Day 100

Yesterday, April 9, was the 100th day of 2012. How do I know this? Because it was also Day 100 of my little “Resolution 2012” project, wherein I strive to write something creative every day. Perhaps it’s time to take stock of what I've "accomplished."

1) About 32,000 words, including this post. Not bad, though not as much as I had originally hoped. That said, in the last few weeks, a crazy work schedule and a bit of a creative lull have combined to slow my daily output. I initially tried to compensate somewhat by attempting the NaPoWriMo thing, but it has been an unmitigated failure.  OK, maybe not unmitigated, since I do have the start of a reasonable poem to show for it, but most of the “poetry” I’ve written over the past nine days would barely qualify as horrible prose. I’m not sure I’ll continue to bother with it.

2) Twenty published posts (including this one) on my two blogs, plus several others that I wrote but didn’t bother to publish. In both cases, this is already far ahead of previous years’ outputs. Yay for me!

3) Six or seven poems started, though most if not all need some serious polishing. Still, I am unaccustomed to this kind of output in recent years, so something is definitely working. I’m not sure if I’ll have the makings of a year-end chapbook, but I’ll certainly have some good material to work with. 

4) Quite a few “placeholder” entries. I won’t even bother going back to count them, but it must be at least 15, and perhaps closer to 20. A 20-percent “slacker” index is nothing to be proud of, but I went into this knowing there would be days I just didn’t have the energy to write anything more than “Hi Mom.” So my built-in failsafe seems to have worked… mostly… which brings me to my most shameful admission...

5) Two missed entries. I had really hoped to have an entry for every day this year, but that is not to be. While I was in Cleveland playing The Magic Flute, I missed days 79 and 84. After the first miss, I chalked it up to my absorption in the project and decided to forgive myself. And to be honest, these projects always sap a lot of my emotional energy. I have trouble focusing on anything other than the music, and it takes a huge effort of will to get any other work done. My entries for that week are mostly reflections on how I was feeling; in other words nothing more than diary entries. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, it’s probably the way to go if I’m not going to forget to write during my other musical projects this year. But in retrospect, I am a little disappointed that I wasn’t able to at least write two words on those two days. 

6) Where do I go from here? By the ides of March, I was feeling very encouraged. I’d written some decent poetry, my blog writing was going well, and I felt like I was back in the writing groove. Then work got really crazy, and suddenly it was as if my brain said “no!” and my inspiration plummeted; I’ve written very little of any consequence since then. But I have enough experience with creativity to know that it goes in cycles, so I’m not too worried. And to be honest, this project has been a fun ride. I’m looking forward to writing a year-end wrap up.

Layton & Jobs: Idealists

The year 2011 was a tough year for the admittedly narrow demographic of left-leaning Canadian Apple aficionados. In August, we lost Jack Layton, the leader of the New Democratic Party, to cancer at the age of 61; and in October, we lost the founder and CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs, also to cancer. 

At first glance, the two men didn’t have much in common. Layton was a career politician and a man of the people. Steve Jobs was one of the most successful businessmen of our time and an intensely private man. Yet both were highly respected among their peers and inspirational to those who looked to them for leadership. And the public outpouring of grief at their untimely passing was of a scale and intensity that has not been seen for decades for a politician, let alone for a businessman. 

Both managed to take the reins of their respective organizations and lead a gradual but seemingly inevitable reversal of fortune, Apple going from a nearly bankrupt computer maker to the most valuable company in the world; the NDP going from an afterthought party to the official opposition. 

But respect and success will only take you so far. Certainly it doesn’t automatically elicit the kind of widespread public mourning that Layton’s and Jobs’ passing did. Of course part of it is that they died far too young and that their lives were cut short at the height of their success. It’s only natural that we feel the tragedy in this more acutely. 

But it occurs to me that the one important thing these two men had in common was an unrelenting idealism that they somehow managed to preserve in fields where compromising one’s ideals is pretty much par for the course. Idealists in politics are generally don't last long; they either get out of politics or make that deal with the devil. Idealists certainly do not rise to party leadership. But Jack Layton was able to stay true to his principles more than any other Canadian party leader in recent memory, and Canadian voters were just beginning to sense this when he died. Steve Jobs’ unwillingness to compromise when it came to user experience is what ultimately set Apple's products apart from those of its competitors. It was what made him a legendary badass among the Silicon Valley elite, but it was also what earned him the grudging respect and admiration of those who worked for him. And it was what endeared him to several generations of Apple fans. When we use an Apple product, we get the feeling that it has been designed specifically to delight us in a thousand different ways, not simply to coax a few hundred dollars from our wallet. This was Steve Jobs’ doing. 

The incredible impromptu public memorials that sprang up after Laytons’ and Jobs’ passing were monuments to idealism. And in this age when people simply assume that all politicians are corrupt and all businessmen are crooked, the grievers were also tapping into the same sentiment that the Occupy Wall Street protesters were channelling. I know this sounds melodramatic, but in some sense, they were mourning the death of truth and honesty and protesting against cynicism.

It’s tough when we lose the good guys. They’re too few and far between.

NaPoWriMo

So April is National Poetry Month in the US and, according to wikipedia, since 1999 in Canada too. In conjunction with "NaPoMo" is National Poetry Writing Month, or NaPoWriMo (all together now), wherein we "poets" are urged to write a poem a day for all 30 days of April. 

Needless to say, as a poet who is thrilled to write—or even start to write—two decent poems a month, I've never participated. It always seemed to place the focus on quantity rather than quantity. But in this year of my own "Resolution 2012 project," in which I have basically thrown quality out the window in favour of quantity, I suppose this is my year to take a stab at NaPoWriMo (even if just saying it leaves a bad taste in my mouth). 

Yesterday, I wrote a "poem" so execrable that I'm surprised my computer didn't destroy itself in shame for having to harbour such drivel on its hard drive. It only deigned to keep it because yesterday was April Fools Day. Today I made somewhat more of an effort, though as you'll see below, the results are only just one level from the bottom on the stinking bathroom scale of "pee-ew."

There once was a poet from somewhere

who didn’t write poems or care.

he spent all his days

in a writer’s-block haze,

but he wrote this damn lim’rick, so there!

The Magic Flute

Last week I was in Cleveland for a three-show run of Mozart’s The Magic Flute with Apollo’s Fire. It was a “semi-staged” production with several very fine singers in the lead roles and a couple of excellent dancers who enhanced the production value considerably. There was no set to speak of, but the singers were in lovely period costumes, and there were a few of props to enhance the "decor." Interestingly and unusually, the orchestra was on stage, split in half with an aisle down the middle, which the choreography put to good use; indeed, the orchestra was often called upon to participate in the action on stage little ways. All in all, it made for a great deal of fun, and the audiences—especially the near-capacity house in Cleveland’s magnificent Severance Hall that instantly leaped to their feet at the end—were very appreciative.  

I brought home many positives from the week. For instance, I’ve been practicing quite a lot recently, and my chops felt very solid on this gig. It was wonderful to feel confident in my playing, to feel sure that the music I was hearing in my mind would come out of my horn. In the last few months, I’ve been working hard on a few technical issues with my playing. It’s been a slow process of unlearning some bad habits and relearning some old good habits that I have lost over the years, but I feel I’m making very good progress, and this gig was a good barometer of that.

Playing in Severance, one of the great concert halls in the United States, was a real thrill. It’s a beautiful old hall and such a nice acoustic to perform in. It’s no wonder that the Cleveland Orchestra developed into one of the United States’ great orchestras. 

But most of all, there was just the sheer joy of making music with such a talented bunch of artists. When I return from these projects, the euphoria lasts for a good week afterward. I wonder if musicians who do this full time get used to it, or do they exist in a constant state of euphoria and don’t know the difference between that and a “normal” mental state. I suppose that eventually the everyday annoyances in any job will bring even a musician down to earth, but for me, the contrast between the occasional music making and my more mundane (though, I hasten to add, very fulling) work as a translator couldn’t be more striking. As always, it’s difficult to put into words, but I feel as though making music taps into something very primal, as if I were speaking some proto-human language based solely on emotion; yet it’s no less nuanced than any modern language for all that. 

It seems to me that because this language cuts right to our emotional core, some of the friendships we forge on these projects are simultaneously superficial and significant. I had never met most of the woodwind and string players in the band before, and even those musicians and singers I do know, I only see once a year at most; still, the mere fact of making great music with them makes them special to me, so it is always with a bittersweet sense of sadness for leaving behind friends mixed with joy for having been part of it that I return from these projects. 

File management and workflow for translators

Image credit: Jessica Mullen

As a freelance translator, it is essential to have good document management and an efficient workflow. Sure, it would be nice if our clients always offered us tidy chunks of work, nicely scheduled so we can keep all our various jobs and deadlines easily organized in our mental filing cabinets, but alas such is rarely the case. One moment you are chugging pleasantly through a few good sized jobs with reasonable deadlines, and then in the space of an afternoon, six clients call you for small jobs with deadlines ranging from “yesterday” to “sometime next week is fine.” If you don’t have a good workflow and file management, one of these will inevitably get lost in the shuffle—until your client calls, wondering when you plan on delivering that document you promised last week. 

So it occurred to me that other translators might find it interesting and/or beneficial if I documented my own workflow, something I’ve honed over the years and that I now find pretty effective. Of course not everyone has the same client mix, faces the same workload, or uses the same programs, so your mileage may vary. I’d be happy if other translators chimed in in the comments.

File management

Let’s start with file management. I maintain a nested file hierarchy that goes something like: Year/Client/(Project Manager)/Project/files. I doubt this is particularly revolutionary. The normal file hierarchy for the current year and that of the previous year go into my Dropbox folder. (The free 2 GB account is generally sufficient for two years’ worth of files; after two years, I transfer the year’s files into my archives.) In my Dropbox folder, I also keep a separate folder—outside of the year-by-year hierarchy—called “Current Projects,” into which I place an alias (or, for Windows users, a “shortcut”) of all current project folders. This gives me quick access to the documents I’m working on: with a couple of keystrokes, I can be looking at all my current ongoing projects. And because it’s Dropbox, I know that my files will be synced between my desktop and laptop.  

Workflow

As for workflow, when a client emails me a document, the first thing I do (after replying to say I’ve received the file) is hit the keyboard shortcut for “Save Attachments.” In the Save window, I navigate to the Client folder (and PM folder, if necessary), create a new folder for that project and save the file(s) in it. Once that’s done, I use another keyboard shortcut to automatically create an alias of the new project folder in the Current Projects folder. And finally, I open my to-do list (I’m currently using iProcrastinate, but I’m looking around for something more elegant) and enter the project name and due date. The beauty of this system is that with keyboard shortcuts (more on that in another blogpost), all this takes about 15 seconds, so it’s not burdensome in terms of time. This is important, because if you’re already working to a tight deadline, the last thing you need is to spend extra time fiddling with an inefficient workflow. If it takes too much time, there’s a chance you’ll put it off for later, and we all know what lies at the end of that tragic path.

Once the project is finished, I create an invoice and save it to the project folder for easy reference. After sending the completed translation and invoice off, I delete the alias from the Current Projects folder and mark the project as completed on the to-do list. If for some reason I don’t bill the client immediately, I don’t delete the alias and use a colour label on the folder to indicate that it hasn’t yet been invoiced.

I’m sure other translators have developed other systems, and as I mentioned earlier, I’d love to hear from you if you have anything to add or can suggest an improvement. Today’s global economic climate is putting pressure on translators to decrease or at least maintain rates at current levels; one way we can counter this is by increasing our productivity, and having an effective workflow is a step in this direction.  

Music = Language

I just finished listening to this week’s Quirks and Quarks, and the last interview was with neuroscientist Gary Marcus, who was discussing his new book Guitar Zero. You can listen to the Q&Q segment here. The book is about music and the brain, and how “nonmusical” adults can learn to become musicians, among other things. 

I should start by saying that I haven’t read the book, but it sounds like an interesting read. That said, I was struck by something Marcus said during the interview. He touched on the idea of whether or not music, like language, is innate in humans. He posited that unlike language, music isn’t “built in”; that while all children learn language naturally at an early age, not all children are musical; he suggested that music is more like reading, something that just about everyone can do given enough dedication and practice, but not something that is necessarily an instinct, as it is in, say, songbirds.  

Listening to Marcus talk about it, he almost had me convinced. If you put a bunch of kids in a beginner band, some will be better than others. Some have more “talent”; or as Marcus puts it, some have more of the genes that predispose people to have musical ability. And all this is true. The problem with his thesis is that he considers music and language separately. 

But they’re not separate at all. Music is a language. Of course some people will have more musical talent than others; we all have various talents that are different from those of others, and this is true of spoken language too. Some people express themselves verbally very well while others have trouble putting two sentences together without stuttering or stumbling over a word. Not all of us will become great orators, no matter how hard we practice, but we can all speak, and we can all communicate with others. 

The thing is, we are all exposed to spoken language constantly from the day we are born. We practice speaking almost as soon as we are born. Of course we get good at it from a very young age, especially if we’re hardwired for it. But I would suggest that Gary Marcus carry out the following thought experiment. Give a young child a flute or some other small instrument, and limit the sounds to which that child is exposed to other people playing that instrument—in other words, the child’s only method of communication is by way of the flute. How would that affect their musical skills, irrespective of their musical talent? Now, do the same thing with a baby chimpanzee. I wonder if the chimp would learn to play the flute. On the flip side, what if the child were allowed to listen to spoken language but not allowed, or not given the opportunity, to speak. How would this affect their verbal skills?

Obviously these experiments could never be carried out in the real world, and yet in one sense we carry out one of them constantly. Most children are exposed to music all the time (on the radio, at concerts, etc.) but a great many of them never get the opportunity to play an instrument. Music programs in schools are often the first things on the chopping block when budgets are cut, and unfortunately there is an increasing divide between listeners of music and performers of music. Unlike spoken language, where we encourage children to speak even though their first words are practically unintelligible (in fact, we find it adorable, right?), with music, when children try to sing or play an instrument they are often actively discouraged because, surprise surprise, they’re singing or playing out of tune or with poor rhythm—making a horrid racket. 

In the interview, Marcus mentions that while a baby bird will learn to sing in pitch and rhythm in 90 days, young children aren’t usually very good at singing, and even at age two do not really understand much more than consonance and dissonance. There is truth to this, as anyone who has heard a kindergarten choir sing knows. But nor are two-year-olds particularly good speakers. They often have trouble expressing themselves, will mispronounce words or will approximate phonemes. It’s normal because they’re learning. So it seems pretty obvious that although we seem to have a hardwired instinct for language, it’s still something we have to learn—but this is true of music as well.

If we’re exposed to English as children but not French, we’ll learn only English. But as many mixed-language parents of children here in Quebec know, if a child is exposed to both French and English, they’ll pick up both very easily. Similarly, if they’re exposed to music—and they’re encouraged to play music—from a young age, they’ll learn the language of music too. But when you pick up an instrument as an adult, it’s like learning a foreign language. With practice, you can become proficient, but you’ll never speak it like a native; music will never be your mother tongue.

The concept that scientists like Marcus seem to have trouble wrapping their heads around—something that all musicians know instinctively—is that while we think of music as an art, at its very foundation, it’s really just another language. So I find it very frustrating when they say that while language is built in, music is mere something that is learned, when it’s clear that both come from the same place.

The Internet and the comeback of live music

A few days ago, one of the people I follow on Twitter posted a link to a 2011 documentary called Press Pause Play. It’s a film about the democratization of art that the Internet has brought about, and it asks the question whether this is a good or a bad thing: does democratization lead to better art, with more artistically inclined people having better access to the tools to create and distribute their art, or does this democratization cause the best art get lost in a vast sea of mediocrity?

Wherever you come down on this debate, it’s a thought-provoking film. Not surprisingly, it deals mostly with the music and film industries, illustrating the many ways in which technology has made it trivially easy to create a song or a film and distribute it online, even for people with limited knowledge of those arts. Some critics, notably the British writer Andrew Keen, say that this “cult of the amateur” (the title of one of Keen’s books) is potentially the downfall of culture, and in the film he states that today, a young Scorsese or Hitchcock wouldn’t make it, that their early creations would “get lost in an ocean of garbage.”

I’m not sure Justin Bieber would agree. Neither would niche artists such as Sophie Madeleine (yes, I’m a fan). Of course the Rebecca Blacks of this world will always be there to add ammunition to Keen’s arsenal, but on the flip side, I remain of the firm opinion that across the board—be it in the jazz, classical or mainstream pop genres—the so-called “music industry” (i.e., the huge corporations that have funded a large proportion of the recordings made over the past century) has left a great many supremely talented artists behind in favour of promoting supreme mediocrity (hello, Brittany Spears), and that the current democratic state of affairs offers greater numbers of artists with real talent and determination a better opportunity to rise to the top. 

Another thing the film touches on is that because of the effortless distribution afforded by the Internet, recorded music is becoming increasingly commoditized, to the extent that it has become almost worthless. People share mp3 files without a thought; music streaming services now provide access to millions upon millions of tracks for a trivial fee; even downloading songs from iTunes is incredibly inexpensive in today’s dollars (older readers might remember days when a CD cost upwards of $20—a lot of money in 1985). In parallel with this commoditization of recordings, there is an apparent increase in the value of live performances. A fan might download a group’s recordings, but real fans go out to the concerts. And if you haven’t noticed, the price of a concert ticket, whether for a pop act or for the opera or symphony, has risen enormously. (By way of comparison, ticket prices for a Montreal Canadien’s game range from about $40 for the super-cheap seats to about $400 for the ultra-premium seats; surprisingly, tickets to see the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal have a similar price range, though the upper end peaks at around $240). This is partly because it costs a lot of money to put on a live show; but I believe it’s also because live music is becoming increasingly desirable and valuable. 

Why is this? Partly, it’s because recorded music is an abomination.

Perhaps it's shocking that a musician might say this, but I have believed it to be true for a long time. Music is an ephemeral art. Part of its allure is that no two performances are (or should be) alike. This allows familiar pieces to be heard as if for the first time. It is what allows musicians to play the same song over and over again with delight. It’s why it’s so wonderful to hear songs performed in styles and genres other than their original intent. But when we record music, we trap it in purgatory. We start to focus on eliminating all the small imperfections in tuning, articulation, tempo—all the small, almost imperceptible, errors that a performer might make while expressing their heart. For lack of a better term, we take away the music’s soul. The only exception is the live recording, and even here, I think it’s a musician’s nature to listen to such a document and be disappointed by the “mistakes,” even if the concert was highly successful. The only recording that music deserves is the one in our memory. This is where the truly great performances should reside, and where they did reside for most of the history of Western music. 

The other problem with recorded music is that it removes another, often overlooked, part of music: its social aspect. Most of the time nowadays, when we listen to recorded music, we are alone. We’re in the car, or we’re listening to our iPods, or we may even be at home with music playing on the stereo. But rarely do people sit down anymore and just listen to recorded music with other people. If there are other people around, it’s because the music is playing in the background and we are doing something else. But if we are actually listening attentively to recorded music, it’s very likely we are by ourselves. 

But at a live concert, we are with other people, and we are all listening to the performance. It’s a social event, and there’s no doubt that one of the reasons we believe that a great concert was a great concert is because we experienced it with others: the music brought us together somehow; it was a unifying event; to use an intentional pun, the music touched a common chord. And for musicians, a significant part of the appeal of performing is that you’re doing it with others, often with people who are good friends. The experience of music creates an emotional bond between people that I feel is often overlooked and poorly understood.

Before the advent of recording technology, live music was performed because that’s the only way music could be heard. Even in the early days of recording, you couldn’t create music electronically; it all had to be recorded. A lot of musicians made good livings in the mid-20th century because the only way to achieve the sound of a string section was to actually record a string section playing. As recording, synthesizing and sampling technologies improved in the latter part of the last century, more and more session musicians lost their jobs, and musicians began to wonder if there was any future for them in the “music” business. 

But with the commoditization of recorded music, musicians and the music industry itself would do well to recognize that the whole “recording craze” may well have been a blip on the graph. Music’s very ephemerality is what makes it valuable, and it is only through live performances that people truly experience why music is a supremely human endeavour. The recording industry has had its day, and will likely always have a place, but I believe that the pendulum is starting to swing toward a more balanced position, where live music is once again achieving a place of prominence in our culture. And if the Internet has played a part in accelerating that swing, then I for one am all for it.