Category Archives: books - Page 4

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The opinion is beginning to form in the back of my mind that perhaps books should have labels not unlike drugs. “Caution: this book has been known to derail creative thoughts and cause endless anguish.” Or maybe “Do not operate recording equipment after reading.” Maybe I should learn not to mix manifestos with deep creative work. Timing is everything.

Last week I finished Jaron Lanier’s “You Are Not A Gadget” and now I’m reading “Reality Hunger” by David Shields. These are not the books for me to read while doing creative work. Especially when I already charted my course. They certainly would have served my process last summer or (likely) in the coming hot season. Both books beg the question of innovation and look critically at the work being done by creative people today. In “Reality Hunger” there’s the sneaking feeling that too many people are losing sight of where we are culturally and the impact that art is making right now. It’s a great book, by the way. I don’t know that it serves the reader when read front to back but given its design one could easily pick it up, flip to a page, and get something from it. I’m at the 80% mark and would recommend it.

What my reaction to these books has done is place an additional burden on my current process. I’m suddenly very aware of what I’m doing and whether or not it is bringing anything new to the table. Everything is overly self-conscious and I have deep fears about what that will mean to the work. I probably should have picked up a novel instead, but the fact of the matter is that I’ve been waiting for books like this. It’s troubling to need something that gets in the way, in the short term anyway.

The Things We Love

Everything changes. The things that we love today are gone so quickly. And by “things” and “love” I mean the pastimes and activities that we use to define ourselves. So much can be communicated about one’s character by simply giving the title of a favorite book or stating a passion for a particular kind of music. These are the loves that fill in the gaps. The thoughts that cement the routine together. Certain songs on the way to work or a book after dinner gives meaning to the mundane. To see the way they have changed and will change can be disconcerting.

I have a library. It isn’t an Umberto Eco library but it’s a pain to move. I love books. I usually can’t leave a book store without dropping $30 to $50. In a good book store like Prairie Lights in Iowa City, Iowa I can walk in and simply let the shelves speak to me. There is always something. I reach out to the shelf and pick it up. It’s there in my hand. I can feel the weight. The physical presence of the object tells me things. I know how many pages are in it and can guess at how long it will take me to read it. I can flip through it and skim a bit. There are margins for doodling and, after I have purchased it, a receipt to fold up and use as a bookmark. But it won’t be like this for long.

When I was in high school in the late eighties and early nineties, things had already changed in the way I listened to music twice. Music went from vinyl records to cassettes and then from cassettes to compact discs. (Note: I’m leaving out the almighty 8-track because, well, we should pretend that some things didn’t happen.) There are some records that by the time I was a senior I had purchased three times! And with each change in medium, something was gained and something was lost.

A record had liner notes. There was a jacket with a huge piece of cover art. The art said nothing about the quality of the music inside, but it was an integral part of the experience. People born after 1980 will just have to take my word for it. Records also enforced time limits. Only so many songs could be on a side. And there were two sides! An A side and a B side. Most of the heavy hitting material was on the top of the album with some often times less heard material on the back. So many great songs were relegated to the B side. I was going to say that the entire B side of Synchronicity by The Police was excellent stuff but I think that that particular album reaches into the future. I’ll get back to that momentarily. The medium dictated form and forced artists to make decisions about their material. A record was a piece of art because of what it was physically.

But records could be scratched and broken. They could melt. And they couldn’t be played in cars. Enter the cassette. There was still some cover art, but it was all but lost. It’s impossible to appreciate a Yes album cover shrunk to that size. It may as well not be there. There was still an A and a B side so the album format was maintained. It was the first step to making music portable and giving us choices. We could listen to a particular tape in the car or on a portable stereo anywhere. We gained something important and lost something important. But it was nothing compared to the next step.

My first CD player was a Sony portable unit with detachable speakers. It had dual cassette decks for making mix tapes and it was awesome. By the time CDs had come into vogue, my record collecting days were over. I had piles and piles of cassettes that littered my vintage ‘84 Ford Escort. I was even beginning to lose some interest in things that made records so important in terms of form. A cassette can be run in fast forward to skip a song. Skipping a song on a record is work. Skipping a song on a CD is nothing more than a single click of a button. The attraction was strong.

But there was another button on my CD player that changed everything for all time: shuffle. Yes, shuffle. I could click a button and it would play the CD in a random order. I didn’t have to listen to it as the artist intended. The machine could mix it up so that it was new every time. The implications of this simple action are huge. It negates years of experience in ordering tracks for dramatic effect. Imagine if The Beatles had put the tracks of Sgt. Pepper in alphabetical order. When I was first playing around with the shuffle function, it was hard to know why artists wouldn’t start doing just that. I believe that this has led to the front loading of albums in a shameless sense. Most albums today have the singles dumped up front and everything else just follows.

The other enormous change was having only one side. Looking back for a moment to Synchronicity, I think that this could very well be the perfect CD. The tracks flow across sides beautifully and since almost every song on that album was a single, having it run straight through or in a random order produces excellent results. But having a single side and treating an album as a collection of songs exposes the filler tracks for what they are. This should raise the bar for song writing, but sadly (or not), CDs weren’t the end of the road.

Today we have fully digital music that requires no physical media at all. Why buy a CD when I can jump online, click once, and have it on my iPod? Nothing to clutter my shelves, no broken jewel cases, and no plastic platters to crack. Oh, and none of those filler tracks if I don’t want them. That’s right, I don’t have to be forced to choose between buying the full item or the singles that a label chooses to sell. I can take any song or songs I want and leave the rest to rot.

What has digital music brought me? Well, for starters, two weeks worth of music on a device that is the size of a pack of cards, acts as a phone, checks my email, and keeps my to do list all while playing video golf. I can have an enormous collection and order it any way I like. My music is entirely about me.

What have I lost? In some sense, the intent of the artist. There’s no limit to how many songs can be in a collection. Album art is all but dead. There are no cool liner notes with inside jokes and crazy nicknames. I don’t have to abide by the order the artist applies to the songs. She may as well not bother. I have also lost context. Is a gentle introduction with a delicate guitar figure going to do well on the heels of “The Ace of Spades”? What is it doing there anyway?

Has any of this ruined music for me? No, but it has changed it dramatically. The evolution of the media that brings me my favorite songs has forever changed my relationship to them. There is no judgement made here, it’s simply changed.

What does any of this have to do with books? I ordered an eBook reader. My reading will no longer be tethered to a specific physical object. An entire library could someday fit in that device. I won’t know how many pages are in a book anymore because I will be able to change the font size on my reader. Pages will cease to have meaning. Will the focus shift to words? Can I retrain myself to think that way? How will publishers present this to me? Will the cover of the book slowly die? Will I read more because I will have one-click access to books? Will I miss the turning of the pages the way I missed the crackle of the needle on turntable only to have it pass away into memory as something that was important only once it was gone? What will the eBook do to the form and format of the novel or books in general? Will it destroy our notion of the book the way mp3 files have killed the album?

The changes to my music collection happened slowly over time and more importantly, when I wasn’t paying attention. With eBooks I am hyperaware of what it means to make this change. And I care.

We change. So do the things we love.

showing up

It’s been weeks since I raved about The War of Art by Steven Pressfield so I need to ramp it up again. I read a lot and there have been many books that have impacted the way I work but never has one gotten me into the habit of working like this one. The motivational force it contains and unleashes on the unwitting artist is impressive.

I get excited about my studio time throughout my day. On my drive to work I listen to what I did the night before. At lunch, I edit and review and journal about it. On the way home, I visualize my session and think deeply about what I want to accomplish. But with the boy in bed and the day’s chores all done it is still difficult to drag myself into the studio and drop down into the headspace needed for the energizing but draining process. It is so much easier to plop down on the couch with a book or the endless timesuck that is the Internet and accomplish nothing. But the passage from The War of Art that affected me most deeply leaps to mind and literally saves my day:

A professional always shows up.

I think about how tired I was that morning when I got out of bed. Maybe I was a little on the ill side. The urge to call in might have been there, but I didn’t. I got dressed, drove my car to my job, and went to work. I was a professional. And I owe my creative work the same level of respect afforded to my colleagues at my day job. I have to show up for me.

pickin' and grinnin'

I’m certain that the amount of effort and mental fortitude required to avoid the many and varied distractions available to the modern person have a lot to do with why so many projects don’t get finished or even started. It isn’t easy to close the web browser and open a new empty document or work on that painting that has been languishing on the easel for a month and taunting its creator. How many songs are hummed while mowing the lawn and never get written because someone posted another “How well do you know that guy you went to high school with but haven’t spoken to in over a decade” quizzes on Facebook?

The difference between a novelist and a guy with a story idea is hundreds of hours of work and a finished product that can be pointed to and shared. Well, that and the immense satisfaction that comes from completing something that wasn’t demanded by anyone but himself. Is there anything better than that?

I’m not an extrinsically motivated person. The carrot and the stick are wasted on me. If the desire to do something doesn’t start inside of me, there’s little hope for it. That’s true in any part of my life and I think it’s true for most people. But if we don’t show up, all of that desire is for naught.

And showing up? It feels good. When I leave my studio at the end of even the worst session I still feel better than if I had gone to bed without putting in the time. None of it is wasted when it’s spent developing my craft. The same can’t be said of the myriad toys and silliness that pass for relaxation.

feasting

The week has passed with Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast on the nightstand. I find myself going back to books about the early 20th century and the Americans who flocked to Europe when fall comes. Those writers and their romantic expatriate lives in the smokey, booze filled cafes in Paris are enough to make anyone pine for a time in which he did not and could not live. On this reading, one of dozens, the book speaks to me differently. I find myself wondering “how does the math work out?”

What a horrible thing to think while reading about Hemingway’s days spent working in and wandering around Paris at a cultural flashpoint. But it’s where my mind goes. How did he pay for all of it? There is mention of journalism and all of its sordidness. There was the selling of some stories. But how did it work? I’m sure I don’t know and just as certain that there is probably a piece out there that would tell me with little effort on my part but instead I close my eyes before bed and wonder how I would do what he did. At the time, he had a wife and son and so do I. Too much logistics and not enough inspiration.

This wasn’t why I picked up the book. The desire was to draw parallels between his way of working and mine. To try and find an appreciation for a man whose method and ethos I prize but whose work I have never been able to love. It’s something I come back to every now and again in the hopes that I might be able to make it work. I can feel the failure already, but reading it is its own reward. It’s wonderful to crawl inside someone else’s mind and watch their life unfold. Memoirs of artists are fascinating because of that explanation. It’s a window into the why and the how of the what.

shiny

Paying for my overpriced cup of burnt coffee with the recharged gift card that I use to maintain my lunchtime coffee and sanity budget, I think about the “coffice” culture that has come along with the advent of portable computing. I remember studying in coffee shops and even sleeping in them occasionally in school, but with the arrival of the laptop and the ubiquitous corporate coffee, complete with wifi, the illusion of the cafe culture is almost a caricature of what I imagine those writers lived. But it’s a pale imitation to my mind. Patrons interact rarely. The tables for two usually seat one person and a bag. Faces lit by web browsers, email, and millions of social networking toys rarely glance at one another. I think of Hemingway laughing aloud at a memory and being looked at by the waiter. I wonder how often he engaged in conversation with other patrons. Or did he simply stick his face in his notebook or newspaper? I would like to think that we’re not all that far apart, but a nagging feeling tells me that I’m a far cry from some of those ideals though I may be closer to some.

There’s a wanderlust that comes when I read Hemingway. I wish from time to time that I could break out and roam the way he did and force the math to work. Grab my wife and son and rush off to Europe to be in the center of it all. Not that there is a center anymore. At least not like there was then. And it’s that kind of a center that I would like to experience at some point in my life. But I’m content as long as the work is getting done. My studio may only be a spare bedroom, but all things considered, I’ll take it over Paris.

An eighth song was added to my collection last night. I’m sorry to say that I’m getting quite attached to these songs and the way they flow together. I hope that someone enjoys them as much as I do, even if it’s not in the same way. The week of October 12th is the most likely release date.

software and doors

Friday night we went on the traditional Buy The New Apple OS run complete with dinner. My son loves the Apple store and my dad loves being a nerd. Me? I’m innocently stuck in the middle. We hit the store and my dad immediately went to grab the Snow Leopard and I went to “look” at Logic 9 to see if it was worthy of an upgrade (as if the package could tell me things that the demos couldn’t). My wife looked at me sideways and said “you know they keep it behind the counter.” She makes things like this sound so dirty. The Orange Shirted Nerd (OSN) knew what was going on merely by the look on her face and he swooped in to save me. After hearing those wonderful words “oh just buy it and get it over with!” (she’s too good to me) he dispatched a Blue Shirted Nerd (BSN) to fetch the appropriate upgrade box and I was set. Very pleased was I.

After putting our son to bed, we retired to the couch for some serious upgrade lovin’. Snow Leopard installed on my MacBook Pro in no time. It took a little longer on her MacBook but in the end it was all good. No issues with the install and everything worked just as well as, if not better than, it did when we started. It seems a little faster as it moves around, but the true test will come in the studio tonight.

Then there was the Logic 9 upgrade. If I could do one thing it would be to make the install faster. It was an overnight deal and when I awoke to the sound of my son in the living room asking aloud “computer doin’?” I realized the biggest flaw in the installer is the fact that the only button on the screen reads “CANCEL.” Of course a complete overhaul of the installer wouldn’t have saved me from the evil “are you sure you want to restart” prompt on the screen when I arrived in the living room. Ah the power button. So shiny! So attractive to little fingers! Thank goodness it takes more than one missle key to make that happen. The point of all of this is that the install takes forever so take a book. Also, I shouldn’t leave my laptop on the coffee table.

huh. sidewalk.

More on Logic this week as I revel in the orgy of new guitar setups and effects. In the few minutes I gave it this weekend there was just too much tasty goodness. I am optimistic that the new stuff will inspire some sort of creative weirdness.

I read Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity by Hugh MacLeod this weekend. He’s the guy that does all of those really cool business card cartoons. I followed his blog for a while years ago, but sort of lost it in the shuffle of my move to Texas. He has a lot of ineresting stuff to say in this book that comes out of his blog. It’s another book that says a lot of things that you already know but his experience lends it a lot of credibility. There’s this confirmatory feel to the book that gave me the sense that I might be less nuts than I think. I need to burn through it again, but it’s a good read and is worth picking up.

That will likely be the last book on the subject of creativity that I read for a while. I’ve read two really good ones and I think I’ll stop there before I hit a bad one (again).

We picked up a closet door for my studio last night so that I can finally cover up all of the stuff I keep in there. It might also keep little hands out of trouble. There is something about a dedicated creative space that is very special and when everything about it is just right, it’s hard to justify not spending more time in it. I think about this a lot, so there will be more about it later. Maybe after I get the closet door hung.