Anyway, after a bunch of trial and error – mostly error – I found a magic combination of stuff to fix it, and now I’m more or less in the same position I was in at the end of last week. Half of the last day of my tearfully short weekend spent just getting where I used to be.

Once I got that feeling of relief and could move on with my day, it got me thinking; I spent 6 hours just trying to get back to where I used to be, and it never entered my mind to work on making things better than they were before. There are other ways to accomplish what I was working fixing today – other programs that allow Windows to run on a Mac, for example – and I could have taken a chance on one of them and possibly not just fixed my problem but made an improvement in reliability or speed or something. It never occurred to me to try until I was totally done. Once I identified that there was a problem, everything else got blocked out and I developed troubleshooting-tunnelvision where I only considered the narrow range of options that I instinctively come up with for “fixing the problem.” And the way I’ve come to define “fixing the problem” is a pretty common one – I fight to get it back to how it was before. And, when I’m honest about it, I usually settle for “most of the way back,” so things aren’t even as good as before. Necessary or not.

How often do I do that? Pretty often, it seems. I’m sure I occasionally spot opportunities to make things better rather than just get them back to some basic, comfortable level. Actually, I’m sure of it; I do it with my client work all the time. They might ask for one thing, but if I see a way of providing what they’re looking for that might help them more than the specific thing they’ve asked for, I’ll usually suggest it, and sometimes they even take me up on it. But that “working for others” mindset seems to be the main thing that triggers my interest in looking for other answers.

When I’m sick, I just patiently (or not patiently) do whatever it takes to get better. Rest. Have a fever. Drink liquids. Medicate. Herbicate. Whatever. But the goal is always to feel like I felt before, or even close to it.

Same with people; if I argue with my wife or hurt my daughter’s feelings, all I end up doing is working so things were “like they were before.” I never look at it as an opportunity to maybe make things better, I just want to fix them so they’re back how they were.

If I cook something from a recipe that turns out well, I frantically seek out the same recipe when it comes to cooking that same dish again. I mean, I actually do try to improve recipes and things food-related. It’s safe to say that there’s probably a better recipe out there for everything I’ve ever tried to cook, but there are also worse ones, so I tend to stick with a known one rather than take the risks involved with finding a better one. Not exactly life or death stuff, but even with a soup recipe, I find myself clinging to what’s “safe.” I don’t think I’m alone. We form these “safe judgements” about almost everything in our lives. Where we buy gas. Where we casually dine out. The kind of eggs we buy. The kind of movies we watch. Maybe even our political party or religion. It’s not a terrible thing to passively choose what’s safe rather than actively seek what’s good, it’s probably wired into us at some level, but it feels like a slow way to evolve. (Which introduces admittedly knotty questions like, “Just how fast is one supposed to evolve?” or “Is evolving faster better?” or even “Do you really have any say in how fast you evolve, or are you just genetically predisposed to either fight or accept the speed with which things change and the real choices are all illusory?” But I’ll conveniently ignore them.)

It’s not as though every situation must always and absolutely present opportunity to make things better, faster, and stronger. But there’s a way to learn from almost everything that happens. I find that the less I know about something, the bigger chances I take and the bigger leaps I make in the progress, and the more I think I know about something, the more conservative my improvements. I mean, that’s actually how things are supposed to work – there’s a bigger leap from “not playing an instrument / playing an instrument” than “playing in instrument well / playing an instrument more well.” (Isn’t there?) But how much of that is self imposed? We all know that our progress is supposed to slow when we reach a certain point, but how much of our slowing is just living up to our own expectation? (Note to self: Insert rambling about theoretical, unimportant questions here, i.e. “How does one judge just how much progress they’re making at something, and when is it enough?”)

Problem solving is easy, and it feels like the time pressures and multitasking lifestyle a lot of us live forces us to be pretty modal, and when we troubleshoot, we need to kill those problems as quickly as possible so we can pick our kid up from school or get gas or stir the soup or get back to work. Bike has flat tire? Fix flat tire. Battery dead? Change battery. In the interest of “solving the problem,” I find I actually gloss over what caused the problem to begin with most of the time; it’s actually one of the things that helps me fix my own computer – I don’t actually care why something happens, I just want to fix it. I can usually accomplish B without confronting A. Sure, it was just a technical issue with a technical solution I arrived at through trial and error and a determination to repeat the same thing over and over until it worked, which it eventually did. But the real issue deal could also be said to be “how I work.” Might that not be worth really evaluating?

I’m really intrigued by the thought that there are obvious opportunities to learn things and do better around me all the time, and I that just don’t see them. For example, I just said some cross words to my wife about something unimportant. She might not even care, I’m not sure she even noticed, but if she did notice and she does care, my first instinct will definitely be to “fix it,” to do the work that brings things back to where they were. That ignores the obvious question, “Is where we were that great?” Or better, “Is where we were so good that it can’t be improved?” What if I look at what caused my cross words – specifically my own role, not all the other circumstances I can and will use to justify my actions – and try to do more? What if I can spot something that would help me fix some little quirk in myself – take something bad I’ve done and use it to actually do a little better in the future? Seems hard to implement 24/7, but suddenly communication between 2 people who know each other well could actually be communication and not the scripted action/reaction that it’s so easy to fall into.

It probably sounds dumb and lofty and conceptual, but for the moment it seems to me like I’ve understood the relationship between a hammer and a nail for the first time. We’ll see how it works.

Phase two will be pulling back from people I know and like and have been playing with. There’s not much going on now, so it’s no big deal yet – nothing to say no to. But I will when the time comes. I’ve been laying the groundwork for a while, so I don’t feel like I’m going to be ambushing anyone, and nobody really depends on me for anything so it’s not like I’m botching up anyone’s living. People will still seem surprised, partly because I’ve been having issues so long that people tune them out and don’t take them seriously, but that’s fine. I’m finding that telling people I’m “taking a break” yields no resistance, but telling people “I’m quitting” is a more threatening notion and raises lots of arguments that I’m not really interested in. This is not a cry for help or fishing for praise or encouragement. If someone realized that running made their knees hurt so they stopped running and started searching for another activity, nobody would fault them, so I’m trying to present it more like that when someone wants to argue. In truth, I feel strong and expansive, not weak and retreating, and there’s something that feels incredibly good about breaking the loop I’ve been in with music. At the same time, I’m so totally empty and filled with dread when it comes to all live music and everything that’s involved that there’s not really any question. I’m tired of doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results; that creates pain. Duh. So rather than sweet talking myself into more of the same, I’m deciding to try something different. Whatever it is. I shouldn’t have an anxiety attack when I recognize a possible gig phone call on caller ID; that seems like a bad sign.

As a result, my music calendar is empty except for one possible date at the end of this week. That’s it.

In theory, I worry about my decision. “What if?” What if I change my mind? What if I miss it? What if I’m wrong? Those are purely thoughts, and I can count them and organize them and evaluate them. But when it comes to the real feelings involved, it’s cut and dry. No debate, nothing fuzzy, nothing vague. This is a rare occasion where my brain leans decisively either left or right, and it’s unfamiliar. And welcome. And it’s not like I make any important part of my living from it these days; I’ve avoided depending on music, and on the down side, that’s required me to pursue fallback plans that have worked out pretty darned well. But on the positive side, I’ve been able to remain involved as long as I have by effectively slowing the eventual complete burnout.

It makes me reflect; am I ungrateful? Is my ego undoing me? Am I cutting off my nose to spite my face? First, I am not ungrateful, or I don’t feel so. My quitting music is about the present and about the future; I regret very little in my past, and I’m thankful for the people music has put in my path and the places I’ve been and the things I’ve tried. But I’ve had very few great musical experiences. Very, very few. People get involved with their passions to have great experiences; I’ve given this music thing 3+ decades, and I don’t feel like I have another 3+ decades to wait, so I’m ready to try some other path or paths to positive experiences. It would be different if I knew what I was waiting for and just losing patience, but I don’t have any idea; all I know is I repeat the same things that make me unhappy and wait for them to suddenly make me happy for some reason, and the novelty of the process has long since worn off.

I realize that I should enjoy the “journey” and not the “destination,” and while it may seem that I’ve missed that point, that’s actually a driving force behind me stepping away. I’m not trying to get to some specific place where suddenly everything’s good, I’m just openly recognizing that I kind of hate the journey that music places me on. So I’m changing it. And I don’t feel particularly egotistical about it. I know that I’m good at what I do, and I know that playing OK is probably the 80th bullet point on the list of stuff it takes to make a living off music, and the 79 bullet points that are higher up are mostly stuff I’m not interested in. I never have been, and I am even less these days.

2 funny things that are happening as a result. First, I realize how deeply I enjoy NOT playing, or not playing gigs at least. When I have a conflict that prevents me from playing or I turn something down, I get a profound sense of enjoyment and accomplishment that playing a gig never, ever brings. A glow; a physical sense that I’ve just done something good for myself. It tells me that I’ve been sleepwalking through my involvement with music. I don’t work hard to set up my own projects and bands and gigs because I dread a lot of what’s involved, so I ride the coattails of other people’s work and projects. I do what’s required and with care – I do have pretty strong work ethic, regardless of my feelings – but I have been doing gigs in my present because I have been doing them in my past and for little other reason. If gigs are for fun and money, and I don’t need the money and I don’t find them fun, there’s not much reason to keep doing them. Is there? I’ve heard all the stuff like, “But you create because you’re DRIVEN to create, for the LOVE of it!” I’m DRIVEN to drink beer and LOVE fried food, too; does that mean that I have absolutely no say in whether or not I partake? Doing something because you absolutely have to is not the same thing as doing something because you absolutely adore it. There’s a difference between unhealthy, addictive behavior and joyfully participating in a passion. Isn’t there?

The second thing is that within minutes of deciding not to gig any more, I found myself in my office/studio doing a much needed cleaning and fixing up my music setup and just playing, and loving it. A cork pulled out of a bottle; a feeling of enjoyment and growth just from playing. New, calm music pouring forth. New ideas, new directions, just new. So I intend to just keep playing and enjoying that I enjoy it for a little while. No agenda, no business plan, no gigs, not even any sharing with others. Just me, playing by myself and for myself. For a change, and for the better. It’s a weird feeling, playing music for enjoyment, and actually ending up enjoying it. This kind of enjoyment has become distant and almost unfamiliar for me, and my intuition was telling me this me should not be the case. So I think I’m on the right track.

Who knows where I’ll be later today, next week, next year? All I can do is make the best decision I can right now based on who I am and what I feel at this moment, and for now I’m a little in touch with how I feel and what I want to do. “Quitting” is not quitting in this case, it’s drawing a line in the sand, closing one door with the hope and the intuition that I’ll find another one to open. Maybe I’ll start playing “new age” music or learn the blues for real or start singing. Well, I’m not going to start singing, but you see what I mean. Maybe I’ll learn some classical pieces I’ve shunned, if it feels right.

All I know is whatever I’d been doing hadn’t been working for me, regardless of how it appeared. It didn’t feel right at several levels, and rather than discovering that just now, I’ve just decided to stop ignoring the not-feeling-right. And in doing so, I feel that I suddenly have a feeble, but real foothold on something else that – working or not – actually feels right. I suspect that at some point, I’ll eventually evaluate whether it’s “working” by thinking about whether I’m making money off of it and that may change my new and novel feelings about it all. But at many important junctures in my life, just doing what feels right (once I discover what that actually is) has taken me in new and important and unexpected directions. After feeling off base for a long time, I feel like I’m starting to see hints of a path and I’m very interested in seeing where it goes.

Enough. Now to think about some changes in how I feel about my “day gig.”

By the time it’s done, I’ll have made something like 13 round trips of 140-180 miles each ranging from 60-90 minutes each way. 

13 trips x 150 or so miles = 1950 miles
1950 miles @ $3.70 a gallon assuming 28mpg = $260 (this is generous; I don’t always get 28mpg)
13 trips * 2 hours of driving for the round trip (guessing low) = 26 hours of driving

An average trip is for about 3 hours; shorter ones are maybe closer to 2 hours – a 1 hour gig, arrive at least 30 minutes early, hang out for at least 20-30 minutes afterwards. A longer one is much longer; I got to Albuquerque at 2:00 on Saturday and got home at 12:30am. So let’s call it an average of 3 hours just to be conservative.

3 hours average * 13 trips = 39 hours.

26 hours of driving + 39 hours of sound checking and playing and hauling equipment and rehearsing = 45 hours.

Federal minimum wage as of July 2007 was $5.85.

$5.85 * 45 hours = $263.

So if I want to cover my gas cost AND make minumum wage, I have to make

$263 + $260 = $523 dollars.

Take a theoretical $100 gig. Do 3 rehearsals (25 bucks or so of gas for each one) and the gig itself, and you’re at plus or minus $1 already, plus you’ve probably got at least 20 hours into it. A hundred bucks is decent pay for a gig, too, especially in these times. I would need an awful lot of gigs where I clear a dollar in order to replace any important part of my living. And I have to think that there are more profitable ways to spend 20 hours. Music’s its own thing, it’s partly out of love, but 20 hours for a buck in your pocket or a buck in the hole is almost beyond love if you do it all the time.

Thanks to one good paying gig, I’m actually a little ahead of the curve. So I’m scoring a little over minumum wage for squeezing in an extra week (40 or so hours) of worth of work over a couple weeks. Depending on how you slice and dice it (which gig for which artist, for example), I’m either making a couple cents an hour or losing $25-40 bucks (and up) for each gig if you don’t factor in that one higher paying gig.

Negative $40 is not a great return on my time investment, and a cynical person might say that paying $40 to spend time away from a home that I love and a family I adore seems a little steep. I’ve done all the gigs voluntarily, and there’s been no gun to my head in any way, so I’m not actually complaining. I’m just evaluating how I spend my sparse “extra” time going forward, and it’s pretty hard to justify losing money to be away from my family. I have hobbies, books to read, a daughter and dogs to play with, neglected wives (wife, actually), home improvements to do, and so on. If I absolutely loved every second of every gig, there’d be nothing to consider. But that’s a stretch. And it’s a dangerous notion that “since you love music, you should always be willing to do it or free or less.” I know people who love the law, but their pro bono time is completely voluntary. I’m doing a benefit at the end of the month for free, but the caterers are getting paid; I know the realities of trying to live off something creative and I’m not salty about it, but I’m aware that it’s not cut and dry. Some people love installing car stereos or painting motorcycles or working outside with plants or healing animals, and there’s not a lot of pressure on them to do it for free most of the time. But for music, there’s almost a weird jealousy, an expectation that since you’ve evidenced 30 years of involvement with something that you must LOVE it, and since you LOVE it, “I’ve got you where I want you.” Your love must mean you NEED to play, so if you NEED to play, you’d probably do it whether or not you got paid, so why bother paying? Or paying fairly. (Whatever that means.)

That being said, I have to say that I’ve been very fortunate in my small little circle. I’ve found people that I share mutual respect for as artists and as people, and (as I will likely repeat more than once), the weird thing about those positive associations is that they’re also the ones where money’s not a consideration. i.e. I’d do those things for free, but never have to.

So I’ll plan on backing away from a lot of it going forward. In truth, I may not even need the plan; next month might be almost totally empty, and the month after, absolutely blank, so this “I’m not going to take many gigs” thing could just be ego-driven theory that I never even get a chance to execute. But I do have to prioritize. The weird thing is that even people close to me say things like “You just CAN’T QUIT music! You love it! It’s too important.” My reaction is usually unspoken, but something like, “Really?” I can’t quit? Ever? Because people can’t quit what they love, and I MUST love music? And if I stopped doing many gigs (again) then I couldn’t possibly be doing anything else with music that I enjoy? There are a lot of assumptions and subtleties in there that can’t be untangled in a sentence or two, but I can say this: I don’t think I could be happy in totally eliminating music from my life, but I already know that I can be pretty OK without playing live much. Not being public and not being involved whatsoever are totally separate notions.

In a perfect world, I would LOVE the people I’m working with, and I’d take home at least a little money. In a less perfect world, I’d LOVE the people I’m with and maybe break even or at least not lose too much. In one world I don’t live in any longer, I’d just make money regardless of who was involved, but I never take gigs for money alone any more. (In reality, I haven’t enountered many gigs out there where the artist is purely painful, but it’s nice to know that if I stumbled across one I would feel no pressure to take it.) One worst case for me is involvement in music I don’t like and with people I don’t like AND not making money at it. Blessedly, it doesn’t happen much; the rare few people I really haven’t gotten along with have usually at least compensated me OK. Whatever.

It’s actually pretty simple when I think about it; all these hypothetical combinations don’t really happen. In real life, I’ve been very lucky about finding people I love being around and making music with and getting fairly compensated for spending time with them feels like a gift. I keep rambling about it because I love those times so much that I wish I could do it more often, and in order to do it more often, I’d have to make some part of my living off of it, realistically speaking, and I’m not there right now. In where the chemistry is not quite there, it’s not a big deal; it’s nobody’s fault, it’s not personal, and there’s not much to do about it – just move on. Gigs with Larry Mitchell and Joy Harjo, for example, or anything involving my man Howard Cloud or my new friend Chris Cushman, are a joy, and I’ll cancel things to make them work out. They nourish me and I’d do them for free, but I never actually need to. Other stuff I’ll have to examine case by case; I’ll try almost anything once, but I’ve been doing it too long to do things just to do them, so if they don’t have something tangibly positive associated with them, I’ll have to back away.

And I’ve already tried a lot of things once, so at the risk of sounded jaded (because I am, at least a little), I can bypass the courtship sometimes and skip right to the breakup. No big deal. (I’m not confrontational by nature, but as soon as I hear one of those “I sure wish I could pay you what you’re worth, but it’ll definitely happen in the future” lines, I just smile and nod and wait to see exactly how they define what I am or am not worth in the form of my pay for their gig.) I’m not driven by money as far as my relationship to music, actually to the point of being a detriment, but there’s only one of me and only 24 hours in a day and an awful lot of life to live, so I have to prioritize things. If something is fun AND I get paid AND my daughter can come see it and have fun too, that’s one thing. If something’s not fun AND I don’t get paid AND I miss a weekend with my family, it gives me tools to make “business decisions” with for muller.com. A lot of music stuff is more fun to tell people about than to actually do, anyway. I’ll just continue to focus on the stuff that’s at least as much fun to do as it is to “complain” about…

I’ve been fortunate to be busy for again for a minute, it’s a nice way to stay honest and try some new things and be around some new people. And it’s actually been really fun, it’s even fun to have a chance to complain about “being so busy.” But if the next month happened to be anything like this one, I simply can’t afford the time and money to do it the same way again, so I probably won’t be this busy again for a while. And I’m looking forward to it. I’m young enough to still be open to trying out the things that fall in front of me, and I’m old enough to recognize (for myself) the difference between “just busy” and “good-busy,” and I’ll continue working towards “good-busy” and save a little of myself for my nuclear family.

Balance. Just an idea still…

It’s been OK to not be busy; conceptually I hate the idea of not playing more, but realistically, I have a pretty full plate with my business and my family so it’s usually OK. Like I didn’t have any gigs or rehearsals last weekend, so I built gates. Wooden ones. And I barbecued. And the weekend was too short. Add to that a couple of 150 mile drives and several hours of practicing or playing, and they get even shorter.

My already-busy schedule leads me to dread a lot of stuff that I shouldn’t dread, and this week’s music is a little like that. I’ve met some great people and I’m looking forward to 6 gigs over the next 2 weekends. But taking time off from work 3 out of 5 days this week puts some unwelcome extra pressure on me. I think I’ve built up enough good karma with everyone for it to not be a big deal, but it’s my living so I worry. I’d hate to turn down gigs, though, so I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do. (And that’s what I did last year, turned everything down. It helped, in the sense that work was crazy and the extra headspace and time was welcome, but not so much that I’m repeating it this year.)

I’m cautiously optimistic; in one sense, it could be a busy month or two, or it could be that I’ve reached some sort of critical mass in my local scene – before, I was not busy, maybe now I am. Or maybe it’s a fluke. We’ll see, I’m pretty OK with it either way.

I’m very geeked to be playing some jazz stuff with my man Howard Cloud and my new friend Chris Cushman, we were in the same room together for the first time today and I felt like we had really good chemistry. It’d be a little sad if the state fair gigs are the only time we meet, this could be the foundation of a great group.

I have another gig with my friend Joy Harjo. I love playing with her; her group is great and populated with really super people, and Joy herself is an inspiration. She has an amazing energy, very quiet but immensely powerful. It’s always a treat to get together with her, and we’ve had at least a gig a month over the summer.

My friend Carmela Rapazzo has started writing some new stuff and we get together periodically to rehearse it. I’m going to probably do an Obama benefit with her at the end of September, but I’m also a part of her gearing up for a new album she’d like to do. She’s an enjoyable singer (which is a weird thing for me, as anyone who knows me will tell you), and also has an amazing, positive energy about her. A dynamo, one of those people who you, when you meet them, you always feel better afterward than you did before, even if you felt great to begin with.

I met this guy RaShaan Houston as a jazz singer, and our first rehearsal was really nice. Snappy. Instant good chemistry; again, good people and good music. I haven’t done many “real” jazz gigs for maybe 13 or 14 years with a couple rare exceptions, so it was nice. Then he felt me out for maybe playing at the State Fair with his pop project, he calls it Phocus, and I checked the music out and went for it. The band, again, is populated with nice people, there’s a really nice energy. The music itself is fun; pretty positive, and a lot of jazzy chordal stuff kind of like the stuff I liked from Incognito in the 90s. More of a disco or house approach than acid jazz, but it’s great. RaShaan is talented and fun, the drummer’s great, it’s just good. Don’t know how often Phocus plays out, but RaShaan’s interested in booking more for the jazz quartet – not a lot of male jazz singers in this town. (Or that town, as the case may be; it’s another Albuquerque project, so there are lots of 150-mile round trip drives involved.)

My complaint-mantra in the last dark period of day gig stuff has been something like “I’d love to make some changes to who I spend some of my professional time around.” Everyone knows someone who won’t leave a terrible job because of the great people they work with or something like that. I’ve been there, I’ve done it, and I actually like everyone that I work with pretty darned well. But I still get a charge out of learning some tricky music or locking up with a drummer or getting to solo with a great band or working to make a soloist sound good, and as much of a drag as music gigs can be – long commutes, dreary rehearsals, hostile venues, occasionally questionable pay rates, etc – when I work with good people, it’s usually worth the price. Even after all these years and all my frustrating experiences (and great experiences), I find that music feels like it has some meaning when it’s with good people, and it’s that meaning thing that I’ve been missing.

So I don’t know if I “manifested” some business, or it’s a fluke, or it’s part of a pattern of ebb and flow that I don’t recognize, but it’s nice to feel busy with music in almost all good ways, and it’s nice to feel in demand. My ego needs it at least occasionally. Part of me is just enjoying it, and part of me is engaged in some very non-zen clinging – I’ll be glad to have some time to breathe in 2 weeks, but I don’t really want the period to totally stop, I’d love to keep some music going. I’m still totally passive about it – if the phone rings, I gig, if it doesn’t, I find something else to do, so if I was serious, I’d make a more formal outreach; do the demos and press kits and phone calls, but I’m not quite there yet. I’m almost afraid to want to remain busy since I don’t do anything to control it, but mostly I’m just having a blast and getting to know some good people. It’s a good period; not an easy period, but a good one.

I still can’t help but wonder why it has to be so all-or-nothing though; if the all periods were even more all, I’d be forced (or be able) to quit some of my work, and if the nothing periods were even more nothing-y, maybe I’d have to quit. (Probably not, actually.) I guess my day gig makes it all feel extra hectic, and deep down, I crave the day where I can make music and/or some other stuff a bigger part of my time and life and my day gig a smaller tax on my time and life. For now, it’s a reminder how very, very tricky it is to live in any sort of balance. I hope I can figure it out at some point. But maybe it’s not something that gets figured out – maybe the all-on and all-off ARE the balance. I’ll think about it. (Of course…)

I didn’t know what to expect.

She’s just up the block, and my wife Anette went early to help with some of the setup. I took my daughter up, I just pushed her up the street about a mile on her little trike – it’s got a handle to prevent her from swerving into traffic, so it’s no big chore.

When we got there, our friend’s house had a subtle incense and had been really worked out since I’d seen it last. She was finally starting to look like she’d moved back in, tasteful artwork and little Buddhist trappings. One large corner was set up with a carpet and some cushions and facing a little shrine-like setup with a couple statues of various Buddhas. Maybe 12 other people came, mostly severe looking older people who turned out to be incredibly nice as we all met each other. People were milling about and talking to one another for maybe 15 minutes until the monks arrived in a big van.

After some brief setup and logistics with the host, the monks set up; they arranged themselves in 2 rows and sat cross-legged facing the shrine. They had red robes, not saffron, and short-cropped hair. Most of them had wooden prayer beads wrapped around one arm. They distributed bowls of flower petals and rice and settled in.

Their leader asked if it was OK to begin after they’d sat for a few moments and grounded. He started with some throat-singing, the rest of the group followed closely after, and a chill went down my spine. I hadn’t expected it, and I’d never seen it live. I could see the people immediately around me and their eyes all widened for a moment. My daughter looked up at me and smiled. I have recordings of Tuva singers and similar music, and by dumb coincidence I’d been playing some the day before and she wasn’t shocked or surprised.

The ritual took maybe 30 minutes. It’s a little hard to judge because time suspends when you witness something amazing, and I didn’t do any kind of before/after checking. They went through several styles of singing covering different prayers with different functions, threw some flower petals in the air, some rice, etc. I couldn’t describe it, but it’s one of the most powerful things I’ve seen in recent memory. In the jaded West, we’ve largely lost sight of the idea that words can have power and sounds can have power. It would appear that they still can. The singing filled the room in a strange, otherworldly kind of way. If I spoke to someone in that same room in a normal speaking voice and volume, the sound would clearly have come from me and toward that person; a little room ambience from the concrete floor, etc., but no confusion as to where the sound came from and was going. But with the singing, it surrounded us and came from everywhere. It was amazing. During the moments where I could shut out worrying about my daughter fidgeting and noticing the dog digging outside and the cool horse photos behind the monks, there was something electric in the room. Subtle. Tangible.

Afterwards, the lead monk explained what they’d just done. They had started with a ritual for invoking the powers of good; they had followed with mantras to channel positive energy and good fortune on the house and those within it. That sort of thing. As a Tibetan, he spends his days across the border in India and has evidently picked up some Indian accent. “Thee first prayer was meant to summon the forces of good and so on and so forth.” For someone dealing with lofty spiritual issues and coming from a presumably impressive level of spiritual development, he used a lot of “so and and so forth”s, which was charming. If he had been from the US, he would have added “and stuff.” “We were using our mantras to manifest the power of universal good for the protection and health of this dwelling and those who are present in it. And stuff.” A serious topic treated as though it was as natural as eating or breathing. Serious, but no big deal.

It was yet another of those experiences that was powerful, but I can’t say exactly how. My eyesight wasn’t healed, I didn’t leave with any problems magically solved, nobody and nothing levitated, I didn’t see colors or witness anything overtly miraculous. But it was powerful nonetheless. I keep having powerful experiences that are hard to describe and that have little-to-no commercial value; there’s a message or lesson in there for me, when you start to notice connections between things they’re no longer coincidental. Maybe the message is that I should experience life firsthand more and think about experience much less. I don’t know. I have a tendency to use my “thinking time” to multitask, and it doesn’t do me any favors. In this instance, I find myself pulled toward the odd an personal question, “This rare spiritual experience was fantastic, but how does it help me sort out my day job?” Aaron Copland once said that writing about music was like dancing about architecture. An interesting notion, probably, but when you try to tie basically different experiences or ideas together, a little something gets lost. So I’ll take it for what it was, whatever that means. And I’ll work on my day job problem separately, maybe that’s a start.

On further reflection, that’s definitely part of the message. The fact that I can describe more of what I like about a sunset or musical performance doesn’t mean that I’ve mastered “saying what I think.” I can use all the dramatic adjectives and adverbs in my limited vocabulary to wax poetically about my monk experience, and at most I can convey my enthusiasm, or perhaps trigger someone else’s ostensibly similar feelings about an ostensibly similar experience. Even that’s shaky; if you describe the new Batman movie to someone who’s only seen Tim Burton’s version from back in the day, it’s hard to say that you shared a similar experience even though they share an awful lot of surface elements. Even trying to know if you shared an experience with someone on the same night at the same event is sketchy; you might have seen something life-changing, and I might have been distracted by work. So my frustration at not finding words to capture my Tibetan monk experience is misleading; I can’t describe a sunflower any better, but I’ve allowed myself to think I can. Madness. Ego. My real frustration is at having the limits of my ability to communicate brought into focus for a moment, monks or sunsets.

Do you see the same red that I see? We may never know. There are words and there are experiences, and maybe there’s not any way to ever cross between them without changing something in the process. Doesn’t mean that we can’t try to bridge the gap, even knowing that we can’t succeed, but maybe it’s important to understanding that there’s even a gap to begin.

I’ll spoil the ending; it’s still worth a read. The answer is that they’re not. Not exactly, at least. Long before Atari 2600s and Apple IIe computers, people were into phrenology and Salem witch hunts and all sorts of other stuff. I’d give some modern examples, but everyone believes some pretty dumb stuff and I don’t want to step on toes needlessly. The verdict is that computers and technology have a role in our dumbening, but it’s just the current tool of choice. If it weren’t for technology, we’d be getting dumber in another way.

The part of the article that I really loved:

Jacoby argues that long-standing American values like rugged individualism and the need to question authority have metastasized into reflexive anti-intellectualism and disdain for “eggheads,” “elites,” and pretty much anyone who might be described as credentialed. This cancerous irrationalism isn’t pretty, but it isn’t technology’s fault, either.

So our national zeitgeist is one where someone who has developed an expertise is worthy of distrust and ridicule? Sort of, actually. The Bill Gateses and Warren Buffets of the world may have something to say about it, but there’s also an element of truth to it. The movie Idiocracy would ridicule people who used big words as “talking all faggy.” (And if you haven’t seen it, the big words weren’t that big.) Women have know about this for ages – act dumb or be popular, to greatly oversimplify. Presidential elections aren’t won on issues, they’re won on who people would drink beer with. To greatly oversimplify – again – one big battle being waged in this campaign right here, right now, is to prove who’s both the most qualified and who’s the least elite. Seems like a pretty narrow niche; good enough, but not too good. Too much good and you’re elite. Not enough good and you’re not good enough. Or something.

The article also hints that technology is also a promising un-dumbening tool. Wikipedia is statistically more accurate than the Encyclopedia Brittanica. I guess. (Take that, you bastards!) Lots of effort by lots of people go into accumulating and sorting humankind’s best and hardest-won information. The problem is that there are lots of people working awfully hard at stuff that’s just not as good. The thing that the Googles of the world have not yet sorted out for us is how to judge information qualitatively. We keep hearing “take it all in and make your own decisions.” If I’m reading contradictory stories about John McCain as a POW from 2 sources I don’t know, that’s not the handiest approach. I’m left to judge the information on purely subjective reactions; who spelled better, which presenter has nicer hair a used a prettier typeface? “Just sort it out” doesn’t work that well for people like me who take in tons of information from tons of sources. I’m not even saying that there’s One Right Answer or anything so narrow, but for people seeking out information that will justify their belief that the world is flat, certain information is just not useful. But mindset-prioritized information won’t help anyone doing real research because all most people use internet research for is to validate what they already know. It’s human nature empowered by technology, and it’s a double edged sword.

Meat eaters love anti-soy propaganda. Vegetarians think anti-soy propaganda is perpetrated by the dairy industry. There are big expensive studies from passionate groups that prove it both ways. How do I find what’s true? Not what justifies my stance, but what’s really and incontrovertibly true?

There has to be a better way, and I don’t have a suggestion. Interesting times, and Google-like spoils to the first group that starts to untangle qualitative information ranking. Even user voting is sort of useless; read an Amazon forum. If you go to an Anti-Apple forum, all the Apple people come in and vote down dissenting opinions regardless of their merit. Read a McCain forum; anything pro-Obama gets voted down. And vice-versa. Post on craigslist; whoever has a critical mass can flag off the opinions of the opposite group. In a certain way, it’s a purer form of governing than the democratic-republic form of the US, there’s nothing representative about it, just one person one vote. But it’s also as impure. People who hate war will vote for a warmonger because they also hate abortion and vote for the anti-abortion guy. In big groups. After a certain number of weeks of American Idol, it becomes personal; people stop voting based on any kind of performance virtue and give in to blind “I just like him/her” votes. I don’t even know if it’s bad, but democratic voting on information accuracy or quality on the web isn’t likely to improve the accuracy or quality of anything, it’ll just filter out views with less supporters, an entirely different matter.

It gets into dumb and ugly abstractions at some point. What IS truth? Is there only one? Is it even worth seeking? How do you have absolute truth in a relativistic world? How do you maintain relativistic perspective in an absolute world? At one point is a truth “unpopular” or “controversial” and at what point is it just “untrue” and therefore worth eliminating from mankind’s pool of knowledge? And who judges it? It’s sort of a nightmare. And it leaves science to solve philosophical and ethical questions – an unfair burden, but one that’s often unrecognized, and one that science often accepts without complaint. Until I hear of a solution that factors in some very convincing perspective on what “true” really means and how to maintain it without bias, I guess I’m left to make my own decisions.

I guess it’s a perfect time to learn a little more about quantum physics, I won’t be confused by any sort of background or qualifications from my past. I’ll just take it all in and make my own call.