Figure out what you want to SAY. That is what’s important. The lipstick doesn’t keep the pig alive. The guts do. Message dictates the proper aesthetic.
I was reminded of quotations from Matthew Arnold,“Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret of style.” And Orwell, “The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.”
Clear language, rather clarity — in voice, in thinking, in intention, in craft — is the most attractive style of all.
To study means to spend time with something. Music and books have the benefit of having the qualities of time baked in to them. I can’t experience November Rain in 2 minutes. I can’t watch Citizen Kane in 20 minutes. Infinite Jest is a bonding experience because it asks so much.
Visuals don’t have time baked in to them. … I don’t think most design blogs are places for study. … If a design blog were made in to a successful place for study, it’d be in spite of the format’s temporal qualities, not because of it.
Whether your study is books, visuals, films, something else, or it all at once, I believe in finding enforced listening moments. In music, intentional pauses can be woven into the sound, but in other media, I believe we can find and create them. Pauses, more intentional space, may allow for time to study.
From the documentary, “What the Future Sounded Like,” a documentary about Electronic Music Studios (EMS), a radical group of avant-garde electronic musicians who composed music using technology and futuristic experimentation:
Comprising of pioneering electronic musicians Peter Zinovieff and Tristram Cary (famed for his work on the Dr Who [sic] series) and genius engineer David Cockerell, EMS’s studio was one of the most advanced computer-music facilities in the world. EMS’s great legacy is the VCS3, Britain’s first synthesizer and rival of the American Moog. The VCS3 changed the sounds of some of the most popular artists of this period including Brian Eno, Hawkwind, and Pink Floyd.
Don Murray on how he recognized a subject and wrote a column:
I hear a line, a fragment of language that holds conflict, contradiction, surprise, something — or see an image that sticks in my eye. This is not a thesis statement. My ignorance is essential. I do not write what I know but what I need to know.
And then:
I hear what I am writing and can create the first draft with the screen turned off. Voice is vital. It tells you what you think and feel, as well as how to write it. I imagine my reader standing beside me as we have a conversation. The reader leads me, asking the questions I must answer. If I say nothing that surprises us by the end of the first third of the draft, I start a new column on a new topic. After I write a draft, I read it, hearing what I have said so I can dance to the music of the draft.
In the ‘50s and ’60s, celebrated photographer W. Eugene Smith recorded the sights and sounds of hundreds of people in and around a loft building in Manhattan where major jazz musicians and others flocked to play music. It marks a kind of cultural heritage of that time unlike others.
From 1957 to 1965 legendary photographer W. Eugene Smith made approximately 4,000 hours of recordings on 1,741 reel-to-reel tapes and nearly 40,000 photographs in a loft building in Manhattan’s wholesale flower district where major jazz musicians of the day gathered and played their music. Smith’s work has remained in archives until now. The Jazz Loft Project is dedicated to uncovering the stories behind this legendary moment in American cultural history.
From this moment in 2009, in which everything anyone thinks or says is twittered or blogged or in some way used, it is revealing to go back 50 years and listen, closely, to something that was never intended to be used in any way. Because of that, it sounds different. The music is less structured, less self-conscious, more exploratory. The conversation is uninhibited, frank and sometimes just plain boring. The creaky steps and squeaky door of the building people describe as ‘smelly’ add to the profile of a place that was simply not ‘for show’ in any way whatsoever.
In a workshop led by Ira Glass, host of public radio’s “This American Life,” I heard him admit, “We edit out people’s breaths and pauses in the interviews before they go on air.” Referring to those ums and stammers, this well-known personality admitted to a group of aspiring storytellers that his renowned radio show might not be as unvarnished as it had once seemed. Editing out pauses makes the story flow better — a measure designed to improve his audience’s experience. Even the non-frilly is edited.
Whether we like it or not, we’ve been given a new role. This promotion came about without warning, without training, without org charts or manuals. In addition to our current positions, let’s face it, now we’re all “editors.”
There has long been an invisible tribe, a mysterious group, who transform scattered thoughts into compelling stories, who splice hundreds of hours of video into feature-length films, who segregate the semicolons from the em dashes. These are editors working across media sectors — publishing, film, music, more — to deliver transformative stories with clarity and grace.
Editing is to media as a performance is to a composition: It is an act of interpretation, rich with opportunities for personal insight, misguided judgments, or brilliance. Each individual is different, and each individual will construct experiences differently. In our new editorial roles, we’re tasked with acting as equal parts consumer and editor.
What we’re doing is, in fact, parallel to decades of editorial traditions:
1. Saying no.
While “stubborn” and “opinionated” might be too strong, it is a truism that an editor’s chief responsibility is to say no. Like all truisms, it is probably false some of the time, but having a recognizable voice is essential. In the recent documentary, “The September Issue,” Anna Wintour exposed hard-handed opinions necessary to differentiate Vogue in the $300 billion fashion industry. Call it decisiveness. Call it intuition. Whatever you call it; editors have the responsibility to quickly sift through abundance to decide what’s important. Just as our Twitter reputation may rest on our ability to make quick judgments about the quality of a tweet before reposting them, so are we all editors in media.
2. Determining the tempo.
The editor determines the tempo, and therefore, the amount of information a consumer receives. Website editors decide when and how often to deliver information to consumers. Film editors decide the duration of a shot, or what kind of edit happens between shots. Both set the pace for a particular experience. The slow dissolve at the end of “Psycho” (1960), for example, can leave an audience lingering, while the timing of a video release on TED.com contributes to our impression of the brand’s value. This is all within an editor’s control. Likewise, the editor’s own tempo must be high. He or she must plow through manuscripts on subject matter that may be of no interest with passionate disinterest.
3. Giving out (or withholding) information.
Editors determine how much information audiences need access to, and how much to hold back. Well-known curated sites such as Core77.com are celebrated for the considered content, not overloaded links. Editors know when and how to scan sources to determine which parts can be skimmed and when it’s key to read it all the way through — every line, word, and scene.
4. Creating coherence.
Editors create relevance and experience where there was none before. Whether it’s constructing a theme or splicing together a flashback sequence for a film, editors are creating connections for their audience with, sometimes, mismatched shapes and concepts. Access does not mean a free-for-all curation party.
5. Lacking a personal agenda.
An editor is creating a narrative from other people’s stories, and must be comfortable doing so. In this sense, the editor is largely invisible, yet knows the value of citing. Sourcing references carefully using “via” or another format demonstrates humility and respect for your sources.
So from here, where? We’re now simply making footprints and leaving signs. While this is a small step for us as burgeoning editors, it’s a fascinating departure as, traditionally, an editor’s role has been an invisible one-one to provide a sort of statuesque transparency — to give it form without knowing he or she is there. The character of the medium remained unchanged, but the transformation was essential so that consumers reveled in the media rather than deliberated over it. With this change, everything has shifted downstream. The footprints and signs of the editor’s role have moved from pre-publishing to post-publishing.
Where once editors and curators provided meaning, now we’re providing it. It remains to be seen how filter failure will be solved, and whether our editorial practices are going to be enough to stamp it out. But meanwhile, though red pens and proofreaders’ marks are not in our future, better ways of collecting and distributing stories are. This age is not about writers learning new tools, nor is it about readers sift through content; it’s about editors experimenting and making meaning of stories for themselves and for their new audiences — whether those are small or large.
Live musical performances, especially classical and art music concerts, are often delayed, marred, ruined, and spoiled by audience members who cough, hiss, wheeze, and even yell during events.
Gould seemed to have concurred in a 1962 article in Musical America called “Let’s Ban Applause!”
[I]n this article, the talented young man directly proposed a strange kind of idea under the guise of the uncomfortable (but pronounceable) acronym, GPAADAK — in other words, the Gould Plan for the Abolition of Applause and Demonstrations of All Kinds …
In this post, Dee goes on to investigate the tradition of applause itself:
Let us begin, for simplicity’s sake, with the basic element of applause within the context of a performance, or even any public gathering. One can think of several events in which one is asked not to applaud, for the basic rationale that the applause impedes the procession of the event.
Clapping, something we think not at all about, is a fascination. At once contagious (one begins and the group takes over) and quite personal (each feels he or she is contributing). Its presence just as powerful as its absence, with typologies of etiquette continuing to grow up all around it. I suspect applaudless performances would be a spectacle, albeit a quiet one.
Lyle Owerko, a New York-based photographer, is a historian. A boombox historian:
There’s a history with this, and boomboxes mean a lot more to culture and to people than just the object itself. And there isn’t one box that means any more than one another. It’s really what you’re playing through it, it’s what the image of it conveys.
The nostalgia for boomboxes isn’t just about a trend in stereo equipment. When the music was loud and unavoidable, we had to listen to each other. Maybe we miss boomboxes because when we’re wearing headphones, we can’t talk to anyone else. Which makes it hard to help each other out, and makes it hard to party.
It would indeed be interesting to see a comparative graph of music-playing devices mapped to the ability or lack thereof, to party. And perhaps engagement that ensued. But that’s for another post. More images from NPR, and even more history at the Boombox Museum.
I began piano lessons at age five. Classical only. Scales. Practicing every evening before dinner was a requirement. In the early ‘80s, weakened by requests, my parents purchased a synthesizer for me. It was an imperative purchase, I felt at the time, for me to continue my creative pursuits as a young musician.
Yet with four more sounds to choose from — not just Piano, but Strings, Harpsichord, and Voices — I was all but paralyzed by choice. And special effects like vibrato added exponential confusion. Instead of being freed, I was truly flummoxed.
Baffled by creative block, I remember questioning my mother at the time, “how can individuals be capable of making choices in the face of so much choice?” but my lack of articulation on the topic at that age resulted in no satisfying answer. She just saw this as another lost investment — much like my passing fancy with soccer and the saxophone. The synthesizer gathered dust under the ruffle-skirted bed, as did any sense of hope about mastering freedom.
Regimentation of creativity
See also:
Family legend has it that Switched-On Bach, recorded using Moog synthesizers, was my favorite album by age two
I’d visit friends who’d upgraded their synthesizers to models with more voices, more choice, even fewer constraints. Impressive. But I would think of the simplicity of the Chickering in my living room. While jealous of their ability to produce without constraint, I couldn’t wait to return to the singular purpose of the baby grand.
Decades later, this pattern repeats itself, as choice is a constant undertone in social and professional interactions, and actively inscribed in the culture of cities. Thus, a regimentation of creativity is necessary.
A contract of constraints
To produce something of merit, I adopt a kind of contract of constraints, an unspoken loose ruleset, that marks boundaries by which I must abide when I work. No matter what an outcome, you can limit a pursuit by at least:
a. Time
Limit an activity to a specified amount time. Instead of solving it in eight hours or a period of weeks, solve it in XX, a shorter period of time. Design charrettes are good models. As Kathy Sierra points out, “One of the best ways to be truly creative — breakthrough creative — is to be forced to go fast. Really, really, really fast.”
b. Grammar
Restrict choices to specific constructions or a vernacular that will give the product or solution form. Choose a letter or a stylistic constraint, and solve for that only instead of tackling an entire design system.
c. Material
Choose one or two materials or platforms and only work within those boundaries. Ignore all others. Work only with recycled plastics from your community; decide your website will only have one page. Limit the material to two, or better, one. Some of the most impressive architectures — digital and physical — have been constructed when material constraints were most limited.
These sample contracts are an assurance between you and your work, such that the website, the product, the music, the book you are actively producing is given boundaries. After a while, they feel less formal, and choices rewarding rather than daunting. And the time you’re spending, valuable, resulting in a tempo and sound that will surprise even you.
Most importantly: constraints, once decided upon, should be tested and stretched, but not forgotten. It is, after all, a contract.
When I called in this, my manager’s office, a few moments ago I was handed my very first American fan letter – and it was from you. I was so pleased that I had to sit down and type an immediate reply, even though Ken is shouting at me to get on with a script he badly needs. That can wiat (wi-at? That’s a new English word which means wait).
For anyone who launches a product, who bravely publishes that first book, who records music, who stands up for ideas of any kind — for anyone who performs for an audience without trackable means for people’s happiness — he or she knows the importance of receiving feedback. And a fan letter, invaluable.
The fan of note was Sandra Dodd, so moved, that she started a fan club on Bowie’s behalf. I find it charming that a 20-year-old Bowie turned around a thank you note immediately.
Jonathan Gold, LA Weekly food critic, on food supplanting music as cultural barometer:
In a lot of ways I think food is starting to take the place in culture that rock and roll took 30 years ago, in that eating has become incredibly political. And just as the street has always dictated fashions on music and other things, it’s starting to happen that way in food.
Yet, there are still those who just want to know how to cook a simple steak. And that seems as rock and roll as it gets.
Jeremy Denk’s take on simplicity versus complexity as told through Chopin:
Chopin’s simplicity rebukes Chopin’s complexity. The Genius of Chopin is sitting there, in his self-rebuke, sandwiched between an almost-clichéd chromatic transition, a pedal point, and a lyrical slow section rocking between the two most common chords there are: this glimpse of screw-you-I-can-write-something-so-beautiful-that’s-made-of-almost-nothing, as an unearthly transition between things that are also almost nothing.
“Almost nothing” as a theme. I like this. As people who create things, we’re often striving to achieve thoughtful reduction ourselves. Denk continues:
One of the great and strange elements of the Polonaise-Fantasie, one of its “themes,” is that the act of listening is woven into its fabric. Chopin wants you to listen–carefully! thoughtfully!–to certain sounds, certain pitches, certain moments; the structure of the story he is telling is utterly dependent upon this listening. But he knows that listening is an inherently lazy activity, often thoughtless, often lulling itself into complacency. Just look around the boxes of Carnegie [Hall] some night if you don’t believe me on this.
Listening is lazy. Of course it is, but I’ve never considered this. I immediately thought of McCullough’s reference to Walter Benjamin, “architecture is experienced habitually, in a state of distraction.” Architects must then weave ways to flow people and resources through built environments. How does Chopin do it?
Chopin writes “enforced” listening moments into the piece–strangely arresting moments, like that F# held, alone, then heard against an astringent dissonance, then heard alone again, then heard against the “correct” dissonance…
Enforced listening moments. Intentional pauses woven into the experience (here music, but elsewhere they could be websites, products, service experiences, architecture) that make people “act, stop, listen” as Denk describes them.
As designers, for all the simplicity we intend in our work, for all the intentional moments we craft, what enforced listening moments are we creating? What rhythms are we designing? Where’s the F#?
