Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Philly

The Happinomics of Magneto

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Today on the bus an attractive, muscle-bound, black man was sitting across from E and I rocking to an unknown sort of music. He was wearing a muscle-shirt version of this Magneto t-shirt.

I turned to E and said, “That guy’s shirt is awesome.” She nodded in agreement.

Then I motioned to the man to take off his headphones.

“Your shirt is awesome.”

“You know who it is?”

“Magneto!”

“Yeah!”

We chuckled at each others fanaticism. He replaced the headphones in his ear and I went back to talking to E.

He smiled until we got off the bus.

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Happinomics is an Ad Busters article about how small changes to the way we interact with the strangers around us can make us tangibly happier. In their example, the interaction is talking on the bus.

the corners of my mind

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I have a habit of dozing off on the 57 bus in the afternoon on the way home from work. I don’t think it’s because I am so tired. There’s just something about the rhythm of motion and the droning of the motor humming through my body while I listen to my headphones.

The nap is only ever about ten minutes long. It’s not even a nap, really. I’ve never slept through my stop. It’s just an extended hang right on the line between awake and asleep.

I love that line, especially when traveling in that direction rather than the opposite – being tortured by an alarm clock. Heading in to sleep is different. Your brain will rationalize outside stimuli however it sees fit. The world outside of your body takes on an arbitrary – almost hallucinatory – quality.

On the bus my favorite thing to do is turn on my own music – new demos or an Arcati Crisis rehearsal – and then drift off. My brain finds things in the songs I’ve never heard before. Sometimes I have a momentary synesthesia and my own words are painted in color. Others I am enraptured by Gina narrating an epic story, only to realize I’m not listening to her towering “Brother John” but just twenty seconds of refrain of “What’ll I Say.”

Last night when my body was finally ready to settle down my brain refused to go gently into that good night. It was raining hard, a symphony of individual droplets pattering against the roof above my head, and my mind wanted to examine every one.

I hate those nights. I’ve hated them since high school, when every night brought the possibility of seeing the subsequent dawn from the wrong side.

Last night I slipped in my earbuds and suddenly “Small & Lonely and “Gone Baby Gone” were rendered in plastic yellow totems, a wry stop-motion tribute to Yellow Submarine, awash in the white noise of the storm.

It took all of four minutes to fall asleep.

whiling away the hours

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(1) A few years ago I saw Malcolm Gladwell deliver a speech at the New Yorker Festival that is largely recapitulated in the second chapter of Outliers, called “The 10,000 Hour Rule.”

In it, Gladwell draws our attention to a data point converged upon by countless studies of experts in a variety of fields. He says, “In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.” He goes on to quote neurologist Daniel Levitin:

In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again. … It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.

Gladwell supports the rule using Mozart, Bill Gates, Bill Joy, and the Beatles as his examples. Not to say that their genius and success is purely a result of 10,000 hours of practice – the book as a whole explains other facets – just that it was an essential component of their expertise.

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(2a) 10,000 hours is a long time.

If as a child starting at age five you had piano lessons two times a week (an hour each) and also practiced an hour a day, you would clock nine hours a week. 468 hours a year. 4,680 hours a decade.

If you kept that up until age 26 you’d finally have served your time.

(2b) 10,000 hours can go by before you know it.

Maybe you got into video games at age 11. You played them every night after homework and dinner, let’s say from 7:30 to 11:00 p.m. on most nights, plus extra on the weekend. That’s more than 25 hours a week. 1,300 plus a year.

You’d be a master by the time you started college. Most kids are.

(2c) Time is relative.

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(3) In the car today Gina and I were singing in harmony to the amazing Hezekiah Jones album Hezekiah Says You’re A-OK, on the way to see his band split a bill with the equally fantastic Up the Chain.

“You know, Gina,” I said, breaking from my lead vocal, “I’ve been thinking about this 10,000 hour thing. Not everyone’s an expert at something. I mean, what do most people spend 10,000 hours doing by the time they’re 25? Watching teevee, I suppose.”

“More than likely,” she replied.

“But, think about me. I watched a lot of television, sure. Mostly, though, I read until I was old enough to write, and then I wrote and read. That’s what I spent my 10k on.”

(Perhaps she interjected, “Oh, I remember.”)

“And, you know, is it any surprise that I’m good at communications? I’m not an expert, but no wonder it’s my calling. I spent my whole life practicing for it.”

We sat and sang for a moment, contemplating that.

“What about you?”

Gina paused in her harmony. “Hmm, me?”

“Yeah. What did you spend 10,000 hours doing?”

“This. Listening to music. Singing harmony.”

“Really your whole life, right? Your mother singing, your father playing guitar…”

“Yeah, since I can remember.”

“Right. So, no matter how much I rehearse, you’ll always have the edge. It’ll always come easier to you, until I reach that threshold.”

“I suppose.”

We paused as the song wound down.

“What do you think Hezekiah spent 10,000 hours doing?”

We thought on that for a few moments, and then sang together to “Albert Hash.”

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(4) We’re not all Mozart. I might not ever be Hezekiah Jones. But, we’ve all spent 10,000 hours doing something other than sleeping, and hopefully other than watching television. Maybe something incidental that we do out of necessity or habit. Driving? Social-networking? Cleaning? Taking care of children?

I’ve put in more than my share on communications – reading cereal boxes and trashy fantasy novels, writing stories at eight on my manual typewriter and almost nine years of blogs.

I got an early start on 10,000 hours of being Gina’s best friend, which I keep padding. I’m really good at that. More recently I’ve attained well-in-excess of 10,000 hours of being in love with Elise.

I hope eventually I’ll reach my 10,000th hour of serious focus on music. It’s a large piggy-bank of time to fill.

What about you? What have you spent your life mastering, intentionally or unintentionally?

don’t fail me now

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The last forty-eight hours of my life.

At six o’clock on Monday I am playing guitar. I have been playing for hours, drilling songs against a metronome. The bridge of “Unengaged” for twenty minutes straight. I’ve worn through a callous for the first time in ages.

Later I rehearse piano and vocals equally as hard. I fall asleep reading Outliers in bed, which just two chapters in already has caused one blowup with E because I said if I had me as a child I’d call me a failure.

I don’t want to be a failure.

Tuesday I have a fun, frantic day at work – the kind where you realize at the end of the day that you never stopped to hang your coat. I start writing the second my ass is on the bus, and emerge almost three hours later with that last post.

I rehearse. Hard. Again. Trying not to fail. Despite my voice sounding brittle and inflexible due to the lack of a warm-up, I venture out to an open mic while E stays at home and works on freelance.

At the restaurant my first song is awesome; the room is quietly transfixed. (I’m not a failure?) Afterward I promptly break a string and become shy and faltering when I’m handed another guitar. I fuck up “Like a Virgin,” of all things, and promptly lose everyone’s attention.

Today I feel slightly beaten up (thank god I don’t drink at those things), on top of beating myself up. Still manage another frantic work day that barely includes a coat-hanging. On the way home I listen to my own voice on my iPod, which a lot of days is the only thing I can manage to do.

I’m listening to “Like a Virgin” from 2006 and thinking, This is awful. Why am i singing like that? (Of course, I wouldn’t make it ten seconds into “Like a Virgin” from 2001.)

Then I listen to a Trio from 2008 and realize, God, I really did get better.

I am not a failure.

I get home and am kissed goodbye as E heads out to front her band at the Khyber. Another hour of writing.

Social Media Club of Philadelphia: The State of Social Media

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Earlier tonight I attended a fantastic networking night and discussion forum hosted by the Social Media Club of Philadelphia.

In a room full of super-mobile urbanites I was the sole attendee clacking away at a laptop, which resulted in my capturing an abridged transcript of the evening. It’s presented below for the utility of my fellow attendees, but you might find it interesting too!

Continue reading for discussions of the following:

  • Q1: What to say when someone says “I don’t have time for social media.”
  • Q2: Is Social Media a popularity contest or is social media about genuine relationships?
  • Q3: Are bloggers responsible for getting the facts right?
  • Q4: What makes a community real? That is: when does a web site feel like a place to be instead of simply a page of information to visit?
  • Q5: What are the responsibilities of Web 2.0 services to engage with and respond to the community they serve, and what are the responsibilities of the community to the service?
  • Q6: How can we best support our social media community and our peers knowing full well we’re often competing for the same clients and client money?

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