Active Goals vs. Passive Goals

June 30th, 2009

I’m a list maker.

(My favorite place for a list is the back of a recycled envelope. John, I count my blessings for knowing you.)

Betimes, I write lists of things I wish to have:

In 2 days, I’ll fly back to Canada, and begin the next chapter of my life. As I sit and draft a list of goals, it strikes me that I’d be much better served with active goals instead of passive goals.

“To have” goals promote a scarcity mentality.
“To do” goals promote an abundance mentality.

My life will not be wasted collecting tokens of a socially acceptable existence.

Allow me to Rephrase

I want to have a blog.
I want to write essays, explore and share my ideas.

I want to have a car.
I want to go places and do things: camp, hike, gig, roadtrip, visit friends.

I want to have a computer, software, gear, a band, an album.
I want to create sounds that make me hysterically joyful.
I want to give people a reason to dance. (And yes, I want to dance with them.)

I want to have a job.
I want to do exciting, meaningful things with my time.
I want to shine light.

I want to have a partner.
I want experience exciting things with my partner.

Go, Do, Meet People, Create Remarkable Moments

Let my adventures motivate and justify my necessities and acquisitions.

A loose abstract of my goals for the next chapter:

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Exposure + Compensation

June 15th, 2009

I continue to think a lot about music and money. How do we determine value for the creative energy, the technical work, the stories told, the physical product or the ones and zeroes.

Yesterday I was thinking about exposure and obscurity.

If listeners are going to take your music anyway, why not give it freely?

But isn’t that that completely defeatist?

How should a musician earn a living if they give their work away for free?

This requires the faith and assumption that with the momentum of widespread exposure will come licensing for film, television, commercials and video games. And with that added exposure, will come more opportunities to play larger shows which earn more money.

AND that there are enthusiastic true fans that will support your work because they believe in compensation for creative work that enriches their lives.

This is a dream.

Should being deemed a dream inherently disqualify such a goal?

I think not.

Tricky Business

I’m not trying to alienate any friends who don’t want to give their work away for free. Your work has value! My musings are not to imply that it does not.

I read an interesting NYTimes article about professional illustrators rebuking Google’s request for pro bono designs.

I see their point. Google has a lot to gain by crowdsourcing, and dangling the exposure carrot. How much conversion traffic would an artist receive from designing a Google Chrome skin?

It’s not that I think musicians shouldn’t be compensated for their music. My frustration stems from the disconnect in the industry where the men in suits (loan sharks) are compensated in place of the artist.

I love to hear of artists who are capable of paying off FACTOR and making ends meet. (And you can listen to all of Metric’s latest album, streamed from their website.)

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Warbreaker & Battling Obscurity over Piracy

June 14th, 2009

Brandon Sanderson has just released a fantasy novel, Warbreaker, available simultaneously in print (published by TOR) and as a free PDF.

He writes:

My biggest challenge as an author is obscurity. I believe in my novels, and believe that if people read them, they will want to read and buy more of them. I believe that readers like to own books and, yes, even like to buy them specifically to support authors they want to write more books.

This resonates with me, especially as I consider how I want to release my music.

For a creator lacking the momentum of industry cred, the doors are closed. Historically, you would need to fluke into the right place at the right time. Take it up the right orifice by the right person. How dreadfully unpleasant.

Exposure is the door-opener.

And with virtually free online distribution, it is a door we can open for ourselves.

[And save the indie artist's ass. Figuratively.]

Backstory: Who is this Sanderson guy?

I used to read fantasy obsessively: C.S. Lewis, then Tolkien, and many more. Then I found Robert Jordan’s A Wheel of Time. Fantastic books. Many characters and plot lines. But I was struggling to keep it all straight. I set the series on the shelf to wait for it to finish.

Sadly, Mr. Jordan passed away before finishing book 12, what he promised would be the final installment in the Wheel of Time. Fortunately for fans (and the Wheel of Time), Mr. Jordan was able to leave his wife (and editor) with enough information, notes and dictations, that the series could be finished by someone else.

Enter Brandon Sanderson, the someone else that was selected with this task. I had never read any Sanderson (or even heard of him) but I’ve been enjoying his blog, and following development on WoT, as well as hearing more about his process as an author. He was even kind enough to exchange a few emails with me.

I’ve been loving Warbreaker. It’s the first fantasy I’ve picked up in a long time. And by picked up, I suppose I mean opt+cmd+down arrowed, but hey, you know what I meant. And if you didn’t, my Mac key commands probably didn’t help.

Warbreaker has witty characters. This suits me fine; my memory of fantasy is that characters (and authors) take themselves much too seriously. It’s a fine line: too much buffoonery, and you lose any sense of of the epic. Sanderson makes it work by giving the irony to his characters. For example, there is a god character who doesn’t believe in his own divinity.

I love that Sanderson has been totally open with his process, and shared drafts from the various stages of Warbreaker’s development.

The free PDF plan has worked on me. I’m converted. Were I back in the land of milk, honey, limitless bandwidth and REASONABLY PRICED-BOOKS, I’d pick this up in a second. And I won’t hesitate to support him in the future.

Not only because my eyes hurt from PDF-reading.

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Reflections on Welcome Flat Hut

June 4th, 2009

Tiny Joel crossing one of many suspension bridges

Last weekend I had the opportunity to hike the Copland Track and stay near the Welcome Flat Hut. I’m so grateful to Ryan and Elizabeth for inviting me to come along.

It was a bit of a drive, and then a bit of a walk off Hwy 6.

I had such an awesome time. My legs are still recovering from all that fun.

I’ve been on several back country canoe trips. But this was my first back country hiking trip. Whoa. I missed my paddle and seat in the stern.

A list of thoughts and reoccurring jokes, numbered but in no peculiar order.

  1. Always be prepared. (So glad we had tents and bed rolls.)
  2. First come first served: Cabin sleeps 31. There were 76(-ish) our first night. Guess who slept outside.
  3. Tabarnouche! Tabarouette!
  4. Pack envy is like the opposite of penis envy. “Look how small his package is! I’m so jealous.”
  5. 17 km is one hell of a portage. (Fortunately, canoe is optional.)
  6. “I spy with my little eye, something that begins with “w”
  7. Men have landed on the moon more than once.
  8. The plane took off! (Set-up) (Pay-off)
  9. Stopped at Hoki Vegas for kūmara chops, on the way to Christ Vegas.
  10. “We don’t need to stop. My bladder is an iron fortress.”
    “Really?”
    “No. It’s a sand castle. Please stop.”
  11. The dangling rhetorical modifier “something as” can generally be resolved with “sliced bread”
  12. A toiletry kit consisting of “toothbrush, toothpaste” is easily lost
  13. Know where your toothbrush is, it may preserve your sanity
  14. Check your car for “fan tail” birds
  15. My gluteus maximus is lazy and does not support my knees
  16. To squeeze your butt more when you walk: swing those hips!
  17. (Which looks dandy in ladies pants.)
  18. I don’t like the drugs, but the drugs like me. (the anti-inflammatory variety)
  19. You need not carry litres of water if every stream you cross is potable.
  20. Camel backs, securely affixed, are not useful for sipping from a stream. (Maybe just the straw part….)
  21. I am very impressed by anyone who can recite Lewis Caroll’s jabberwocky by memory.
  22. Delicious powdered mashed potatoes are possible. (It helps to use goat feta, salami and herb spices.)
  23. When your body wakes you up to tell you something, you should just take care of it quickly. (For example: “Go pee,” or “You’re cold.”) You will not sleep well enough to justify ignoring whatever your body woke you up about.
  24. Crazy 8’s and we’ll identify the rules as the cards appear and get played.
  25. There was a great big moose.
  26. I miss the promise of a camp fire, inherent in any Canadian camping trip. No fire = the damp cool I’ve come to associate with New Zealand winter.
  27. A sing-along will restore your soul. Maybe not the souls of hikers over-taking you on the trail.
  28. There is a time and a place to suck hard on a vanilla tea bag. (Brings new meaning to the verb “teabag,” but don’t tell her I said that.)
  29. It was a cracker of a day.
  30. Be nice to the hut warden. He might just be a volunteer, home-sick American who has only been on the job 5 nights.
  31. This is a leaf of the poopooa fern. It is only ever found lying on the ground, in a wet semi-decayed state.
  32. There is no place so remote you might not run into someone who grew up near you. Steven from Georgetown, ON, it was nice to meet you.
  33. Consider wind and tree shelter before you pitch your tent.
  34. Keep your head above water, unless you like the sound of amoebic meningitis.
  35. Seeing someone with a 40 of Canadian Club made me a little home-sick.
  36. There are those who avoid suspension bridges. I take solid construction for granted.
  37. When you are certain you dropped something further back on the trail, check first to see if your backpack caught it
  38. When staying at a holiday park, a midnight trip to the loo should include bringing the key to the room.
  39. Do not begrudge the photographer, you’ll be grateful for pictures later.
  40. Photo ops decrease as the sun sets.
  41. Hiking in the dark is fine, but not ideal when you’ve already been hiking all day.
  42. I’m not as young and spry as I used to be.
  43. When the gimp takes a head start and sets the pace, he should move like he’s still trying to catch up.
  44. Found sunglasses + staff + camera – warm clothes = impromptu silliness.
  45. Do not yell back, “Car,” when all you see is “the bridge the car drove across.” It might be a damn large bridge, visible from a great distance.
  46. Joseph Campbell would love that 100m from the car park, the trail leads through a wide, icy river, knee high deep. The adventure begins.
  47. Naturally, the river was also the final obstacle before returning home to cars and iPods.
  48. I have an aversion to walking through mud. I will always look for away around, even though I know I’m going to have to wade through a river in the next hour.
  49. I take for granted that the car will start.
  50. I’d do it again. But I would aim for during the week, as opposed to a holiday weekend.

The Hut

Found Sunglasses

I’ve posted several pictures to a Picasa web album.

[I have yet to completely grok the WordPress gallery and bend it to my desires. In the meantime, I'll share them with Google. Why not give more of my life's content to my friends at the GOOG?]

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Where is that music coming from?

May 28th, 2009

It’s 2009: Interruption marketing is over.
Websites with auto-playing music need to KNOCK IT OFF.

Your music is awesome, and it’s great that you want me to hear it. I want to hear it. But please, invite me to turn it on. Invite me to download it to my computer and integrate it into MY media player.

I found an artist who is sharing his music for free. Awesome.

But the more I listened I thought, “Wow, the production is really top notch. The drums are a bit messy… and I’m getting sick of this delay on the vocals…. Wow, pretty repetitive effect…. Ugh! Same effect on the verse AND chorus. Quit it with the delay!”

Then I realized that I had opened two tabs, and it was playing on both.

Ironically enough, when I listened to just one version of the song, the drums sounded a little blasé, but significantly less messy.

That perfectly describes my hyper-active auditory attention span (meaning: I like my beats busy).

I won’t speak for the vfx, but I love this song “Double Pump” by Girl Talk (et al).

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