Learning is Change

The things that we are most proud of, the ones that take us the most time to get right, the ones that are distinctive because our personality is immediately present, these are the ones that we don’t want others to mess with. It is a strictly look but do not touch policy. Whether it is a piece of art that has 40 layers of paint applied or a business plan with hundreds of hours of research and writing, the one thing we can’t accept is some amateur running their hands all over it and asking us inane questions about how it came about. We want to talked to the informed individual, not the masses that just wouldn’t understand or appreciate what we have done.

And yet, I have tasted grapes from a viticulturist.

The man who knew everything about the science of growing grapes let me taste a few of his own. He let me manhandle the vines. He had worked for years to get each one to grow in a certain way, and he let me disrupt the process so that I could taste what he was doing. They were sensational. As I rolled the velvety skins and juicy flesh in my mouth, I knew that I had stepped into a sanctuary for this man. He said as much when he took a few from each bunch and popped them in his mouth, “I love grapes.”

This is what I wish happened in schools. It is what I wish happened in forward thinking and collaborative businesses. I wish that we opened our doors and let people walk around and taste our grapes. Passionate educators and businesspeople should be showing their passion for what they do by talking it through with everyone that comes through the door. We should open up our classrooms and cubicles to those that know nothing about it, and we should show them what it means to cultivate minds and ideas. We should give them a taste of what learning and doing are all about and give them a chance to make their own decisions about which kinds of grapes they prefer.

And then we should offer up our wine.

We should know all of the things that our graduates and employees have come to be and we should display their products proudly. We should have rooms dedicated to the objects and ideas that our biggest stakeholders have made. Those that wish to see what we make, should have the opportunity to touch the physical affects of our work. They should see our essential role in moving the world forward as something tangible and real.

And yes, I know the story about the Blueberries. I know that comparing people to grapes is fruitless because we can’t just throw out bad people. I don’t care about that. I am talking about the process of letting others in on what we do. I am talking about demystifying good teaching and visionary business practices. The grapes aren’t people. They are a symptom of the right process and the right information. They are the early successes of our craft, only when all of the grapes are blended and seen to their final destination can anything be called a success. The grapes are our individual moments, with both failures and truths, and the only way to get a full picture of what we do is to sip our wine. Be it sweet or earthy, you will know us by the way we finish on the palette. So, go ahead. Taste the grapes.

There are only a few windy overcast days in Denver. We have 300 day of sunshine a year, and it is something we are quite proud of, even if we have nothing to do with it. On those few days in the fall, there comes wafting down from Greeley this amazing odor of cow dung and slaughterhouses. We get that special treat a few days a year, but Greeley gets it all year. They don’t get a break from the stench.

I know from a few science classes that our bodies are capable of adapting to and ignoring a lot. They can work toward equilibrium from almost anywhere. I know this is what people who live in Greeley experience because I have known many. They say that after a while you can’t even detect the smell. They have led happy and productive lives in that town without having to go through the daily stress of a looming odor.

It strikes me that We might just as easily live through other environments that slowly have worn down our senses. We might be putting up with these things simply because we no longer see them as a problem to be fixed, but rather just the way things are. They have seeped too far into the background that we are only reminded of them when an outsider brings them to our attention.

Things like:

1. Adversarial relationships between departments or disciplines.
2. Lack of communication among coworkers, creating a need to know information system and preventing all but the most direct forms of collaboration.
3. A total lack of equity in marriages for the care of children.
4. The gentle racism and overall bias of preference for the known.
5. Tedious workflows that seemingly are the only vestiges of an era without automation or integration.
6. Separation from extended family.
7. Regret for choices not taken and opportunities not capitalized on.
8. Advertising and marketing directly to us.
9. A complete lack of purposeful exercise.
10. An unwillingness to seek our or let new people into our lives.

These are the things we internalize. These are the things we can no longer smell. These are the things that we must be reminded of, lest they become our way of life.

I notice that mapping is still difficult. Not as hard, perhaps, as when it was done with a compass, pencil and paper. But, hard nonetheless.

I can’t pull my path, my route, to where I want to go. Not on the iPad, not on the laptop, and certainly not in the rest of my life.

One of my favorite things in this life is a can of mixed nuts. I don’t get to enjoy them very often, but whenever I see a can on the shelf, it makes me happy. There is something about looking at the soft tin film with the vacuum seal just waiting for me to peal it back. And the first few tastes of the over salted macadamia and brazil nuts. Then the hearty helping of cashews keeps me reaching in for more and more nutty goodness. As the can sits half empty after a few minutes of snacking, I can hardly imagine having not opened up the can. I rationalize the amount of nuts I have consumed as I dig further into the can and start to become more choosy with my bites. I start putting back peanuts and almonds. I even decide that I am too good for the walnuts that have somehow taken on the aluminum taste of the can itself. Towards the end of the can, I can see that it has become mostly a few straggler peanuts. I have given up on any hope of eating a meal anytime soon, even if this was supposed to be an appetizer. And as I look over to see my wife aghast at my indulgence, I know that this is exactly why I don’t enjoy cans of mixed nuts all that often. I realize that there are some things better left packaged and on the shelf. There are some things that are too good for their own good.

And I wonder what my other mixed nuts are.

I am coming to understand that Netflix on demand may be such a thing. The ability to watch high quality television and movies at any time with no effort is indulgent. 13 episodes of Weeds in one day is unhealthy, and yet, so easy. We just selected the next one because it was available. As it turns out, the next one is always available now. And it will only become more so. Streaming media is going to ruin us. So long as there is undiscovered hours of good acting and engaging storylines, we will be powerless to close the lid. The cliffhangers and plot twists are salting our appetites, begging us to keep on watching in ways that were never intended by the original media creators. We throw back some of the things that are too ordinary and derivative, but the brazil nuts of television we savor. And we can do it every day, at any time.

The package is vacuum sealed.

At least when the TV is off.

But, knowing it is (always) there is too much for my weak will power to handle. At some point, I will just start grabbing content by the handful. And that’s what they want. That’s what they’ve always wanted.

I used to record music in my dorm room. I would hook up a microphone to my laptop and start to play my guitar. I tried to do this when my roommate wasn’t there, but when he was I took it into the laundry room on the floor. Odly enough, no one seemed to want to come into the laundry room while I was singing and playing guitar. I would belt out these words that I had written a few minutes earlier. Everything was captured by a multi tracking piece of software, and the whole process would take about 2 hours. From beginning to end, once I had the melody and the music, I just went.

This was all before I discovered loops.

Before I discovered loops, I would record the three minute song, complete with accompaniment on a separate track. Even the chords that repeated and the solo lines that would be easy to sync up without the rhythm. I thought there was something special about screwing up in the last few moments of a song and having to redo a large portion. It was a romantic gesture in my music. They were one take wonders, or more accurately, they were 50 take wonders that had to be done individually.

After I discovered loops, though, I would record a single moment and them modulate it and stretch it and transpose it all over the song. I could make sounds that didn’t exist before just by playing with how the loops went together. This took less time but had more variation. I was still recording the music, but I could also bring in the loops that others had crafted. I could obsess on getting things to fit together without having to break out my guitar each time I found a flaw. In short, it was filled with possibility for making me a better musician, all without me have to actually become a better player.

And I wonder if the loop killed my creativity.

Not long after I discovered the loop, I stopped recording the songs I was writing. Not long after that, I stopped writing music altogether. Of course it could be that I got married or had kids and didn’t have the time to do it. But, I think that the loop is at least partially to blame.

Loops are easy. They are the sound byte that becomes the entire message. They are the single notes that reverberate throughout the piece that seem other worldly and inhuman. A machine is responsible for them, not me. The loop is where we lose control of e direction. We let a flaw dictate our path rather than going back and reworking our original material. The loop is literally the same thing over and over, without improvisation or human variation. It is perfect but not reflective.

I lost track of the voice I had created. I lost track of my long form. Everything became abbreviated. It all became a retweet. I wasn’t telling stories anymore, I was just listening to one liners. They sounded nice, but I couldn’t string them all together the way that I had. I couldn’t hear what I needed to anymore, couldn’t pull out the harmony that wasn’t obvious and suggested.

I longed for the layers, for listening to 5 minutes just to insert a single idea. I used to see each play things into existence instead of inserting or copying and pasting. There is something infinitely more satisfying about playing, about being the one to add layers to your current composition. There is a responsibility too. I can be proud of what I have created, even if it is terrible. I know that the flaws are mine and that I left them in on purpose.

Playing makes me happy, but pasting makes me productive. Sometimes, I’m okay just to be happy.

I think that most of us are pretty used to making lists by now. We all do it quite well. Whether it is for things we need to do or simply the mental list of favorite times of the day, we make lists because it is natural to do so. And yet, the problems start when we try to prioritize these lists in oblivion. Each item becomes weighted and underscored. Each one’s value becomes suspect the instant that it is written down. It isn’t enough to have come up with the important things, we have to know how important they are.

And maybe that is natural too. But, it strikes me that with prioritization comes a lack of responsibility. By saying that some things are more important than others (which clearly they are), we are saying that some things aren’t worth doing (which they clearly aren’t).

Every once in a while, I just want to e an in and out box. I want the things that come into me to receive no weight or value based upon their merits. I want my list of things to be bullets instead of numbers. I don’t want to have to think about the order or bunching the like items together. I just want to do the things as they come because they have found me.

I want to follow the ideas where they lead rather than evaluate if I have enough time to work on them. I want to leave my priorities at the door. There are enough conflicting ideas of what comes next that much of the time I just want the NEXT thing to come next. I don’t want a predermined live to be the one I have, one that is prioritize and mastermined by the list. I don’t have enough refresh left to analyze once again where things are headed. The in and out box will suit me just fine.

Now that gmail prioritizes my email for me, I have a feeling that my daily events will be scripted by an algorithm. Sure, I can turn that feature off, but it is so useful for figuring out what to focus on. The priorities have won. the tangents have lost. I am more productive than I have ever been. I literally have a notice starring at me, telling me that I have read all of my important messages. This is what counts or an accomplishment now. Inbox 0 has become a goal in and of itself.

But there is one email that I haven’t answered that is eating at me, and it has been ever since it was sent over 9 months ago. It is from a former student. It has a short story and a few nice words about me as a person. I want to respond to it. I have wanted to do it each week since I received it. I have tried, too. I have one paragraph of a draft response completed. That’s it. Every time I look to answer it, another priority comes to the forefront. While this situation is not tragic and I could very easily make time for this email, it is a symptom of my lack of control over what gets done. It is the symbol of what my priorities have become in a lot of ways:

The important things are determined by situation, by my environment. The valuable things (to me, anyway) are determined by conversation.

I want more conversation.

I want more in-box/out-box, more give and take.

I want more of now.

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Each piece of an arch is needed in order to support the structure. More than that, each one must be placed in tension with one another. The small pieces must be held up as it is being constructed so that both sides of the arch stay standing until the single middle piece is placed that allows everything to hold.

Are we making such structures? Or, are we just building towers that go straight up.

Are we dependent upon each other, or just stacking ourselves up as high as we can to see where it gets us?