Also posted in Music
Tagged engaged, haise, hart house, hhcs, proposal, song, video, wedding
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I’m getting married in three days, thought I’d share the engagement photos that my aunt took for us.
This is a bit of a personal ramble.
Gerald Klickstein had a great post on the Music Think Tank blog about avoiding avoidance:
Do you ever dodge your creative work? Say, your practice time arrives, and you race off to do some chore. It might be a chore that you detest, but now it calls to you. Then, instead of refining your music, you start cleaning the house or doing whatever. [...]
When we practice, write, or otherwise innovate, we stretch our limits. We strive.
But striving takes us into the unknown, and that brings uncertainty. [...] If the uncertainty of creating unsettles us, then, to escape the discomfort, we might seek refuge in a mindless task: “This really needs doing,” we’ll congratulate ourselves as we reach for the mop.
So true. I set aside afternoons to work on my music, but often end up catching up on email, cleaning, doing laundry, or running errands. It’s so easy to avoid that difficult creative work.
Klickstein has a solution:
First we have to notice an avoidant thought before we fall under its spell. Next we must act to do what we intend. [...] As I see it, we’re all going to have avoidant thoughts, so we need to keep countermoves handy. Here’s my anti-avoidance formula:
Counter Avoidance
- Notice an avoidant thought.
- Dispute it. (Laugh at yourself or just say “no.”)
- Replace it with an affirmation: “Music feeds my soul.”
- Act with full intention.
It’s great advice, but I still find myself struggling. I have so many distractions that aren’t just chores or busywork. I spent a lot of my “music” time in the fall revamping my website, which is important for my music, but it isn’t my music. Also, there’s always the temptation to put more hours in to my other jobs, especially when I have clients waiting on me; it’s hard to spend an afternoon focused on songwriting when I have a separate deadline with a client bearing down on me. And, lately, I’m spending a lot of time on music, but not my music; I’m writing arrangements for the Hart House Chamber Strings pops concert, which is an amazing opportunity for me to write arrangements and work with some of my favourite local artists, but only a small percentage of the concert involves my songs. Even when I work on music, it’s not always my own.
Then, there’s the issue of multiple creative endeavours. I’m a songwriter, but I also try to set aside time for writing (like this) and for programming. It’s easy for one of these activities to overshadow the others.
I defer to Adam Singer, someone whose several steps ahead down a road I’d like to travel:
By day I work for one of the top search/social marketing firms globally. At night I keep this marketing/media/PR blog and participate in industry conversations around the web. I also write music. In between all of that I read 1-2 two non-fiction/sociology books and some 300 blogs monthly (I’m a knowledge-junkie). I also don’t do any of these things halfway, they are not fleeting interests – I’m fully committed.
[...] It took me years to develop the self-discipline necessary to split time across interests and get fulfilling results in all of them.
Today I thought I would share the process I took to get to the point of balancing multiple pursuits. If you also have multiple interests and are frustrated you’re not able to devote enough time to them, this might help.
He lists 10 pieces of advice (I’m just listing the titles, but you can read the post for more detailed descriptions.)
1. Internalize what outcomes you want from each interest first
2. Define what specific activities support your desired outcome from that interest
3. Remove everything else
It’s an ongoing process, but I’m inspired by the steps I’ve made in the past few years in narrowing down the sorts of things I want to accomplish in different areas. The picture is constant evolving, and becoming clearer. One of my goals going forward is to speak more publicly about the things I’m working on.
It is a challenge to remove everything else though. I have a hard time saying no to many things (e.g. I need to do less Windows tech support…).
4. Automate or outsource all collateral activities
I lot of the time I’ve spent working my website, or figuring out 64 Studio factors into this… At times it feels like I’m spending so much time not making music, but I’ve been streamlining my process of recording and sharing recordings, which is essential going forward.
5. Your career should be an interest
Check.
6. Learn to ignore others who tell you to focus on one thing
This is incredibly encouraging. One of the common sayings that haunts me is “jack of all trades, master of none.” (I prefer “master of some.”) Sometimes, I feel like I’m spreading myself too thin, trying to be too many things. There is a way.
7. Focus time where your mind is naturally drawn during free time
This is also encouraging, given the variety of my pursuits… but, I think it’s also essential to make sure there is time set aside for each activity in the long run. While it makes sense, on a micro-level, to focus where the inspiration and motivation is present, on the macro-level I’m still trying to find the best way to make sure that none of my interests are neglected for too long. That’s the real challenge.
8. Learn patience and dedication
9. Be grounded in reality, realize life is short
Sound, but basic advice.
10. Remember that focusing on one and only thing is mentally limiting
I don’t need to be reminded of this. Some people have one thing that they can do well and focus on, but I’ve always had multiple passions.
About 10 years ago, I remember my mom sitting me down for one of those overly-concerned parental talks. “It’s great that you’re so passionate about music and computers,” she said, “but… you need other interests too, you need to be balanced.” After listing off a variety of other hobbies at the time (basketball, skiing, cross country—just in the athletics department), I reassured her that I was interested in a healthy balance of things—and that I just really enjoyed music and working with computers.
That was Grade 7. Five years later, applying to universities, I was looking at music and computer science/engineering programs. I ended up choosing computer science at U of T, not just for the program (which is fantastic), but because it allowed me maximum freedom to study other things as well; music and engineering programs offered very few electives. I began thinking I’d do a music minor, but ended up choosing English instead. Last June, I graduated with a major in computer science, and minors in English and philosophy (as I like to say: Plato, Python and Shakespeare).
And now, I’m continue to work part-time at Alleyne Inc., while the rest of my time is spent on music and writing. (I’m also doing a couple graduate-level credits in theology this Spring, but not quite sure where that will lead…)
For me, it would be extremely mentally limiting to focus on just one thing.
The challenge, moving forward, is to find balance between multiple creative interests, avoiding avoidance and narrowing in on my creative goals.
Rambling out loud like this will likely be part of the process…
Also posted in Free Software, Technology
Tagged 386, computing, family, family room, growing up, haise, mythtv, room computing
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My first computing experience was on the family computer, a 386 running Windows 3.1 in my parents’ den. It was truly a family computer—my parents used it for work, and the kids used it for games. A few years later, my parents moved to IBM ThinkPads with Windows 95 (vehicles for my first Internet experiences, dialing into chat rooms to talk about my dog with strangers… I was 9!), but the kids’ computer was still the shared desktop. When the 386 was no longer able to run our games, it was replaced with a new Windows 98 desktop. That shared kids’ computer spent most of its life out in the open, in our family room.
In the next five years, our home computing landscape changed drastically. I got my own desktop when I started high school in 2001. A few years later, I acquired a laptop after a summer trip overseas, and my two siblings (3 and 6 years younger) both got recycled older desktops in their rooms for homework. My desktop became the new kids’ computer, but it was quickly phased out as gaming shifted to consoles and my siblings got upgraded machines. By 2005, our computing took place in separate rooms.
But in 2007, I entered the free software world and developed an interest in bringing old neglected Windows machines back to life with GNU/Linux. I bought a TV tuner card, and turned my old Windows 98 desktop into a MythTV server (among other things). It was an odd project, since I rarely watch TV, but soon enough I had another old computer connected to my MythTV server and setup on the big screen TV in our family room
I soon realized that we didn’t just have a new way of watching TV, but a fully-featured PC hooked up to a giant screen. With a couch and a wireless keyboard, I began using it to browse the web and consume other forms of media (especially useful when we had company!) and even used it for some work (handy for group projects!). It provided a stark contrast to the tethered appliance computers nearby—an XBOX 360 and a Rogers HD PVR (which broke!).
I don’t want any proprietary tethered appliances when I move out. I want a general purpose computer that opens up to the room—not a personal computer that family members take turns using, or a TV that people just watch, but a group computer that brings other people into the computing experience.
With a general purpose computer, I can specialize with software (MythTV for television channels, Firefox for web content, etc.). MythTV is cool, but video is moving from TV to the web—why not focus on that? I don’t know of a real group user interface for general purpose operating systems yet (i.e. like on video game consoles), but a big display goes a long way to involving a room in the meantime. I’m also fascinated to think about how handheld devices fit into the picture, with large tablets for media consumption or smaller tablets as controllers.
A TV is just a big screen. I’d rather have a computer I can own, control and create with hooked up to it, instead of the black box proprietary tethered appliances that commonly broadcast into a room. I don’t want a “home entertainment system;” I want a shared computing experience.
Is there a name for this? I’ve been calling it “family room computing”—or just “room computing”—but suggestions are welcome. I’m just getting some rough thoughts out. What do you think family room computing could look like, with computer users in charge?
ps that original family room computer? It’s still semi-set up in our basement—I installed Debian on it a few years ago to give Fluxbox a try!
Also posted in Music
Tagged new year's eve, niagara falls, performance, photos, robyn dell'unto, video, violin
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I’ve been in love with Robyn Dell’Unto from the moment I first heard her voice, and it’s been almost two years now since we became friends and she first introduced me as her secret weapon.
This past Thursday, we had the opportunity to perform at the Niagara Falls New Year’s Eve party on the main stage. Though our set was cut short, it was a fantastic experience. We made it onto the Global TV national broadcast for about a minute, and I’ve stumbled upon some great photos taken by Ed McAskill (including some outstanding shots of me).
Robyn has been taking off recently, getting signed with Orange Lounge and having her music featured on CBC’s Being Erica season finale and other TV shows. She’s started work on her first full-length album, and it’s only going to get more exciting from here… I hope she remembers me when she’s famous!
I had a bit of a moment yesterday.
It’s just that I’m so incredibly excited and energized right now. I’m starting to move on a variety of really cool projects and endeavours.
A little over a year ago, I claimed I was about to “up the diversity” on this blog. Better late than never. Here’s me committing to actually begin talking about a Catholic case for free culture. I have been giving it a lot of thought and making lots of notes, but I just need to get over the urge to write an essay instead of blog post so that I can start getting the ideas out.
The other theme I hope to explore in depth is the full potential of a true free culture approach to transform music. I’ve had some fascinating conversations with Nathan Simpson, Roman Verzub, Matt York and Josh Newman, and I’ve been putting the pieces in place at blaise.ca/music to start turning some of these ideas into action. I plan to expand on this at length in future posts.
I feel like these two ideas will be prominent themes in much of what I do in the next few years, and beyond.
Then, there’s the work I’ve been doing on the Drupal Creative Commons module and, more recently, the new Creative Commons Canada website (hope to have something to show soon…), among many of the other cool things I get to do through Alleyne Inc. My band is showing signs of life again, and I’ve been gigging on violin. I’ve also been part of a great team with the University of Toronto Students for Life, and I’ll be putting on another pops concert with the Hart House Chamber Strings in February. The day after that, I’m headed to Philadelphia for a week-long immersion course with one of the leading scholars on the Theology of the Body.
Oh, and I’m getting married next summer.
I’m hitting the release candidate stage for version 1.0 of my life. And there are a lot of things I’m going to create.
Also posted in Catholic, Free Culture, Philosophy
Tagged art, beauty, creativity, desire, eros, fertility, giving birth in beauty, love, poetry, sex
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This may be over the top, but it’s the kind of crazy I’m feeling right now.
This is as close to pregnant as I’ll ever get.
I am teeming with desire, overflowing with a yearning to release this energy, to create something beautiful. So overwhelmingly fertile, I strive for that moment of giving birth in beauty. Overcome by the potential for real unity, I move forward with purpose and resolve, with being and intention, in search of the complete, of an expression of a truly generative love.
This is creativity. This is sex. This is beauty.
More to come…
Also posted in Catholic
Tagged brother domenic, de la salle, encomia, gaudium et spes, love, mr hunt, oaklands, self-giving, speech, success, tribute
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On November 14th, 2009, I was invited to give a speech at a tribute to Brother Domenic, principal of De La Salle College “Oaklands” from 1996 to 2009. I graduated from De La Salle in 2005.
In March of 2004, sitting in English class, Mr. Hunt told us that we were all schizophrenic. We were schizophrenic for “attending a school run by a man from another century,” and putting on our uniforms, and combating this “tidal wave of junk,” and then going out and living in it. “It’s one thing to be stuck in this hurricane,” he said, “but it’s even worse to be a schizo stuck in this hurricane!”
From Mr. Hunt, being a “man from another century” is a profound compliment of the highest order. I’ve been fortunate enough to know this man from another century for the past eight years of our century — and, unlike Alessia, only four years as a student, and the other four as an alumnus who hangs around the school a bit too much. Since graduating, I’ve attended — among other things — every Christmas and Founder’s Day mass that I could. Only a direct conflict would stop me; if my exams were in the afternoon, I’d be here in the morning.
One of the main benefits of being at the school assemblies has always been Brother Domenic’s speeches. I remember him stressing what it means to be a signum fidei at the opening assembly in 2001, when I was in Grade 9. I remember a speech railing against the phrase, “that’s nice,” as a focus on mediocrity. I remember him stressing that, at De La Salle, we are not taught to be great, but to be good — not in terms of being mediocre, but in terms of being centred on Christ. The most memorable of all, however, were the words of wisdom Brother offered us during a time of great mourning, at Ian Lawson Van Toch’s Mass of the Resurrection. Brother Domenic said,
The way we measure success as human beings is terribly flawed. I am increasingly of the view personally that we have it terribly wrong. It is not the length of days or the accomplishments or the conquests, or health or the career, which makes us most human and therefore like God in whose image we are created. It is our capacity to love and be loved by others.
Success is our capacity to love and be loved by others.
And love? The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium Et Spes (“Joy and Hope”), explains love in the following way:
(24) God, Who has fatherly concern for everyone, has willed that all men should constitute one family and treat one another in a spirit of brotherhood…
For this reason, love for God and neighbour is the first and greatest commandment. Sacred Scripture, however, teaches us that the love of God cannot be separated from love of neighbour…
Indeed, the Lord Jesus, when He prayed to the Father, “that all may be one. . . as we are one” (John 17:21-22) opened up vistas closed to human reason, for He implied a certain likeness between the union of the divine Persons, and the unity of God’s sons in truth and charity. This likeness reveals that man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.
In other words, man cannot truly be successful except through a sincere gift of self.
Love is a self-giving — to love is to serve — and to be truly successful is to love and to be loved.
Brother Domenic, it’s clear by your abundant service and gift of self to the school community, and by the community of people assembled here today who love you, that you have truly been successful.
Also posted in Technology
Tagged clay shirky, emilie, information serendipity, internet, masnick, mathew ingram, newspapers, search, serendipity, social media
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I’ve been meaning to comment on Mathew Ingram’s defence of newspapers and serendipity. Clay Shirky has been talking about the bundling that occurs in newspapers as a mere accident of print, something that was only necessary given the constraints of paper, but doesn’t make sense otherwise. Mathew disagrees:
Is there a purpose in aggregating the horoscope and the weather and the news about the coup in Tegucigalpa? I think there is, and I think newspapers do a pretty good job of it.
It’s not just because they have to — although that’s part of it. Maybe I’ve just been trained as a newspaper reader for my whole life, but I like the serendipity of tripping over fascinating articles about things I would never have known even existed were it not for a newspaper. To take the Saturday Globe and Mail as an example, I read about an up-and-coming Muslim hockey player, a profile of Paul Shaffer, a review of the punk band Gossip, an article about contentious city council politics in Aurora and a great feature on retirees and their vanishing pensions.
Just two days before Mathew’s post, my friend Emilie and I were having the same conversation. She reads the newspaper daily and made the same defence. I used to read the paper regularly when I was commuting to school in Grade 9, but more recently, I’ve come to get my “news” through Gwibber and Google Reader. It’s not that Mathew or Emilie don’t use the web, but they both have found something valuable in newspapers that the web hasn’t been able to offer — information serendipity (by that, I mean serendipity with respect to encountering ideas). Mathew continues,
Could links to those stories show up in my RSS reader? Possibly – but I doubt it. The mix is just too eclectic. And I would never have sought out the article about the Muslim hockey player, because I don’t particularly care about hockey and therefore I would likely never have come across it. Would the retirement piece ever make it to Techmeme or some similar aggregator? I doubt it. But it was still worth reading. And so were the half-dozen or so articles I can’t recall right now, which I tripped across as I read the paper. I would never have deliberately sought them out either.
I think Mathew’s missing one of the most serendipitous aspects of the web — the social aspect. I wouldn’t likely stumble upon those sorts of articles through my RSS subscriptions (though I’m subscribed to some pretty eclectic stuff), but through Google Reader shared items (e.g. Turadg Aleahmad shares some really interesting things, like this Wikipedia article on Mamihlapinatapai). I stumbled across Valaam chant through a friend’s Facebook posted items the other day, a genre of music that’s entirely new to me and will likely influence my own music. I find interesting links through Twitter/Identi.ca every week that are outside my regular areas of interest (e.g. this video riding blog from Sunday). I may follow someone who shares some interests in common with me, but that doesn’t mean their other interests are my usual fare. Information serendipity here is social.
Then, beyond the social, Mike Masnick was writing about serendipity of search a few weeks before Mathew’s post:
There’s a separate side of having search so ingrained in our lives that isn’t often explored: the serendipity of search… I do a countless number of searches during the day — it’s ingrained to quickly and automatically jump to the search box all through the day — and usually two or three times per day, I end up going down a fascinating, if unexpected path to learning something new and interesting. Usually, it’s related to what I was originally searching for, but leads me on a trail of additional information, well beyond what I expected to learn. Other times, it may be a total tangent, but still one that ends up being useful and relevant in odd and unexpected ways.
A couple days after Mike’s post, I was watching Margaret Visser’s The Geometry of Love with the RCIA group at the Newman Centre. She makes a passing comment in the video about the serendipity of browsing through the stacks at Robarts Library — yet another type of information serendipity.
Beyond information serendipity, there’s a likelihood of social serendipity (in encountering people rather than ideas) that exists in a communications medium like the web that you wouldn’t find in a newspaper. On any medium, it’s not so much a question of whether there’s an element of serendipity as it’s a question of what that serendipity is like.
Information serendipity on the web is different than in newspapers. There’s information serendipity in bundling, in proximity, in linking, in social connections, and then there are other types of serendipity altogether, like social serendipity. I think it’d be really interesting to dig deeper and explore the differences…
Also posted in Catholic
Tagged duty, jessica valenti, love, pleasure, premarital sex, purity myth, sex, sexuality, theology of the body
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Jessica Valenti, author of The Purity Myth, wrote about why everyone should have premarital sex on Feministing yesterday.
Let’s face it – if you’re going to commit yourself to someone for (presumably) the rest of your life, it’s probably best if you know that you’re sexually compatible. I don’t think this is particularly radical thing to say; in fact, it seems quite logical to me. But somehow, if you suggest that pre-marital sex is a good and maybe even necessary thing (especially if you say those things while being a feminist) you are an evil, evil whoremaker.
Do I think that people can have perfectly wonderful satisfying relationships without having had sex before making a commitment? Sure, I’m positive that happens often. But considering what a huge role sexuality plays in our lives and relationships…well, I’d rather be super duper positive.
What a tragically narrow vision of sexuality! Sexuality is reduced to an action. It’s not just Valenti. Films become rated R: “contains sexuality.” The example that will always stick out in my mind is Nick Carter asking in Backstreet’s Back, “am I sexual?” (Yes, Nick, you are a sexual being.) As wonderful as sex (the act) is, sex (-uality) is so much more than that. It’s especially ironic considering Valenti is trying to reclaim a more nuanced vision of sexuality from “the virgin/whore binary,” yet her nuanced vision remains so narrow. Sexuality isn’t just having sex. It’s about being created male and female, about our entire being, not just our genitals.
More importantly, I’ve become increasingly skeptical of the “test-drive” approach to love. Yes, of course you want to get to know your partner before you make a longterm commitment, but suggesting that means you ought to take their body for a test drive is a bad, bad way to approach that commitment.
It sets up the spousal model all wrong.
I’ve come to refer to this as the “pleasure and duty” ethic. If people consent mutually to the use of their bodies for pleasure, what’s the problem? Look at the model: Pleasure is the end goal, and consenting to the “use” of your body parts is the means of attaining it. Fluffy feelings of bonding might be a nice side-effect. Orgasm is the intent. The other person becomes a means of achieving your orgasm, and you become a means of theirs. This is objectification by definition, even if it’s mutual and consenting. On top that, pleasure is the metric of success. That is, a successful sex act is one that brings about pleasure. The act of sex becomes, at least in part, an economic transaction where you trade access to your body in exchange for pleasure. And that’s not always going to be a fair trade — and you may evaluate the quality and the fairness of the deal. After all, we test drive cars. And we also sell and replace them when they no longer serve their purpose.
I have a crazy idea: What if the goal of sex is self-giving rather than pleasure? What if the idea was to come into ultimate union with another human being, and the means of attaining that was complete and total self-giving and affirmation of the other as other? I have a feeling that the pleasure factors in as a side-effect, without “driving” the entire experience.
I don’t feel the need to take my future spouse for a test drive. I’m not marrying a car.
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