"How should we create things?"

"One popular idea is that we ought to 'make' things. In books like Robert Pirsig’s 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' and Matthew Crawford’s 'Shop Class as Soulcraft,' we encounter the notion that there’s something special about making things yourself, to your own specifications, with a particular goal in mind and in a particular state of mind—a kind of elevated craftsmanship. 'Craftsmanship means dwelling on a task for a long time and going deeply into it, because you want to get it right,' Crawford writes. He’s thinking mainly about making tough, hefty things with your hands—furniture, engines, houses, and so on.... Eno has a different way of imagining creativity.... Demonstrating some of the software he uses for creating generative music, he shows how a few elements can be designed and then put into motion—a keyboard melody, for example, can be fed through a program that randomly skips some of its notes, so that the melody renders differently as it repeats.... The idea is that the music isn’t finished. It will continue growing without him.... Applying a little Eno to my writing can loosen it up, shifting it from the precise, controlled, responsible 'making' track onto the playful, surprising, impersonal 'growing' track...."

Writes Joshua Rothman in "How Should We Create Things? In a new documentary, the musician Brian Eno shows that playfulness can substitute for inspiration" (The New Yorker).

"Most people I know felt that 2016 was the beginning of a long decline with Brexit, then Trump and all these nationalist movements in Europe."

"It looked like things were going to get worse and worse. I said: ‘Well, what about thinking about it in a different way?’ Actually, it’s the end of a long decline. We’ve been in decline for about 40 years since Thatcher and Reagan and the Ayn Rand infection spread through the political class, and perhaps we’ve bottomed out. My feeling about Brexit was not anger at anybody else, it was anger at myself for not realising what was going on. I thought that all those Ukip people and those National Fronty people were in a little bubble. Then I thought: ‘Fuck, it was us, we were in the bubble, we didn’t notice it.’ There was a revolution brewing and we didn’t spot it because we didn’t make it. We expected we were going to be the revolution.... Actually, in retrospect, I’ve started to think I’m pleased about Trump and I’m pleased about Brexit because it gives us a kick up the arse and we needed it because we weren’t going to change anything. Just imagine if Hillary Clinton had won and we’d been business as usual, the whole structure she’d inherited, the whole Clinton family myth. I don’t know that’s a future I would particularly want. It just seems that was grinding slowly to a halt, whereas now, with Trump, there’s a chance of a proper crash, and a chance to really rethink."

Said Brian Eno.

In case you're about to comment "Who's Brian Eno?," let me send you back to my old post from 2005, "Music to read by: the suggestions."

You can play "Music for Airports" here. I like dead silence for reading, but if I'm in a place where the sound is distracting, this is probably the first thing I'd choose to plug my headphones into.

"It felt like my boss had ripped off my clothes and left me standing in my skivvies."

Writes Lindsey Kaufman in a WaPo article titled "Google got it wrong. The open-office trend is destroying the workplace" about the time she "was forced to trade in my private office for a seat at a long, shared table."

Our new, modern Tribeca office was beautifully airy, and yet remarkably oppressive. Nothing was private. On the first day, I took my seat at the table assigned to our creative department, next to a nice woman who I suspect was an air horn in a former life.  All day, there was constant shuffling, yelling, and laughing, along with loud music piped through a PA system. As an excessive water drinker, I feared my co-workers were tallying my frequent bathroom trips. At day’s end, I bid adieu to the 12 pairs of eyes I felt judging my 5:04 p.m. departure time. I beelined to the Beats store to purchase their best noise-cancelling headphones in an unmistakably visible neon blue.

The most horrific part of that is "loud music."  Later:

If employers want to make the open-office model work, they have to take measures to improve work efficiency... And please, let’s eliminate the music that blankets our workspaces.  Metallica at 3 p.m. isn’t always compatible with meeting a 4 p.m. deadline.

Jeez. Any music interferes with the kind of thinking you need to do to write. Of course, hearing other people talking is bad too, and the right kind of music can be used to exclude voices. Ten years ago, I worked hard on putting together a music-for-reading playlist. I've deployed Brian Eno many times — even to work in my office (which is not impervious to the sound of people talking in hallways and other offices).

Kaufman ends with "companies could simply join another trend — allowing employees to work from home," and that's my preference for most of the work I do. You can get deeply attached to quiet if you have access to it and learn how much it helps. When you're reading and writing, there's no music at all that's better than silence.

"Crossword puzzles heavily favor Democrats."

LOL. And those dastardly puzzlers also betray an evil fondness for Arab cities, the Spanish language, Hindu royalty, Hawaiian fowl, and these dreadful things:



ADDED: A poll!

What's the crossword puzzle's favorite music?
	Electric Light Orchestra
	Yma Sumac
	Brian Eno
	ABBA
pollcode.com free polls

Shuffling.

My iPod shuffle is filled with my carefully selected study music (which my readers helped me select). There's lots of ambient Brian Eno things, some nice Wes Montgomery, some early music. But there's one joker deliberately inserted in the deck: "Housequake," by Prince. Every time it comes up, it startles me, then makes me laugh.

Music to read by: the suggestions.

Today, my iPod Shuffle arrived, and I adore it, as blogged here. You may remember I bought it to fill with music that would help me read and study without distraction, and I solicited advice from readers about what they thought would fit this need. I've already noted some preliminary suggestions, including a warning against classical music, the theory being that it's too complex and interesting, which makes it distracting. Clearly, you don't want to study while listening to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, but I think there are some good classical choices. One reader writes:

In response to your e-mailer who suggested that classical music is too distracting to read by: presumably that depends a great deal on the individual reader/listener. I, personally, am distracted by schlocky music. Most contemporary movie soundtracks would have me yanking off my earphones and begging the barista to chat me up. The thing I love about Chopin (for example) is that, while it has a deep, complex musical structure and emotional texture, it doesn't have any of the insistent qualities that demand that you focus your immediate, conscious attention on it at every moment (like a driving beat, or an incessant rhythm or lyric, or a rigid structure). Last week in the library I read two books and skimmed three more in two and a half hours while listening to Rubinstein play Chopin, and my concentration never wavered. I can rarely sustain that level of concentration for that long, and I credit the music for helping to maintain my interest and focus.

In fact, I have this CD already, and I put the only the slower pieces on my "Reading Music" playlist. Here's another email with classical suggestions:

My taste might be more vanilla than you're looking for, but I often study listening to Chopin's nocturnes, Schubert's impromptus, and Vanessa-Mae's classical work. A good Chopin CD is Jean Yves Thibaudet's "The Chopin I Love"; there's quite a bit on that CD, including the E-flat major nocturne, which is my absolute favorite. For Schubert, the Wanderer Fantasy CD is very nice, especially if you can find the one played by Leon Fleisher. Actually, most of Leon Fleisher's piano work is wonderful. And Vanessa-Mae--her Original Four Seasons CD is very nice. It has the Vivaldi pieces but also her own work, the Devil's Trill Sonata, which is fantastic. Her CD Violin Player is also probably good, but I don't have that one. I do have Storm, which is interesting--she is a beautifully talented violinist who likes to fuse classical music with more modern work. She combined Bizet's Can-Can with a driving techno beat, and that worked quite well. But some of her other pieces on that CD are a little annoying--Bach just shouldn't be combined with a synthesizer or electric guitar line.

Here's another:

I find that the Hilliard Ensemble's "Morimur" is great to read to. (It's on ECM New Series.) The recording was inspired by the research of Helga Thoene, a musicologist who argues that Bach alluded to chorales in the Chaconne from the second partita for solo violin. So the recording presents several chorales (in German) and the partita, followed by a reconstruction of the Chaconne with singers emphasizing the chorale melodies. (Of course, you can't go wrong with Bach for stringed instruments, either: the 'cello suites, the sonatas and partitas for solo violin, and the lute music -- there is also a very fine, recent release of Segovia Bach transcriptions on Deutsche Grammophon.)

I have a lot of Bach on CD and am putting a good portion of that into the Shuffle. Someone recommended Schubert's "Wanderer Fantasy," which I had.

Another of the "preliminary suggestions" noted in the earlier post was movie soundtracks. As that emailer above indicates, many film soundtracks are bombastic and inappropriate for my purpose, but from my existing CD collection, I chose the Philip Glass soundtrack from "Kundun." Although I haven't ordered any of these, here are some specific soundtracks that were recommended: "Ghost in the Shell 2," "The Last of the Mohicans," "Cinema Paradiso."

Another recommendation noted in the "preliminary suggestions" post was Brian Eno's ambient music, particularly "Music for Airports." I've ordered that, along with Eno's "Ambient 4: On Land" -- a classic example of making a second purchase to earn the free shipping.

Now, for some extra stuff. One emailer pointed me to this list of music featured on The Weather Channel. A couple people recommended Sigur Ros -- which sounds great. Another interesting idea is "True Love Waits: Christopher O'Riley Plays Radiohead" ("Radiohead consistently produces very complex melodies and this works surprisingly well. Classically they fall into the 'Romantic' camp. Very Debussy.") One emailer suggested Miles Davis, specifically "Kind of Blue" and "Sketches of Spain." Someone recommended Aphex Twin. Someone recommended Ottmar Liebert. ("He plays 'nuevo flamenco,' some of the most beautiful and interesting classical guitar you’ve ever heard. Perfect background for reading or just thinking. Or in my case, for coding :)")

From my CD collection, I pulled out a lot of early music. I have had very good reading success with this CD in the past, so it went right in. And I had these two Hildegard von Bingen chant recordings. I put in some Monteverdi.

One more email:

It may be rather SNAGy (Sensitive New Age Guy) of me to mention this, but there is, in fact, a lot of so-called New Age music that is not overly cheesy and quite relaxing. I read and write to George Winston, Michael Jones (solo piano), David Lanz and/or Paul Speer (they collaborated), among others. A lot of it is the sort of pretentious 'Toltec Magician' (I kid you not) crap, but there are also some halfway decent composers out there. I subscribed to Real's Rhapsody service, which is pretty cheap for streaming audio, and they have a New Age stream where I get some ideas. A bunch are available on iTunes.

Anyway, that's enough for now!

Music to read by.

I am getting a great response to the request I made yesterday for suggestions what to load into my iPod Shuffle, which I want solely for the purpose of screening out annoying room noise so I can maintain my concentration to read and study. That is, I don't want to be distracted by the music, but I don't want to be listening to crap either. Anyway, crap would annoy me, so it would be distracting. I'm going to post a list of suggestions later -- so keep suggesting things -- but I wanted to make a few observations while they're fresh in my mind.

First, I'm amazed by how many people have suggested Brian Eno's ambient music, especially "Music for Airports." And unfortunately, Amazon does not have it for sale new and it isn't in the iTunes music store. (Note: I'm not trying to prompt people to mail me sound files. Please, don't.) [UPDATE: Now, for some reason, I'm finding it on Amazon: here.]

Second, though some have recommended classical music, one person warned against classical music, saying:

Do not be fooled by anyone claiming to have a list of classical pieces that foster easy reading. Classical music is so complex and interesting that it claims your full attention. You will be too busy wondering what's going to happen next musically to devote any of your brain to your reading.

I think this is absolutely right. I bought a CD of the supposedly "relaxing" classical music for my work computer to screen out noise, and it is distracting. For years, I relied on this CD of much older music and found it very helpful. The emailer that warned me off classical music recommended mediaeval chants.

Third, many people have recommended film various film soundtracks -- I'll name some later -- and I think one reason many of these are good is that they are similar to classical music, but much less likely to be distractingly interesting, surprising, and complex.