The Ruination of Incidental Resonance

I participate in medical research studies. They're very popular around here. Most are overnight studies into which you are not allowed to bring any kind of food or medicine. There's a bag check for such things, which means a line forms, consisting of a dozen, perhaps, to more than 100 people.

The sleeping rooms are large and filled with bunk beds. You bring your own bedding. Lower bunks, against the wall, and near electrical outlets are premium real estate, desired so much that people will arrive early to get first dibs. In large studies, this competitive impulse typically predicates a long, potentially boring wait for the bag check to proceed.

One time, standing amidst the other participants with our bulks of pillows, blankets, clothing, and necessary distractions, I discovered how wonderful it was to have an mp3 player. Without anyone I knew to talk to, and no particular motivation to make conversation, it was a perfect time to lapse into the world of a playlist assembled for the occasion. I made further effective use of my magical music device that weekend to help focus on the reading of a good book, ignore a stupid movie I had seen once, too many times, and block out the unfortunate instance of snoring already in session before I went to bed.

All these are moments where an mp3 player was the blessed answer to incidental noise of unappealing variety.

There you have a case for segregating one's self from the world about by placing music front and center of attention. You should also see I'm no troglodyte come to condemn this era's insufferable intrusions into nature's audio receptor. Today, however, came a point where I had to pause and consider if I was listening too much here and not enough there.

Clues have been mounting, raising a notion. I'll be driving and just can't seem to find any station that fits my mood. I'm trying to work and keep skipping past songs seeking that gem of a tune to aid my concentration. I'm reading and realize the best sound I could be hearing is whatever my imagination conjures from the story's descriptions. Predilections for musical solutions preclude potential problems. (I'll try to avoid falling into a complete alliterate bender, here.)

Accept as a premise this quote from Oliver Stone's Doors movie. John Densmore, concerned with Jim Morrison's increasing bouts of intoxication, tells him "We took drugs to expand our mind, not to escape." Drugs and alcohol lure initiates of altered states by the variance from everyday perception. Truth be told, drinking day to day destroys sobriety's distinctions.

Likewise, how is music to compliment our lives if we don't allow some quieter contrast? Trusting musical diversions to enhance routine, or the advent of any such conditioned behavior, begs a discerning mind for the occasional assessment of absence. No deeply hedged forest or salty ocean expanse can escape our ever more convenient media, so capable we are in ignoring the might of existence. Are we succumbing to the addiction of musical augmentation?

In comparison to other fixations the consequences may prove less evident, assuredly less grave, toward our physical state. But questions must be asked. Do we deprive our brains of some mental exercise when we insist on a programmable soundtrack to our daily motions? Is there some spiritual damage caused by acting against the mind's absorption of random and unanticipated aural emanations?

I don't' want to overstate or over-think this. That would be antithetical. I simply recognized a moment today where I found myself enjoying intermittent sounds, the murmur of the workplace, by neglecting to resume my beloved internet streaming audio. I knew it was a realization worth remarking.

My Inauguration Day

I'll be taking photos around work and campus to document the event. Updates to come.

Update: 11:11 am

Obama Inauguration Day, UND Campus

Purpose, Refracted

Imagine you look for praise in your work, be it art, craft, or otherwise. Then, one day, you strike fame and all of your desire for recognition is answered. You deal well with the inevitable criticism of wide acclaim, but eventually the acknowledgments on a whole become unfulfilling. You find less and less original opinion, the words strung together from contexts of commendation to condemnation bereft as they balance one another out.

You begin to realize the feedback you once so craved, is now an empty well. Your work is all you have left in the equation, and it has been abandoned by your own sentiments for the worth it was given by others. You awaken to the simple truth of self-contentment and see how it has escaped you throughout. When all else falls away, only inherent gratification sustains the soul and it seems so urgent after years of neglected effort to attain.

What, then, would you do? Could you conceive a concept of new appreciations or be undone by the weight of wasted time? Would you wish you could go back now and do it right?

Paper to Pixels: New Life for Old Journals?

I have a plan.

I used to keep journals. I also used to have a lot more free time. I've been stuck not blogging but wanting to. While there are plenty of topics and concepts I find interesting, my perspectives have been lacking quality worthy of publishing. My posted vs unposted blogs are about 1-1.

So, I thought I might start a new blog, under a new name and profile and transcribe my journals to it. The journal entries are what you might expect. Questions, declarations, emotions, experiences. Many mundane, a few fascinating, some eloquently written, others an affront to the English language, but all real. I would change the names to protect the innocent (Have you ever googled yourself or someone you know? Of course you have.). I still would not tell (almost) anyone the name or location of said blog. With all the users pouring their hearts and souls onto the internet, it should be difficult enough to sniff out my new creation.

This is the genesis of the project, however, and I need to make a couple of decisions.

Do I present it as a period piece by adding the entry dates? If not, people might eventually figure it out when the content starts to sound dated. That could be part of the fun, like inadvertently tuning into a blog being broadcast through time, before there were blogs as we now know them. I dig time travel, after all.

Alternatively, I could pull a Lucas by "enhancing" the material. Using the current post date and time, updating pop culture references to contemporary stand-ins, avoiding anachronisms, and making other modifications where appropriate would serve to pass off this blog as the musings of a parallel universe version of myself born 15 years later. That's kind of cool.

Which way to go? In the former, people might be guessing who this person was and where they lived, the story unfolding with nostalgia for some and retrospection for others. With the latter, I could could further mask my identity and treat the source writing as a sort of rough draft, presenting a pseudo-fictitious biography.

Or I could do both simultaneously...

What do you think?

Big Time in a Northern Town

The North Dakota Democratic convention. The World Men's Curling Championship. Beatlemania Live! The Capitol Steps. Numerous music acts at bars and clubs. And a few other less extravagant affairs. Grand Forks is hoppin' this weekend!

I'm leaving work at 3pm to meet my wife for a shuttle bus to take us over to the Alerus. From there we wait in line to go through security with the throngs of convention goers, most of whom wouldn't be there if it weren't for the attraction of speeches by Obama first, and then Hillary (who scheduled out of pure desperation, I swear; she's grasping for the reins coming here). At 4:30 we attend the fund-raiser reception where Barack will give a short speech. Then, we hang out until 5:10 when we need to be seated for Obama's speech at the rally, the big event. I'm really interested in hearing what size crowd will stick around for Hillary at 7:30 (previously 8pm, until her campaign realized they were going to be stepping on some toes on their way to the Capitol Steps). We've got tickets to the Beatlemania show at that time, which frankly should be more entertaining than seeing Clinton, no matter how less historic.

This whole political convention business has got me a little anxious. It's like any new experience and environment to which you're committing a good chunk of time and will be surrounded by others who have a clue. I'm excited, but concerned because of the time constraints. My parents are also attending the Beatles show, but their tickets are at the venue under my name. I need to make sure we aren't late, or risk making my parents stand around waiting.

I want to absorb as much of this evening as possible and worry as little as possible about the details.

DELETED!

The Maze's link from Grand Forks Life has been revoked! Well, don't put me out to pasture yet. Labeling Maze of Feathers as a blog that "hasn't been updated for a half a year or more" is technically incorrect, although ostensibly true. There happen to be blog entries waiting in the gates, is all, yet-to-be-posted material stuck in draft form, entries with enticing titles like Quadruple Intelligences, The Arcade Enclave, Closer to Home, and Delayed Reaction. And they're coming to a computer screen NEAR YOU... as soon as they meet my evolving standards.

Am I alone in this situation? Are there other principled blog authors out there getting lost in the shuffle because they only want to offer their best, as it comes to them? Sure, the internet is vast. Certainly, the multitude of sites capable of entertaining or informing us breaches our limited time and attention. By necessity, we cut the fat. But, are we so inundated in the realm of individually operated city-centric sites, yet? Is the Grand Forks blogosphere truly so overcrowded that some periodically dormant seeds of local opinion and insight must be banished from more regularly updated pages?

More importantly, is there no value in dated text? Grand Forks Life lists an archive of it's own material, which may occasionally have current relevance. GrandForksGuy certainly links back to his earlier reporting often enough. If that respected and frequented site continues to build a reputation as repository for our regional history via the lens of our web culture, links to any existing Grand Forks blog should be maintained. Look to the future, but preserve the past, for both will meet in the now.

UPDATE: Read through the intense debate!

The Knack of Inspiration

Film making is yet another voice in the chorus of entertaining career options that relies all too heavily on my shaky attention span and wavering will. Today I went to lunch and caught a the first 45 minutes of "The Knack ...and How to Get It,' a quirky black and white 60s fare, brandishing the era's sexual repression like a stylized warning sign. IMDB and Amazon tell me it winds up chastising sexual imposition, lending some early girl power to the film's female lead, but I don't actually care much about the movie's message. The crazy editing, random captioning, explicitly candid scripting scene by scene for would-be extras, and whatever madness awaits me in the rest of the story come from a school of uninhibited creative expression that I want in on. It inspired me. Back to work, running paperwork from one place to another I looked around me and saw scenes waiting to be written and directed. My mind was framing shots of windows and shadows and stonework and people, and to each instilling context, bright with interest.

The flow of feeling and ideas is empowering. It sets me loose and alive and I have taken to sitting down and writing when it hits, committing not only the ideas but the sensation to text as accurately as possible before it's lost to me again. Inspiration is a vagrant, wiser than the world, dispelling the constraints of our present and constructed realities, but transient and prone to vanishing without a trace. The muse offers generous enchantment, though unheeding to our calls. This is why I watch these moments come and go with care. I note the circumstances preceding their arrival and struggle to apprehend their continued presence. I want to love what I do. We have a chance each day to see something closer to our souls' desires, if we take the time to look and listen, and believe.

And now, I return to something completely mundane... or is it?