UNDERDOG of PERFECTION

About two weeks ago, someone decided SLP needed to be convinced to vote for John McCain, or so it would seem. She got a number of “robo-calls” and, over a period of three days, three different McCain (or, really, anti-Obama) mailers.

At first we were both rather frustrated and annoyed by this. Who did we know who had, as a prank, signed her up on the McCain mailing list? I myself had gotten a few emails from the McCain campaign a few weeks prior, but I had removed myself from their mailing list and hadn’t heard from them again.

But today, reading a Huffington Post article about McCain’s tactics in Wisconsin, I came to a new realization. The article features some quotes from a Sun Prairie woman who, like SLP, is beyond extremely unlikely to be swayed to the McCain side. It suddenly became clear: the McCain campaign is not well-organized; it cannot differentiate between potential supporters and complete wastes of time. As a result, the campaign is squandering its resources in a futile attempt to persuade the unpersuadable.

Obama FTW!

I’ve just posted an updated version of the website for The Farm documentaries, now featuring both films streaming online in their entirety. Check it out! room34.com/thefarm

It’s hard to start over. Make a clean break. Go back to the very beginning and build things from the ground up. I experience it all the time in web development. Most of the time, starting over from scratch in this field is seen in a negative light. “Reinventing the wheel” is the standard metaphor. Why do something you’ve (or someone else has) already done all over again? Better to take what you’ve already built once or twice or a hundred times before and just reuse what you can, tweak as needed, give it a fresh coat of paint (so to speak) and call it a day — to keep the clichés coming, fast and furious. Check.

But… on the other hand… did you really do it the best you could on the very first try? Is it another coat of paint on a sturdy, reliable structure that’s stood the test of time, or just another layer of lipstick on the pig? Well, for better or worse that’s what I do, most of the time. It’s what most of us do. Because even if we have the chance, starting over from the beginning means a lot more work, and isn’t what we’ve already got, good enough?

Maybe. But is “good enough” really good enough? Really?

Today my 5-year-old son was bored. BOOOOORED. And he asked me what he could do. I spotted on the shelf above my desk the bulk Legos I had purchased several months ago to keep on my desk at my old job. They’ve pretty much just been sitting in their containers since I’ve been working from home, and I decided it was time to break them out.

So we sat at the table and started building. I had packed them somewhat hastily back when I left that job, and they were still mostly clumped together into the odd, improbable configurations I always liked to build when I was sitting at my desk mulling over a coding problem.

As we began putting the Legos together, I mostly kept these proto-creations and just added on to them or made slight modifications. It seemed too time-consuming and counterproductive to take them all apart and start over again. But then I stepped away for a few minutes, and when I returned, I discovered he had completely disassembled them all. Everything. Nothing but individual pieces, and we had to start over.

I grabbed a few pieces and began to imagine the configuration of whatever it might be that I was about to build. And then the ideas began to flow. I started seeing arrangements I never would have imagined — or, more precisely, bothered to imagine — otherwise. The end result was probably one of the most interesting and (dare I say it) whimsical Lego creations I’ve ever come up with. (And I don’t use the word “whimsical” lightly. Or at all.)

And it never would have happened if I hadn’t gone back to square one and started over.

Thanks, kid. Those of you who are registered users can see more pictures from our Lego project here.

This is the first time I’ve ever seen a performance of 4’33”. It’s a polarizing work, to be sure. You love it or you hate it. Or maybe you get it or you don’t. Or you get it, but you still don’t really get it. Or you do really get it that, really, there’s nothing to get.

Personally, I think it has merit on multiple levels: it forces you to stop and observe your surroundings in a way few of us do these days; artistically, it’s one logical extreme of the various avant-garde movements of the 20th century; it cultivates proper concert hall decorum; and, if you choose to see it this way, it’s a brilliant piece of comic absurdism. The fact that it’s performed in three movements, with the requisite pauses (and opportunities for the audience to cough, adjust themselves in their seats, rustle programs, etc.), is the key to this last perspective. If it were just the performers sitting up there staring blankly for four-and-a-half minutes, who cares? But it’s three distinct movements of nothing, separated by more nothing (of a much different kind).

There’s something deeper to it though. As any serious student of music will tell you, the silence is just as important as the notes. To put it more simply, silence is music, just as much as sound is. So as I said earlier, this is the logical conclusion of a particular strain of 20th century music — the mirror image of the kind of free-form cacophony that was also being practiced at the time. Whether Cage intended this piece as a critique of that movement, a part of it, or otherwise, is a topic best left to the scholars who’ve studied Cage more than I have. Ultimately, I just think it’s a cool idea. Somebody had to do it eventually.

And I feel hope for an inspiring leader and real progress, the likes of which have not been seen in my lifetime.