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Where, When, How Much, What Flavor.
I can't believe I went through high school and never read Andrew Marvell's fantastic poem "To His Coy Mistress." Check this out...
"Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime ...
But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity."
Isn't that great?
Oh it's also Marvell's birthday today (via The Writer's Almanac)
I Know I'm Not Alone (2005): "The choice between politics and peace is entirely ours to rise to or fall short of."
Notes: San Francisco musician Michael Franti visits Baghdad and Jerusalem in an attempt to understand the nature of occupation and conflict in the Middle East. His warmth can seem childlike and naive at times but his attempt at understanding an empathy is wide, deep and largely apolitical. A little film that holds a whole lot in its arms.
"Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game and dumb enough to think it's important." --Eugene McCarthy (whom my mother campeigned for in 1968) (via The Writer's Almanac).
I'm nowhere near the first person to weigh in on the harassment flung at prominent technologist Kathy Sierra (read the whole disgusting mess if you must) so let me point you to a few places of thoughtful discussion so you can educate yourself and make up your own mind.
I don't need to repeat what everyone is saying: That this is a repulsive display of inhumanity and precisely what happens when we believe we can excuse anything in the name of snarking, humor, or the imaginary promise of total freedom the Internet promised so long ago. It isn't funny, it isn't performance art, it isn't even protected speech. It's bile. And our bodies know what to do with bile.
*The always thoughtful George Kelly created this video salon on the incident.
* Blogher co-founder Lisa Stone had this to say about protecting the safety of women, neigh all of us, online.
*The excellent tech journalist Dan Fost wrote up this account in the San Francisco Chronicle.
On a less calm note, would someone kindly tell Chris Pirillo that this isn't helping?
This isn’t new, folks - far from it. Kathy is just one out of (certainly) millions of people who suffer at the minds of psychotics. And without trying to minimize this particular situation, I’ve gotta tell you - this sounds like high school to me. Literally. Granted, I’ve had just as many death threats ONLINE - but they didn’t just start last week.
I received death threats in high school all the time - ALL THE TIME. Only, I didn’t have to deal with anonymous Internet cowards [back then] - I had to deal with real-world bullies who weren’t happy unless they struck fear into me. Death threats are just as serious in high school as they are in the world beyond.
Mr. Pirillo is correct but misguided. When a colleague is attacked and fears for her safety, the humane reaction is to show your solidarity first and question the level of his or her reaction later. While there's no harm in logic, logic in the face of another's needless misfortune is misplaced and cold. "People suck, waddya gonna do?" and Me-too-ism do not show warmth. And what people in pain and fear need is warmth.
To be clear, I am an admirer of both Mr. Pirillo's work and his enthusiasm for this community. It is based on his accomplishments and the deserved position he has attained that I feel he could have done better. A situation like this asks a lot of us. But first it asks us to be good, instead of simply right. And I know all of us are capable of both.
Background: I've been attending the South by Southwest Interactive Festival since 2000 and as a featured speaker since 2003. This year I decided to go to my ninth conference just as an attendee. South by Southwest was held March 9-18 in Austin, Texas.
Here's what I learned....
1. In the Hall of the Giants: Rumor has it South by Southwest Interactive has grown 200% in attendee population in 2005, outselling the SXSW Film Festival for the first time in their collective histories. Each official event and most of the off-schedule jamborees had corporate sponsors and an always-on tap of free drinks. The after-parties had after parties. Panels were held on Being John Malkovich floors of the convention center I never knew existed. It took three hours to get a table at lunch.
Forget having to explain to your friends back homethat South by Southwest Interactive isn't the same as South by Southwest Music. Them days are over. SXSWi has arrived. Its now the Sundance of New Media.
2. Which alters the attendee experience, probably forever. SXSWi is no longer one conference where everyone largely attends the same pool of events. It's now a swaying mobile of mini conferences where you hear a week later that your mother attended and played Legos with Wil Wright, but you'd have never known because you never saw her. Panels scattered about the convention center means everyone doesn't file down the same hallway to make lunch plans. Competing night events means you may go to one party and stay simply because you've lost your convoy. Most sadly, agendas now seem to be set by the tagline on your business card. Designers stick with designers, coders with each other, the rest in floating huddles. It seems like the only way to get a handle on the enormity of it all is to seek out familar faces. Surprise and spontaneity are a luxury now.
The frontier has closed, the west has been settled. How long before there's a geek version of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, complete with and 56K modems to romanticize an era long gone?
Keynote speaker Kathy Sierra began her presentation by asking the audience to group itself into three categories: Designers, coders and money people. As one of the "others" I stayed in my chair and shrugged. SXSW was formally a conference of "others" where engineers learned from english majors after drinking with lawyers and arguing with artists. That still exists, mostly in groups of friends who already knew one another, but it is an increasing rarity. Now reasons attendees come to Austin are practical: To network, get funded, to hang out with old friends, to drink.
3. I'm not bitter. No, really. You want what you love to succeed. And I have loved SXSW for the better part of a decade. Demanding it remain exactly how I first enjoyed it is selfish. Change is inevitable. The people I admire most accept change, evolve or don't but make a thoughtful decision and don't rag on yours. Asking for nothing to change then whining when it does is being a spoiled brat. And my mother raised me better than that.
Now that doesn't mean I was all higglety pigglety about everything. On more than one occasion (usually after getting stranded in the rain or waiting 2 hours for a plate of migas), I was ready grab the next flight back to California. But that's a child's instinct, running home with my football because I didn't get to play quarterback. Instead I drew on how I felt last summer, standing for 9 hours in the Chicago sun, during Lollapalooza.
"You chose to do this," I told my aching feet and sweaty eyebrows. "Being momentarily uncomfortable does not make it a bad choice. You'll only enjoy the rewards of your choice if you accept it and go from there."
4. Hard choices. I discovered by about day 3 that a) It's impossible to see/do everything that sounds interesting b)Even offered the choice to do everything is a kind of paralysis and c) Personally, I'd rather have meaningful interactions with 10 people than shallow 2 minute conversations with 100. This means there are people I love, attending the same conference as me, with whom who I cannot spend time. That sucks. It means I'll be spending even more on airfare this year to see them all. Which doesn't suck so much. It just is. It means that a giant media-rootie-kazootie is not perhaps the best place to link souls.
5. Where to look. Keep your eye on online video (Thank you gabillion dollar YouTube buyout), green technology (thank you Al Gore) and politics (thank you 2008 election) as spaces to watch for the next year. I'm sure there was more but can't see how to document treeing my accessibility or pimping my GUi or kerning my Helvetica or whatever else you smarter people do, will effect the larger world in the same way.
6. Into the Heart. The soul of the conference, for me at least, remains the activities I do year after year (without Fray Cafe and 20x2, without dinner at the Castle Hill, plan on finding me at Coffee to the People next March) and the quality time I spend with people I admire and respect. I may not leave with a fabulous new idea every year but warmth of the interaction (including family) more than makes up for it.
It helps that Austin, even after moving away seven years ago, feels like a second home. I'd like to make a point of coming back at least one more time during the year.
7. Three ways. For the first time, I felt as though SXSW was three conferences. I had friends in town for just Interactive, just Film, just Music and several combinations I hadn't considered. Each is its own experience. The days I enjoyed most are when I had a plan to do everything, did a little bit of everything that felt natural and gave myself time in between to eat, talk and get talked into doing something else.
8. Spore is going to set the world on its ear. It may be the excuse I've been looking for to upgrade iMacs.
9. Coming Home. Plan of action for all future Home-From-SXSW Re-Entries: Bring home as little media as possible, use available tools for exploring things missed at the festival, return emails and phone calls quickly, tell friends and family have arrived home safely, get good night's sleep and non-Hush Puppy accompanied meal asap.
Re: Stack of magazines, Tivoed shows and podcasts the height of a city bus, declare bankruptcy.
10. Everything changes and nothing does. I was 25 when I started coming to SXSW, a bored, lonely graduate student with too much time and nowhere useful to put it. The Internet had hit its first stride. Google was a baby. Podcasting, vlogging and World of Warcraft were like flying cars.
I'm 33 now, a published author, a home and cat owner, less tough but happier now. I probably can't hit 6 parties in an evening and know I don't want to. That's ok. I might have my kids to tend to one year like my friend Mike did. I'll adjust and still make room for the things that matter most: Learning, growth, time with people I love and spring in a place that's grown on me the longer I've been away.
This year was about acceptance. SXSW is bigger than any of us old timers had imagined it could be. That isn't going to change. But this once intimate now enormous conference isn't saying "go away" but rather "find your place." The joy is no longer in collective experience but the one you make for yourself. That isn't any less valuable, just different.
Beyond that, if you want to know why I keep coming back to Austin the second week of March every year, look at the masthead of the World Changing blog. It says "Another World is Here."
Every year at SXSW, I live in this message. The future we not only dream of but want is attainable. In many ways, it's already here. And it's not being decided in corporate board rooms or the halls of Congress but here, amongst smart people with laptops who believe that good ideas can live without excluding good values or making a good living.
Isn't that the adult world we dreamed of as children? One where work wasn't necessary druggery but both allowed us to live comfortably and aid in the coming of a better world? One that wasn't either or but both?
There is such optimism in Austin every spring. Despite the crowds, the noise, the gigantism of it all, the hope I feel sustains me for months afterword.
I had my doubts after 2006 whether I would be back. But when I am honest with myself, I can't imagine being anywhere else in March of 2008 and beyond that. Even if it's only for a few parties and a late night plate of migas, I will be back next year.
See you then, if not before.
The New York Times is asking if the album as a musical format is not long for this world. This comes only a week or so after the 33 1/3 series of books analyzing a single album each announced 21 new volumes in their series.
Which leads me to ask? Will the study of album soon become like the study of paintings in a museum, an important yet not contemporary form venerated by history and academia?
What do you think?
I will send you all scooters, or wings, or those tubes that the Jetsons rode around in. Something, because, lord, I'm so so sorry.
"The easiest way to attract a crowd is to let it be known that at a given time and a given place someone is going to attempt something that in the event of failure will result in sudden death."
--Harry Houdini (via The Writer's Almanac)
The last nine bands that have shown up on my Last.fm profile have been characterized as "Post-Rock" a term I hadn't heard before and haven't the slightest understanding of its meaning. This Wikipedia entry left me holding my own tail.
Anybody heard this term before? Help a brutha out?
I am not proud of this but I have been brought low by allergies. For most my adult life, I've been No Allergy Person (NAP) who would zoom on where others weezed and complained about the coming of spring. Now I am the guy watching hour 4 of Friday Night Lights, home on a Friday Night while my nose mimicks Mount Kilauea. Except with snot.
My college buddy Dave used to spend 3 days in bed at the beginning of every allergy season. He was also the guy who would beg out of social engagements to fold napkins or back up his Palm Pilot so I figured him for the introverted type. Now I get it. My nose feels like a giant, bleeding tumor welded to my face. I have the energy of a wet mop.
Have fun without me, you, you crazy kids at the horse races. You, you lushies out getting lushed. Save yourselves. Even all ya'll doing something with robots that I don't understand. Get wired. I need to get well
"Give all of us gathered here tonight the strength to remember that life is so very fragile. We are all vulnerable and we will all at some point in our lives fall; we will all fall. We must carry this in our hearts…that what we have is special. That it can be taken from us and that when it is taken from us we will be tested…we will be tested to our very souls." --Friday Night Lights
The Holiday (2006): "Sweet is not the same as loveable"
Notes: A hollow, phony, laughless waste of time. Nancy Meyers, I expected better of you.
Today is notable for three writers who stirred a fair bit of stink in their day:
It's the birthday of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, most famous for his play A Doll's house. First performed in 1879, A Doll's House is the story of the unraveling of a marriage which ends with Nora, the heroine, leaving her husband with the slam of a door. In it's day, it left audience's agast which is focus on domestic life rather than epic drama, on dialogue rather than monologue and its lack of faith in the exhalted Victorian institution of marriage.
Writer Kathryn Harrison was also born today. Harrison's 1998 memoir The Kiss concerned an incestuous relationship with her father.
Today is also the anniversary of the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin, the bestselling book of the 19th century behind the Bible and the novel often credited with laying the groundwork for the Civil War. Published first in abolishonist newspapers, Uncle Tom's Cabin has been labelled racist and banned more than nearly any book in the history of American literature. As testament to its impact, when President Lincoln met its author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, he said "So you're the little lady who wrote the book that started this great war."
(via The Writer's Alamanac)
"I think we are all responsible for discovering what the night holds for us" --Patti Smith (via Fresh Air)
"Saving what you really want to do for retirement is like saving sex for old age" --Warren Buffet
Wherein we discuss the calm before the storm and yawn.
MP3 File
Wattstax (1974): "A community rebuilds itself by first being honest about its own history."
Notes: Documentary about music festival in the Watts section of Los Angeles seven years after the 1965 riots set the community ablaze. Featuring performances by The Staple Singers, The Bar Kays and Isaac Hayes who closes the show. Called the "Black Woodstock" and filmed just as brilliantly. Director Mel Stuart hired an all black crew for principal photography.
Wherein we welcome you to Central Texas.
MP3 File
Guess where I am?
Something New (2006): "Who we date often says less about us than we think it does."
Notes: In a weird twist, this was the #1 movie in my Netflix queue and just starting when I turned on the TV in my hotel room in Houston. It's a great concept (black woman dates white man and struggles to win the approval of her family, friends and community) with rich possibilities but Something New's content to play it as a traditional romantic comedy. Too bad. There's got to be something between this and Jungle Fever.
Hey there. I'm headed to New Orleans today to check out the relief effort my mom spearheaded as part of United Jewish Communities in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Then it's on to Austin and SXSW come Wed.
I'll be blogging some a voz but expect postings to be light until I return home on the 19th.
Have a good few weeks, everyone. See you in Austin!
Title: "On a Night Like Thus"
Author: Ellen Sussman.
Synopsis: Blair Clemens is a chef in San Francisco. Luke Bellingham is a successful screenwriter, also in San Francisco. They went to high school together but barely new one another. Many years later, they run into one another, Luke on the verge of a divorce, Blair with a teenage daughter and terminal cancer. Love ensues.
Backstory: Ellen is a friend the local literary scene and Readerville. In honor of my trip down the coast last month, I wanted to read something set in California.
Notes: A quick plot heavy read. Strong sense of setting.
Verdict: There's something to be said for a book that simply makes you want to come back to it while you're away. I can't say the characters or the story spoke to me but they did make me hold on. I want to know what happened next, to wolf it down instead of chew lightly.
It's a different sort of reading experience perhaps from the books that change your life but it takes all kinds. Sometimes I want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich rather than a 9 course masterwork. And this was a damn fine sandwich.
I'll be there guy there not speaking on any panels or organizing any huge events or looking like a survivor of the bombing of Guernica which is what I felt like last year.
Friends, its all about the fun this time. Look for the fella with the relaxed shoulders and the dopey wide smile. I may even wear a funny hat.
Nothing!
I completed the first chapter of my book on Tuesday. The beast weighed in at 34 pages and 9,943 words. I think it's pretty good but Agent Man has the final word. He may say "we're a go" which is ideal and means we're ready to take this mutha out for a spin or he may say "fix this" or "tweek that" (more likely) in which case I do it as quickly as I can.
Either way, I've made a huge step towards this thing being born. And that makes me so happy, I started spinning in circles just walking to the mailbox yesterday. That combined with finishing my LA Times review on Thursday means I get to head off to SXSW next week with a clean plate.
Hooray. Hu-mother-lovin-Ray.
Apex (noun, 2nd definition): "Peak, summit, high point"
Usage: "The apex of my spring was completing the first chapter of my book, on time and below budget."
Today is the birthday of Tom Wolfe, John Irving and Dr. Seuss. Wow (via The Writer's Almanac).
Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times edited by Kevin Smokler
