April 2007 Archives

One of the untidy realities of life is that when we finally shift off this mortal coil, we leave behind us a chain of lose ends, of uncompleted tasks, bills unpaid, rooms uncleaned, and the collective activities of a life in the process of being lived. In previous eras, most of what was left behind were tangibles -- immediate objects left to be sorted and collected, mostly easily found or easily accessed; furniture, clothing, jewelry, etc. Those things not immediately tangible were of the fiscal entity sort, bills, stocks, bonds, insurance policies, etc. All of which items are easily accounted for and dealt with by accountants and attorneys.

Things have shifted in the age of the internet. Now, with our involvement in electronic communication and commerce, publication through blogs and web sites, there are a whole new classification of intangible assets that need to be tracked and accounted for in the end of our days, and that in most people's lives the access to those assets are kept a secret. Secure passwords are those not written down, and not guessable by anyone. For those who have the fortunate misfortune to know they are about to pass on might have the prescience to write down all the passwords to all of their accounts, for the overwhelming majority, death comes suddenly and unexpected. Of course, for the most obvious assets, those known about by loved-ones, it's probable that those left behind can contact the ISPs of those assets and obtain access, but in many cases there are items not known about, and of strange status; from the experimental blog held on free services, to flickr photos, assets and ephemera held in the distributed web in online applications with blurry lines on ownership. What is a blog comment, or a usenet post? An amazon wish list or membership in online communities, MySpace pages, Friendster accounts, Second Life homes and owned objects... There's an entire world of leavings and trails, footprints and imprints of our existence that like photographs or scrap book memories survive us, granting their own form of immortality to our lives, but of course that immortality is often a sham, with silver nitrate fading over time, age and weather laying claim to paper and fabric, until all that is left is dust and a footnote in a history book, if you're lucky...

...or has the internet changed this too? The cost of duplication of data is for all practical purposes free, and the internet way-back machine makes it so you don't even need to worry about performing the act yourself -- in fact, you can't get rid of the evidence if you tried. Once you step into the world of internet participation, and leave your fingerprint, it is indelibly and forever marked on the DNA of the beast. As long as the machine keeps doing what it's doing, we're here forever, and with more participation and proliferation, twitter and webcams, we'e making ourselves more and more part of the fabric of internet reality. Eventually programs will be written that will ingest all of this data and do something new and completely cool with it all, and our psychic selves will again be food for the beast.

So what, you'd expect me to say 'be careful what you say, because it's there forever', but I'm not going to. I think it's just the next step in our natural social evolution. We have to let go of our fiction of privacy and private property, and realize we're all tools in the new reality, and we are being used by the machine. I'm okay with that, because the trade-off is immortality, and in three thousand years my progeny will be able to call up my face, my words, this post in fact, and have a better idea of where they came from. Imagine what that would be like for us, to see our own faces and thoughts mirrored in ancestors from thousands of years ago. All of a sudden, the mad rush to make our mark on the world, to be remembered for something is absolved. We're there, we've made it. Just participating is enough. The important project for us is to get as many people involved as we can, so they aren't left out of the great migration. The internet is the new family tree in the back of the bible. Good thing too, since so many of us no longer possess one. Paper fades and pages crumble, but information liberated from its medium is forever. Our ideas will outlive our bodies, and that should be at least a little cold comfort in the face of the grim reaper.

I've owned a guitar ever since high school, when I fell in love with Led Zeppelin, with the idea of playing guitar, and worked my ass off to learn how to muddle through Stairway to Heaven. In high school I even took two semesters of classical guitar at the local community college, and learned how to arpeggiate with the best of them (them meaning beginning guitar students). Truth be told, I haven't really played it with any sort of proficiency for 15 years, and mostly my acoustic and my electric are little more than decoration for the room they live in. The rubber on the stands they sit in is so old that it's vulcanized and is breaking off. So much for the spirit of music.

What is true of the entire time that I have been involved in playing guitar, is that I always approached it from a technical angle, trying to learn to play songs I liked, trying to learn chords (though I never managed to get the musical theory into my head, so I can't walk the fretboard with the ease that's necessary for a true guitarist), but never did I become possessed by the music and played from the heart. Or at least, I don't remember having done so -- it's been a while, maybe it was like that for me in the beginning.

Last night, late after all were in bed, after a casual drink or two, I picked up the acoustic sitting quietly in the library, waiting like a forgotten lover for the touch that says they're still important, still wanted. I try to keep the guitar in tune, even if I don't play it, and thankfully it still was. I casually started to strum the lovely beaten old friend in the three or four chords I still remember, and found myself entering into a new space with the guitar. I was moving between rhythms and chords in a conscious way, not conscious of the technical notes, but conscious of connecting the actions with the sounds I heard in my head. I was phrasing intentionally, and I was moving... with love. It was an emotional experience where I felt the rhythms and the music, and for once I finally get why people play music. I have been a singer in my past, and know the rapture of a well-performed choral piece, but for the first time I felt the joy of playing a stringed instrument. I am by no means a professional, nor can I repeat the sounds reliably that I make, but as a past-time I jazz it through and have a great time, and perhaps this is the hook I finally need to really learn to love to play. I know that whenever I pick up the guitar, my kids absolutely love it, and it's fun for me as well. What isn't fun is not knowing HOW to play, and I haven't been motivated to learn.

Maybe now is the time.

forgive the empty posts, but I'm testing my software. Ever since my update to 3.34, MT has been a little persnickety.

I've had quite the month, full of travel, sickness, health, highs, lows and existential crisis. So many times I thought of you all, and wanted to tell you all about my processes, but as usual, the blog deferred is the blog lost. And the effect is a cumulative paralysis of non-posting, for lack of proper time and attention to give the 30 items I haven't posted before THIS new item comes to fore.

So I'm breaking the seal, so to speak, and just putting it out there. Today, I don't have a lot to say, but I wanted to say it nonetheless, just so that I can start talking to all of you again.

Small items:

I've been playing with http://www.talkr.com/app/cast_pods.app?feed_id=28482

I've traveled way too much lately, and I'm happy to be home for a while. I'm sorry if I've been out of touch or slow to reply. Obviously I haven't been available to blog. That will all change now.

For those who replied to my meme, your posts ARE coming. I promise.

Well, that's it for today. My taxes are in (I had to pay state URGH), and my obligations are under control. I will be posting more.