The boy looked intently into his Grandfather's eye and asked, "Which one wins, Grandfather?"
The Grandfather solemnly said, "The one I feed."
This struck a chord. If this was Vacation Bible School, the easy intepretation would be "Don't feed the angry one. Peace out." Indeed, this is what I started to write. However, it occurs to me that the two wolves represent a spectrum of action; there are perhaps times when you need to call on that action. In the case of self-defense, for example. Or when there clearly is evil afoot, as clear as we can see at any given time.
So I suppose the corollary is, "You are what you eat" :-)
I recently finished the design and coding of a CES kiosk piece for one of ActiveEdge's clients. The latest post-project ritual is to drive up to the nearest Cinnabon to indulge in one of their freshly baked sticky buns. It's a treat because we have to drive up to Manchester to get one...there's no local Cinnabon franchise (in Nashua).
During the last Cinnabon summit, I had the opportunity to talk with AE's creative director Scott about his take on life, achievement, and getting closer to personal goals. His advice to me this year is to own it, and not be afraid of shining brightly.
On reflection, I do have a tendency to not want to be in the limelight or out "in front" of an organization. Maybe I am a little bit afraid of it. I can't think of a good reason why I should be. It may be more of a lack of understanding myself, of what "it" is, like that moment in City Slickers when Jack Palance's character tells Billy Crystal the Secret of Life:
Palance: "You city folk -- you're all the same. You spend fifty weeks of the year getting knots tied in your rope and expect twoweeks out here will straighten them out. Do you know what the secret of life is? This." (He holds up his index finger)
Crystal: "Your finger?"
"No. One thing, just one thing. You stick to that and everything else don't mean squat."
"What's the one thing?"
"That's what you gotta figure out."
I have no idea what that "one thing" is for me, though I've been trying to figure it out for ages. It's somewhere between new media, video games, and teaching. But even before this, I need to have the gumption to put myself in the position of actually following through with execution. I don't believe I understood that completely until Scott's conversation that night. Cinnabon, I thank you!
I was looking for a Screen Designers Guild online, just to see if such a thing existed. Nope! The idea of having an alliance of like-minded screen artisans is appealing, and it seems less egotistical than having something like "David Seah and Associates". On the other hand, shying away from self-promotion doesn't do me any favors either.
On the other hand, at this stage it's more important to find independent individuals who share a similar goal: to create meaningful artifacts (digital or otherwise) of lasting quality and purpose. I've come to realize I have more of an artisan philosophy toward creating things, though I seem to lack the actual impulse to create in isolation.
That said, I just realized that the most effective way to create that impulse is to inject myself back into a place where the demands are immediate rather than words in a blog.
Next Steps:
1. methodology statement
2. cast methdology net
3. work work work
