Neil Mix

It happens on every flight. The lights go off briefly as the pilots prepare for takeoff. Instinctively, passengers reach up for the button that turns on the reading light. It’s a red, rectangular button directly overhead…it’s hard to see (because the lights are off)…is this the one?…*bing*

The big red button is alluring, all-powerful in it’s ability to draw you toward it. Place it with care — the best placement is not intuitive. Most often, the big red button belongs somewhere you wouldn’t normally find a button. Consider: the airplane (wrong), versus the subway (correct). Easily accessible: yes, prominently visible: yes, intuitive: no. The idea is that in a panic, you’ll find it, but in your daily routine it’s out of your way.

Draw parallels to your communications. How many times have you inadvertently started an email panic by placing an unqualified big-red-button in plain site? Conversely, when was your big-red-button missed because it was buried deeply in amidst complex prose?

You may have noticed that some of my previously missing blog posts magically re-appeared this evening. And those close to me may have noticed that I caught up on email this evening. Plus I cleaned up the kitchen after dinner, did some other chores, and even managed to get some time on the piano. And now I’m writing this. Later, I may work on a new novel, finish the basement, and/or win the Nobel Peace Prize. We’ll see how my energy holds up.

Any parent of a newborn will recognize this — it’s the arrival of “The Schedule.” The Schedule is the magical point in a baby’s development when he stops going to sleep at a random time and waking at night (say, from his own gas) to discover that he’s hungry and needs to eat RIGHT NOW. Instead, he follows a daily pattern and holds in the gas (or sleeps through it — damn funny over the baby monitor, I tell you) and then wakes up early in the morning needing to eat RIGHT NOW.

For first-time parents, The Schedule is half mythology, half mysticism. You’ve heard of it, but don’t believe it exists. Or if it does exist, it’s not for your child. How can this child, whose sleeping pattern can only be described with the help of advanced chaotic science, suddenly become the Family Timepiece? We know those other parents who claim they got their child on The Schedule — why can’t we? Is it a cult? Will they let us in?

So after a couple of months of what I like to call “baby terrorism,” when The Schedule arrives it is a moment of great relief. Except for all the manic tasks and chores.

Manic, you say? Yeah, there’s the whole PTSD thing. Months of being on “high alert” (armed with wipes and onsies and headed for poopy combat) leaves one completely unprepared for the strange routine most people refer to as “daily life.” When The Schedule arrives, it is not to be trusted. Fool-me-once (and all that mumbling), I have 5 minutes to spare if I’m lucky, I better go change the oil.

I’ve always been a procrastinator, until now. You see, before The Schedule there is no such thing as “I can do that tomorrow.” That is the path of crusty bathtubs, overflowing litterboxes, and a stinky kitchen. So you evolve, and you do less with more, and you act with urgency. By the time The Schedule finally does arrive, you’ve forgotten that tomorrow is a tangible, reliable thing. Tomorrow? No no no, now that’s a myth.

Doing more-with-less is a Good Thing, thank you Henry. I don’t know why I used to think that researching reality show biographies was important. But no more! Now, where was that cancer drug formula I was working on…

Imagine you need to tell a story, to walk someone through a coherent thought beginning to end. Now imagine that you can’t use words, and you can’t use visuals. You can use sound, but you can’t use spoken language of any kind, and your audience will be blindfolded. Where would you start? How would you proceed? What messages would you be able to convey? And how limited would your message be?

At first glance, it may seem this format is too limiting for meaningful communication. But that’s not the case: the composers of classical music were great masters of the design and presentation of complex narratives, and they did so without words or visuals. For a master class in story telling, study classical music.

It’s no easy trick. You need to repeat your themes, but not too much. Themes must be presented in different ways, but not too different. And you need to evoke recognition of archetypal structures, but do so without belaboring the obvious.

A well-written classical music piece contains the plot of a great novel or movie: it has a well-defined flow and structure, it tells you where you are going without giving away the ending, and it’s so interesting that you’ll enjoy the ride even if you’ve experienced the story many times previously. When done well, the removal of any one section renders it incomplete. The narrative takes on a life of its own beyond the composer, as if it had always existed but no one ever pulled back the curtain to reveal it.

The sad truth about classical music in the modern world is that most people consider it “background” music. It’s fairly easy to hear simple beauty in classical music moment by moment, one theme at a time. But this is a shallow understanding of the music. In order to grasp its true depth (and unimaginable beauty), you have to “listen big”. You need to pay attention and remember each moment, and then you must reflect on how each moment impacts the next. In the end, the structure becomes clear. A beautiful architecture is revealed, and a deep emotional understanding is imparted. Rachmaninoff described this moment in a piece of music as “the point”. It’s presence is the hallmark of a masterful presentation.

Unfortunately, the attention requirements of classical music don’t mesh well with today’s sound-byte driven world. My college music history professor spent a year walking us on a musical journey through centuries, and his final lecture led to the conclusion that classical music (or more specifically, The Tradition of Western European Art Music) was terminally ill, if not already dead. It was a great moment, and remarkable in that he employed the master’s device on us — he built us up to a culminating “point” where a profound message became clear. Stunned by his prognosis, we were deeply saddened. And we applauded.

The next time you hear a bit of classical music in the background, consider scratching a little deeper. You might be surprised at what you learn.

As you may have noticed, my blog has been offline for a while. I’d like to say that I was too involved in a stealth-mode startup pursuing teleportation technology to notice that my blog was down, but the reality is far more boring. My blog provider sufferred a hard drive crash, I didn’t have a backup, and you know the rest.

We’ve all shared the misery of data loss at one time or another. It sucks. However, the past couple of weeks have given me a chance to reflect on the direction I was headed with my blog. I’d never gotten to the point where I felt my “true voice” was active, so I feel like this is an opportunity to give it another shot.

I’m a startup guy, so I’m all about starting from scratch. I far prefer the blank slate to the well-defined shell. I hated losing my blog, but I love the potential of a new start. So here we go.

(Of course, there are a few posts on my old blog that were traffic drivers or personal favorites. I managed to recover those from my blog reader; they’ll be appearing again as soon as I get a chance. In particular, the “Threading in JavaScript 1.7″ post, with its accompanying Thread.js library, is not lost. Expect it again soon or drop me an email if you’re impatient.)