Stephen Hackett over at 512 Pixels runs a monthly feature called Old Mac of the Month in which guest writers reminisce about an old Macintosh model of their choosing. This month, yours truly wrote a piece about my family’s first Mac, the Macintosh Iivx.
So, I guess that I am kind of published now.
Music was once, universally, a shared experience.
By technological necessity — i.e. a lack of recording equipment, distribution, and playback devices — it had to be. Even as technology evolved to allow people to experience music independent of others, the nature of sound caused one person’s music to become another’s. Sometimes this was good. Nights spent with my high school friends listening to albums we loved come to mind. Sometimes this was bad. Think of the asshole who lived above you who insists on playing his shitty music at 3 AM.
Then came the Sony Walkman. For the first time, music could be entirely portable and, more important, entirely confined to the experience of one individual. The iPod and other MP3 players have since continued and accelerated this trend. It’s neither good nor bad, but there is no questioning that the shift has occurred. Think about it: When was the last time you and someone else sat around and listened to music? I mean, really listened to it instead of just playing something as background noise. It’s probably been awhile. And how many people do you see out in public with headphones in their ears?
Music is often still a shared experience, though the sharing — both in method and type — has changed dramatically due to the advent of digital music and the development of the internet, which allows for it to be shared instantly with people thousands of miles apart. Twenty years ago, you found out about a band through word-of-mouth, a music magazine, or maybe by seeing them open for another band that you paid to see. If you were especially interested, you’d go to the local music shop and risk $10-20 on the hope that the band’s recorded output would be good. Today, by contrast, the listener has thousands upon thousands of artists available to you for sampling with but a few search keywords.
It is also much easier today to read writing about music. Enter the linked article: “Where We Will All Be Received” by Nell Boeschenstein. I’m embarrassed to admit that I can’t remember how I stumbled upon it but stumble upon it I did. The article is fantastic by any measure, the writing strong and the backstory — a sister’s struggle with cancer treatment — poignant. Great writing connects, and article this one is no exception: Reading it made me reflect on my own experiences with the album.
I used to hate Paul Simon’s Graceland. I thought the African rhythms and drums were stupid. I also disliked the production: “Too 80’s,” I thought. But then, Inspection 12 — one of my favorite bands as a youth — covered “You Can Call Me Al” on their album Get Rad. It was brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Everything about it worked; from the acoustic guitar interpretation of the song’s signature intro riff to the dramatically better rendition of the “Amen and Hallelujah!” line before the final chorus, the song was fantastic. It’s common sense that a song doesn’t go from shitty to amazing just by being covered by another artist. There has to be a seed of greatness in the original tune that the interpretating artist can nurture, shape, and refine into a new (and better) song. Inspection 12’s cover got me thinking: Maybe the Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al” isn’t so bad after all?
That thought remained frozen for years; it thawed a bit when I bought two individual tracks from Graceland (“You Can Call Me Al,” logically, and “Boy in the Bubble”), but I never listened to the album as a whole, even after it became part of my music collection as one of a large stack of vinyl that my dad gave me.
A year or so ago, my friend Rachel was in town for a visit, and we were at my place hanging out and listening to music. She dug through my vinyl collection and stopped at Graceland; “We have to listen to this!” So we did.
As the album played, it started to make sense to me in the way that art can when you experience it with someone who loves it. Rachel loved Graceland. But her love for it seemed to be less about the individual songs and more about the feelings and memories that she experienced while listening to it.
I remember Rachel telling me that she loved the song “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes” in particular because it reminded her of her father. I don’t remember the exact story, or even generally why this song that reminded her of him, but the details of her memory aren’t nearly as important as the simple idea that music is powerful and life-changing. It provides comfort and familiarity during times of stress and tension and brings joy when joy is needed and much appreciated. In Rachel’s case, Paul Simon’s album will, for the rest of her life, remind her of the times when, as a kid, she would sit with him and listen to it. That’s an incredible thing.
We all have our own Gracelands — those works of art that deliver a powerful contact high of combined memory and emotion. We should treasure them and keep them safe; and, like Rachel and Boeschenstein did, we should share them with each other for one reason: Music — even in the era of iPods and headphones — offers people, whatever their differences, the rare place Where We Will All Be Received.
I mentioned my new iMac to a co-worker today, and we discussed an interesting phenomenon that we each have noticed in ourselves: Post-Purchase Guilt. Maybe you suffer from it too? There’s a pretty simple test. Ask yourself: After a purchase, (especially a large one) do you feel the incessant need to justify said purchase to both yourself and others?
I’ll demonstrate.
The computer is amazing; that fact isn’t in question. Still, a tiny voice in my head reminds me of the money I spent yesterday that now can’t sit in my savings account for some future, unforeseen disaster. Another voice (or maybe it’s the same one?) tells me that I didn’t really need to buy a new computer when my early 2008 MacBook Pro was still chugging along.
But still … this machine! It’s a fucking beautiful, functional work of art.
Photos pop. The web experience is amazing. I can work on web and graphic design projects without hunching over a (relatively) tiny 17” laptop. Even my speakers — the Harmon Kardon SoundSticks that I’ve had since freshman year of college — sound better next to the iMac. Don’t ask me to explain that one.
And I haven’t even mentioned how a bigger screen will help when I record in Garageband.
It all seems so logical, yet I’ve spent nearly an entire post justifying how I decided to spend my own money. This phenomenon isn’t even restricted to tech purchases. I had similar thoughts when I bought new skates a couple of months ago, despite the fact that my current pair was messing up my ankle and hockey is something I do more often than I care to think about. Same goes for the couch I bought on sale on January to compliment the only living room seating I had in my place, a $400 sofa that I’ve had since college.
Time eventually takes care of the guilt, but it would be nice to actually enjoy large purchases when I make them.
Yesterday, I took my first step towards reducing the obscene amount of money I pay to Comcast every month for service I don’t really:
I’m not a Comcast hater, necessarily — I have no major complaints about my internet service. It’s fast, reliable, and the data cap doesn’t come close to affecting me at my level of data consumption. The only complaint I do have in that area is the modem I now, as of a recent price increase, have the privilege of paying $7 monthly to rent. No longer. I ordered an identical model for $51.99 + $2.99 shipping from Newegg.com. For the math-challenged out there, that price means that my investment will have broken even after 7.85 months. Give or take. Ultimately, I don’t blame anyone but myself for the money I’ve been wasting for years, but it still stings to think about.
The real waste of money for me is cable TV. My issues with it aren’t especially unique or different from the complaints that myriad commentators have made on the hundreds of times before, so I’ll keep it short:
It’s that simple. The television portion of my Comcast bill is about $130. For that money, I’d be much better off renting or buying new episodes of the shows I enjoy from iTunes for $2 a pop (or 99 cents via AppleTV). If you do the math, I could buy 65 episodes a month for what I’m paying currently. Ouch.
After the NHL playoffs end, I’m turning in my cable box. We’ll see how it goes.
Confession: I am a perfectionist.
Not all the time, and not to the extreme, but the thought that “It’s just not good enough” torments me more often than I’d like.
Too often, expectations of initial perfection cripple me; they prevent me from seeing a project or post beyond an initial draft or sketch because I am disappointed by what I produced initially. Countless ideas of interest have faded from memory because I started writing something and never finished.
But, finally, the metaphorical light above my head blinked on: It — whatever it is that I’m building, be it a song, a post, a project at work, whatever — doesn’t have to be great at first. It doesn’t even have to be good. All it needs is at least a kernel of goodness in it, the indescribable but always palpable something that makes a project worth continuing.
I think that it’s imperative to have high standards for yourself and the things you create. But you shouldn’t stop doing something just because your first attempt didn’t live up to expectations (or even just plain sucked).
As long as you see at least that kernel of greatness, you should keep at it. Revise, revise, and revise some more. Sculpt. Shape. Throw out the bad stuff. Be willing to reconsider your entire approach, if you have to. But, whatever you do, don’t stop. Take a break (or many) if you need to, but don’t stop. Keep at it.
What you come up with might surprise you.
Postscript: I started this post as a draft earlier this week. Coincidentally, I stumbled across “Let the Fear Out” by Justin Williams, which links to another article titled “Scared” by Phillip Bowden. Both writers make the point I’m trying to make (and probably better): Whatever it is you are trying to do, just do it (sorry Nike). Don’t let your expectations of perfection prevent you from eventually creating something great.
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Jack Delano - Chopping cotton on rented land near White Plains, Greene County, Ga. (Farm Security Administration, 1941)
A lot of the color photos I’ve seen from before the 1950s strike me as stiff, over-worked, or so experimental as to be a “Hello, World.” They’re cool from a technical standpoint, but they often don’t tell you any more about the subject than a well-produced monochrome image would.
Given the costliness of the film and the complexity of the process, it’s easy to understand why early color photographers had to be choosy about picking the subjects and conditions that their camera could capture well (rather than, as is ideally the case, working the other way around).
But, sometimes, an old color photo brings a distant image to life and produces something kind of special. The best ones make their subjects and their surroundings seem far more real and intimate.
I especially agreed with this passage:
When done well, these images help repudiate the implicit modern reading that pre-color photography realistically captured the simple but alien lives of people who were neither as complex, interesting, nor sophisticated as we CMYK people are.
In college, I remember coming across a huge online archive of photos like these of Americans in the 1930’s. Last week, links to the same collection worked their way around the Internet (or at least the small corner of it that I frequent).
The photos struck me exactly as Merlin describes: I realized that people of the past were actually people like me. Sure, they had no idea what an iPhone was, nor did they know a lot of the other things that define modern life. But they sure as hell loved, grieved, got pissed, ate and enjoyed food, got drunk, got married, had children (unintentionally and intentionally) and did all the other things that have defined what it means to be human for hundreds of years.
via John Gruber at Daring Fireball.
