Temp Check 2/13

So, the little tally sheet right there to the right says that I need to write more, right? (Heh, see what I did there?)

This week throws us an interesting juxtaposition. At the end of Week One, I showcased Amanda Palmer's Ukulele Anthem and mentioned how it threw "a great big pile of Chaotic Neutral all over my nice, neat Lawful Good spreadsheet" and the M in WARMER, my ukulele practice. Since then and now, I have read Guitar Zero: The Science of Becoming Musical at Any Age by Gary Marcus, who comes at the topic of making music from a whole different angle than the punk goddess.

Marcus, a professor at NYU, decided at age 38, after a totally nonmusical life, to learn how to play the guitar - and further, to figure out how people learn how to play the guitar. Not a bad little sabbatical project, I'd say. And since he is a cognitive psychologist and hangs around with Steven Pinker and that lot (and I am sure has a squad of grad students digging out his research), the result is a well-connected and well-sourced explanation of how the brain apprehends music, learns tasks, and creates music, bouncing from references to clinical studies old and new to interviews with rock stars, classical musicians, and music teachers.

There's a lot of good stuff in here. Marcus examines evidence on all sides of  the various theories around music: the connection between language and music, the correlation between age and learning, the nature of talent. He summarizes and synthesizes the information clearly and concisely, and clearly identifies his own conclusions based on his analysis of the ongoing conversation; I would love to take a class from him and could easily use some chapters of the book in English 102 as an example of how to write from sources.

Unfortunately, the dust cover promise - "Marcus translates his own experience into practical advice" - is the weakest part of the book. While his explanation of the science behind his learning is crystal clear, his personal journey lacks detail and specificity. Although it started out strong with particulars about his process and advancement, it quickly lost that focus and became like one of those parody "How to Draw A..." strips, that start with a lot of basics but then skip the important middle bits. I got a real good sense of Marcus as a neophyte, but he wasn't onstage much as learner, so it is a bit of a surprise at the end when he plays in front of 200 people: some sense of his journey gets lost along with way.

In any case, the contrast between Marcus and Palmer couldn't be greater. From the get-go, Marcus approached both his book and his learning to play as scientific experiments, and his conclusions revolve around practice (not the Gladwell 10,000 hours schtick, but practice specifically focused on improving weaknesses). Palmer, of course, exhorts us "do not practice daily" and just wants people to jump into the visceral joy of making art and somehow it will all work out.

Maybe the first song I should learn chords for is Stuck in the Middle...

A little more quotidian

So, in my post yesterday, I got wrapped up in some Big Ideas and got distracted from the more mundane aspects of WARMER (a dose of AFP will do that to you). So here are some deets for the records, as it were:

In addition to "writing a novel" (heh - about 900 words so far) I have been including my RPG game journal as part of my W. I write up summaries of the gaming sessions, but from the perspective of my character; it is a great exercise in voice and description, if a but constrained as to narrative and plot. My buddy who is DMing thinks that if I keep it up, it can be retrofit as story; he might not be half-wrong, especially since he does a great job of putting some complex themes into the game. We'll see if we reach a natural ending at sometime point and I can try that experiment.

For A, I have been doing some character sketches and have once again taken up the 200 Project from from last summer. Everything goes on Talent Not Guaranteed.

I am really ready to rock and roll with R - it has been a joy to linger in the sun with a book in my hands. First, I finished off two short-story collections that had been sitting on my night stand for what seems like forever:

I have something posted about each of these before, but I don't think I'll go into detailed reviews.

I am currently in the middle of another short story collection (that I tweeted about) and a seminal 1954 primer on Game Theory (that became a pretty tough go right after chapter one).

And here's the stack to get through. It's almost all non-fiction; I might have to throw another novel in there to balance it out.

Moving on to M: I'm just going to say that my fingers were really sore after the first couple of ukulele practices. The muscle memory may be there, but the flexibility sure ain't.

Speaking of flexibility: my E routine is the NY Times Scientific 7-Minute Workout. I used to do the Royal Canadian Airforce 5BX Exercise Plan for Physical Fitness, but when I read about this new one, it sounded a lot like something Doc Savage would do if he didn't have the two-hours for his usual regimen, so I switched.

In some ways, R is a gimme: I walk a lot. My usual pleasure route looks like this...

... but I am more and more just incorporating walking-as-transportation into my routine. (This guy doesn't stay very current, but I like his approach.)  And I have gotten the longboard out just once - I'm thinking about getting a land-paddle.

That's the 4-1-1.

Taking the temperature: 1

So, every once in a while, you come up with a plan, and it feels like a good plan, and you initiate the plan, and then something happens that makes you question not the details of the plan, but the philosophical underpinnings of the plan itself. We may have found ourselves there.

Last week, we launched WARMER, this year's Summer Self-Improvement Scheme™. The tally sheet in the right sidebar shows that the first week went pretty well: Writing, Art, Reading, Music, Exercise, and Roadwork all show strong participation and consistency. Lots of green boxes - yay!

Then this happened:

A friend connected me to this - Amanda Fuckin' Palmer throwing a great big pile of Chaotic Neutral all over my nice, neat Lawful Good spreadsheet.

And thus it has always been, the tension between order and chaos, Apollonian and Dionysian, the Gnome Monk and Dwarf Bard. I once took one of those diagnostic tests that determine how your personality characteristics match with broad career areas; the counselor didn't know how to advise me because my two highest scores were on the opposed tracks of Artistic and Clerical. Epicurus and the Ataraxia covering Wild Thing as a single.

I guess we could get all Aristotelian and run to the shelter of the Golden Mean, but that seems somehow non-committal, hedging the philosophical bet, as it were. The middle of the road just seems like the easiest place to get run over; a compromise between the Free Spirit and the Disciplined Soul doesn't seem like a Good Thing, but rather a weak thing from any direction. Choose your path. Decide. Commit to it, go forth, and embody it.

But which?

This dichotomy extends from my inner life to the practical sphere as well. The way I choose affects not just whether or how I structure my summer activities, but where I place myself in my life's work: as part of the order of the organization, even as an agent of change (administration) or on the edges with a little more freedom (faculty) and a little more opportunity to resist.

The monk and the bard.

I will leave myself with one line from the Anthem:

Quit the bitchin' on your blog

and stop pretending art is hard.

Peace out.

This summer it's going to be WARMER

So, I'm not talking about global climate change or even the Old Farmer's Almanac prediction, and today's weather certainly doesn't hold a lot of promise for that outcome regardless. What I'm really talking about is this year's Summer Self-Improvement Scheme™. In the tradition of Around Walaka in Eighty Days, this year we're going spend the 91 Days of Summer getting WARMER.

Here's how it goes:

W Writing: gonna try that hour-a-day-for-nothing-but scheme.

A Art: gonna make a sketch or drawing a day

R Reading: gonna make sure I set aside time to read every night.

M Music: gonna practive the uke every day. (Like last summer. Sigh.)

E Exercise: gonna keep up with my daily workout (started a month or so ago).

R Road work: gonna walk, run, or longboard daily.

Once again, I don't have a real summer vacation - I'll be teaching at least one summer quarter online class and doing some committee work between now and September. But I should have enough free time to have a prolonged run  of productivity. When doing some intention-setting exercises with Coco (who, if you know her, is all about things like intention-setting exercises), I decided that my theme word for this year was fruitful. I want not just to be creative and enjoy myself but to see some tangible results of the creativity and some reward for my activity. That's what WARMER is all about.

To that end, I am marshaling the power of social media and public commitment: the WARMER tally sheet, seen on the right sidebar, will be updated weekly on Mondays. We're going to aim for 91% success rate for daily activities over the stretch of 91 days - that means I need 83 green boxes under each letter by September 14. Ain't no hill for a stepper.

Summer is upon us - it's time to get WARMER!