All I Gotta Do Is Act Naturally
Skills Learned Because A Buddy Couldn’t Get Along With His Brother
With This Type of Friend You Are Never Alone
Perhaps fewer individuals have any experience of what community really means. Young people are marketed to and formed by the twin pursuits of convenience and choice while simultaneously being told that a person’s chief purpose is to express themselves (usually through consumption). This vision of the good life is part of the next generation’s socialization. It feels “natural” to them, and yet it does little to prepare them for the demands and delights of membership in a community.
While many schools around the country went virtual for extended periods of time, ours made every effort to reopen within months by leveraging the medical talent in the neighborhood to develop nuanced procedures to safeguard everyone. Streams of volunteers supplemented what school staff could manage. Meanwhile, synagogues organized new virtual activities for kids and shifted their many programs for adults online. Neighbors hosted social gatherings in their front yards and encouraged kids to spend time together in the back yards.
Think of how we grew up – you didn’t have much choice regarding your community, you had to make due with who you were stuck with. If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one your with. Growing up in a small town, EVERYONE knew your business and you were stuck with your history unless you ignored others, overcame misgivings by doing other things that matured your emotions and thickened your calluses.
But those enamored with the false promise of online communities supplanting basic foundational relationships for human beings always seek a new technology to improve the human condition.
Friend is AI in a pendant that you wear, and look at the motion performed to check in with you ever present friend.
An Alternative
What’s The Bait and Switch With The Title?
There is none. Here’s the story.
In high school back in the 80s the only I survived high school was sport music, and after school activities. Academics were NOT a priority. And I did every function that I could: concert band, jazz band, marching band, tennis and worked weekends for my dad and for our neighbor. Growing up in small town of 1900 people in the Catskills you had to invent ways to entertain yourself, and you were on your own when you needed to learn of things.
I took so much band because I wanted to be play rock music, and I knew a great drummer who had a brother who was an awesome bass player, and while all three of us played in the rhythm section of jazz band, the brothers did NOT get along. Our music teach always said “You guys would be a great power trio if Dave and his brother would get along.” Dave’s brother played in another band, and there were no other bass players. So Dave and I decided we would be better than everyone else and be a “studio garage band”. Fast road to stardom.
La Villa Strangiato
Since this was the early 80s, we had no technology for recording, only a boom box that had two channels, but we figured out how to lay down multiple tracks. I’d play bass and guitar, and Dave would play synth and drums. While I also played drums in marching band, Dave was far better.
Of course we wanted to play what we liked, and that was Rush. And we were no where near good enough. But given we were so brutally honest with each when one of sucked, we learned a few songs. But THE song that was out of our reach was an instrumental called La Villa Strangiato. It’s over 9 minutes long. It isn’t a straight 4/4 rock beat with downbeats on 1 &3 and up beats om 2 & 4.
A Late Night AM Radio
One summer I was driving back home around midnight and if you ever been in the Catskill mountains at night, it’s jet black and radio reception is terrible. AM radio was all you could get in certain stretches of Route 28 as you came off Franklink Mountain and passing through Merideth. I switched on the radio, and heard a jazz band from the 1930s play a piece that was from La Villa Strangiato.
I didn’t see Dave for another few days, but this started us on a quest to not only figure out to play that section – Dave was better at the time signatures and we figured what I was doing wrong. But back in the 80s we had to live with the mystery, because I never got the song nor the band’s name, it was just a scratchy AM tune. All we knew was Rush MIGHT have been inspired by it.
Perchance to Dream
First you are lulled to sleep as you are then taken off to dream land.
MONSTERS!!
By dropping 1/2 of a beat, Rush introduced at disruption in the cadence. Think about the jump scare, things fall apart your heart leaps to your throat as Monsters lurch out of now where.
Returning to 4/4 time, you get a rhythm that you can runaway with as you try to escape.
Another Late Night Ride, Another Mistake That Leading To Accidental Discovery
Fast forward to 2009. Whatever I have done, I work long hours at it. It was 730 PM and I was still at the office prepping for a presentation I had to give at the quarterly meeting. I didn’t have a real good theme yet, I had to present the next morning and it was my debut at the quarterly meeting with my new title of Director of Systems Development and we were launching a corporate wide project, it would be the first time the CEO would see me present anything formerly. I was blessed in that I had a rockstar team and my job was to be the BLOCKER while the would be the star quarterback, receiver and running back. It was one of the best teams I had the pleasure of leading, real great, fluid collaboration.
And I didn’t have a theme.
I had pandora on and this song comes on and my heart freezes – it had several years since Rush had released new material and I heard a section with what seemed to bombastic chorus with great synchronization with the bass, guitar sounding like Alex Lifeson and an explosive series of fills on the drums. And it seemed the song had those odd time signatures that only Rush could make work.
But it turns out it was a different artist, and by changing the pattern in the melody, he FOOLED your ear into thinking there were time signature changes. Quite a trick.
But the song has a waltzing, floating feel to it. It is very fluid and while a slower tempo, it still rocks.
And thus I had my theme: our project was a productivity software that indeed was fluid, it was very easy to use, people wouldn’t have to search in folders, they’d have one screen for organizing meetings and the files needed for those meetings. Remember this was before most internet tools like Google Docs, Skype and Slack, so we had made it our mission to simplify, provide what people needed within 3 clicks.
The irony of the title Hurry Up was that it reduced time needed for a lot of tasks. But the deeper irony is that I had to hurry up and present an over all theme. Now I had it.