If there’s anyone who seems right to tackle a project like this it seems that Mickey’s the guy. I highly recommend Mickey’s book Drumming at the Edge of Magic: A Journey into the Spirit of Percussion, to anyone who’s never read it. In this book he talks about percussion and spirituality and using percussion as a spiritual bridge or stairway to ascend to timeless spirit realm; really a beautiful book but also a great study on the ethnomusicological aspects of percussion that inspire him.

I do think that trying to sonify the cosmos is kind of silly because the cosmos already is full of sound, even if there’s no sound in space, but nevertheless the concept is neat and the sounds created thus far are kind of spooky and vaguely reminsicent of Pierre Henry and Pierre Schaeffer’s musique concrete, as well as John Bullitt’s Deep Earth Dome work.

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It pulled us
in,
brought us
together,
and when the
music ended,
the sound faded,
and the last
echoes of the
shining sun
dissipated,
we were all there.
More alive
and more completely
connected to the source
than ever before.

For a moment
we captured the light
and I hope to get
back there as often
as possible.

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Similarly, I believe that music is like a stream that goes to one place and becomes a river, or to another place and becomes a brook, or to the sea where it is totally expanded. This is so because music, unlike many other creative arts doesn’t suffer the problems of physics and is free to expand and contract, thus allowing the energy of the music to be distributed, flowly freely outward. This is what  gives music and the acts of listening, performing and/or composing the potential to be a timeless experience; the energy of the sound, whether emotional, psychological, or otherwise, has a way of transporting us by touching the core of our being, affecting the way we feel, the way we experience the world, and enhancing our sense of well-being. I’ve heard the composer Steve Roach refer to this as being in the “sound current“; I like to think of it that way.

I imagine being in the sound current as being one with a timeless state.

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Taken from Sri Ramana Maharshi’s Forty Verses on Reality:

Apart, from us where is time and where is space? If we are bodies, we are involved in time and in space, but are we? We are one and identical now, then, and forever, here, and everywhere. Therefore we, timeless, and spaceless Being, alone are.

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1. Music/Sound
2. Electronic communications (social media, Web 2.0, new media, etc…)
3. Our human potential (self-motivation, self-help, goals, etc…)

These themes have taken many forms, including anecdotes, videos, and posts I’ve found online to quotes, book references, poetry, sound samples and musical references. That’s not going to change, but time has given me the benefit of being able to see what this blog is about; what scales, and what’s sustainable as a writer and leader of this endeavor.

If you imagine this blog as an impressionist painting, say a darker Monet (above) or Renoire, and you blur the specific content items into a single whole, the focus of the writing and the message start to get more narrow. You start to see that really this blog is about me and what I’ve tried to do since I came online with my music in 1999, I write a bit about that at the bottom this post here. Here’s an excerpt:

It’s funny because as I write this I remember what it was that attracted me to the Web. I was a musician/composer, and I was working on a recording. After having played guitar for years, being in bands, playing shows, and trying to sell music at venues, I saw that the Web had the power to change everything for me as a working artist — the playing field had been leveled. On the Web, in 1999, Mp3.com had just launched, and it was skies the limit for artists to get out their, hang a virtual shingle, and let the world know about their work. However, it wasn’t about huckstering your product and bombarding folks with spam to inform them about your work (though there was some of that); rather there was an openness that permeated throughout this new platform. There were new channels for sharing what you were doing, as well as for folks, from all the over the world, to share with you.

The Web was, is, the great liberator. It leveled the playing field for artists of all kinds, but for me as a composer, the benefits have been huge. Here are a few reasons why:

• Getting the message out is cheap (often free)
• Exposure is as great as the work you put into it (and free, not historically the case)
• Everyone in the world (with an internet connection) can access your work.
• You are your own limitation because the world is at your finger tips (or to use bad 90’s copy – just a mouse click away)

These items are unprecedented, and while they have, and will continue to, come with their own struggles, it’s has the potential to be a boon for the working artist, writer, and creative. Therefore, the moral of the, blog/story that I’ve been weaving for the past year  starts to look like this:

If you’re a composer, artist, creative, whatever then there’s no excuse to not get your work out there, do the most and be the most you can be; the Web and the many electronic communications tools available to you (including email, social media and even old school listservs and newsgroups) can help you get the message out there about your work.

That’s it.

That’s the fork in the message for creatives out there.

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It’s no simple task coming up with fresh content, doing the postings, cross-posting, etc… and being, basically, a one-man media empire; it takes a heck of a lot of work, and that explains both why so many people start and give up, and why the persistence of doing it is often rewarded with followers, comments, links, etc… in many ways it’s self-regulating. Don’t do it, no love lost… keep it up, and people become interested, you can become a taste maker, or a critical voice.

Having a good social media workflow in place allows you to get more bang for your, content, buck by getting the message to more people right away. So instead of just posting and hoping that something goes viral, or you’ll be found in organic Google searches, you’re taking the message to the people. Some might forward it, some might not read it, some might not care at all, some might really enjoy it, but either way it’s out there, and getting the message out there is what it’s all about. We can only take it that far. After that it’s left to go as far as it can on merit and value alone.

I’m going to post Gina’s video here, as well, because it’s a nice addition to reading the post. Enjoy.

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Reading about Gutenberg, movable type, and printing in general always makes me think about just how far we’ve come in the realm of communications and the ability to disseminate information. As many of you know, I’m a letterpress printer, using machines that aren’t much different from the ones Gutenberg himself worked with five hundred, yep, that’s 500! years ago!!!

On the other end of spectrum, though, is the work that I’m lucky enough to do every day in the realm of electronic communications. Read the Wired, This Day In Tech, article, and allow your mind to wander, thinking about, imagining, the world of lead type, and heavy cast iron that was needed to get a message out there. Then think back a bit further to a time of hand scribes, and no dissemination at all except what could be passed word-of-mouth.

It’s kind of hard to imagine especially in a world rapid-fire tweets, Facebook status updates, RSS feeds, and blog posts just like this one, that not too long ago there was no Web, or iPhone, or Blackberry or anything else that permitted such awesome real-time, in the moment, communication. Just sayin’… pretty awesome.

Our struggle now isn’t the media, but finding the attention to dedicate to it all… Exciting stuff.

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When developing anything for the Web or from any IT perspective, there are two things that need to be considered:

1.) It’s very challenging to develop a digital process where there’s no human process.

It’s not that creating a digital process can’t be completed, it’s just that it has to be pursued. When you start developing a Web or IT endeavor it’s all about the process that you’re trying to digitize. So having process map is crucial to developing the workflow for a given Web or IT project.

2.) Sometimes a Web or IT project can’t replace real human contact

Some processes, many processes have the luxury of being able to be replaced by computers. However, there are some that no Web site or computer can replaced. In my business, it’s a beautiful idea to streamline or refine work processes, and it’s a work that I love and look very forward to doing, but sometimes there’s no replacement for human contact. Sometimes, creating a digital process where a human one is needed can hurt the process.

What I’ve learned is that you really have to evaluate the projects, analyze them, and sometimes the best thing to do is avoid digitizing a process, allowing the human process to stand.

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