On a grey February Sunday

Valentine's Day is a day when the fairytale version of love is celebrated. Therefor, a poem that tells you what to do when you're stuck in a fairytale seems suitable:



The wisdom of Neil Gaiman seems indefinite.

Good luck!

Angel in Hell

I met somebody the other day, a very nice, gentle person. She asked me about my job, but when I asked her about where she works she hesitated. After a moment she said it, and then asked if that was the end of our conversation. Of course not, a person is not his or her job, but I was curious.

She works in Hell, you see, so of course I asked her why she took that job. These days it might simply be desperation, better a job in Hell than no job at all, but that wasn't it. Instead she'd applied for this job in times when there actually were other jobs available, and her reason for doing so was nothing less than fantastic: By working in Hell she had a chance to make the situation for those forced to live there a tiny bit more humane. By being there she could set an example for others working there, show them that their duties can be performed in a respectful way and remind them that the people in their care are individuals, not a group of lowlifes.

In this there's alot to learn for alot of us. Regardless of which position we are in we always have the choice to treat the people around us with respect, and that makes all the difference.

Digital communication

I just caught myself hissing like an angry cat at the screen. Somebody sent me some crap that I really don't want to deal with, and in response I hissed.

And then started thinking. I often do things like this, I give the screen the finger when somebody says something that deserves that respons, I curse at the screen, I laugh, I smile, I aaawwww out loud when somebody says or does something increadibly nice or sweet (So I'm not all bad and evil, ok?) The person on the other side neither hears nor sees this, and the cats don't care, so why do I do it?

I'm only half way through this thought, so I have no theory to offer yet. I wonder if others do the same?

Yikes!

A colleague just shared a Really Creepy Story with me over the 'net, I read it and replied an onomatopoetic 'Yikes!' To further foreground my reaction I made it big and red and underlined it.

It left her totally confused.

She figured it was some sort of abbreviation and tried to decipher it, to no avail. Since it isn't.

Communication is not to be taken for granted.

Qwerty

The keyboard on my phone is a qwerty keyboard. I really like that, so much easier to use!

I'd like to end this post with a quote: "and that was all I had to say right now"

The artist and the Internet

This was originally posted in Swedish, but since I was inspired by and am using quite a lot of the words of somebody who does not, to my knowledge, read Swedish I've decided to translate it and post it again:

The relationship between artist and fan is changing if you haven't noticed, along with the way we consume and experience music and even communicate since the internet arrived.

In the forum on the NIN homepage Trent Reznor, the voice of Nine Inch Nail, talks amongst other things about how the cultural landscape have changed, and still is changing today:

It's been an interesting experiment over the last couple of years or so. Faced with leaving the infrastructure of traditional record labels and figuring out what the right thing to do is in this new world - I found myself realizing that for me to have any concept of how to interact with the community and know what they might want / what they find appropriate, I need to immerse myself in that world and live it for a while.
The reason no record label knows how to market anything to new media is they don't live there. They don't get it because they don't use it. What you've seen happen with the marketing and presentation of NIN over the last years is a direct result of living next to you, listening to you, consuming with you and interacting with you. Directly. There's no handlers or PR people here, it's me and my guys - that's it. There's no real plan, even - it's just trying to do the right thing that respects you the fan, the music, and me the artist. That's the goal - a mutual and shared respect.

Not everybody chooses to follow the same path but it is my belief that the path chosen by NIN and many others is wisely chosen. It's better on so many levels to participate in this new thing, be a part of it and dealing with it from experience and insight rather than desperately hanging on to what no longer is, or even allowing some of all these self proclaimed experts or gurus take command.

Of course there's a price to pay for the intimacy this sort of interacting brings. The world is a huge place and here be all kinds of people, including the ones who may not always be able to grasp the concept of perspective. Reznor tells about people who are unable to fully distinguis between reality and imagination, about people who express anger and hateful feelings due to the fact that he's not the same man today as he was in 1994, and about people who attack the fact that he's in a relation and his girlfriend. Yet, he forgrounds, even if they are both intrusive and stubborn, and sometimes threatening and scary, the only a few of them.

Reznor with NIN, like many artists, writers, musicians etc have chosen to be part of the new social arena. They choose to communicate directly with fans all over the world and generously share both time and other things with their fans. They are rewarded with loyalty, attention and their works, records, books etc, are sold and bring pleasure to many. The artist who chooses to stay out of the arena may achieve some fame as a hermite but accepts the risk of ending up out in the cold, forgotten. Choosing between works from somebody who's generously shared his or her thoughts along the process, replied to questions etc, or the works by somebody one's never heard of most of is would choose the first one.

The world is not out of joint, it has changed. Artists have nothing to loose in getting of the high horses they cannot handle and instead follow in the path of Reznor and many others. It's not that dangerous, and it's worth it.

a Lovesong For the Internet

I love the Internet. Through it I meet so many wonderful, fantastic, generous, wise, fabulous individuals from all over the world. Sometimes they even send me guitar picks. Today the actual Pick of Destiny arrived in my mailbox, too cool! Thank you, dear friend!

I love the Internet. I honestly believe that all the communication between different people that goes on all the time is the way to peace.

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.

Communicative confusion

Communication is so much more than just the words we use. It’s so much more than body language. It’s so much more than tone and intonation, what we say and what we don’t say.

We did use the exact same words, you see. We used roughly the same body language, which is rare enough in itself. We even looked at each other and nodded in agreement. For a very long time I have been thinking that we did say the same thing.

But then there’s the aspect of culture, of tradition. I forgot about that. No, I’m not being honest. I did remember that, but I didn’t think it was an issue here. I thought, for a long time, that we belonged to the same culture in this perspective.

It turns out, I realised today, that was a huge mistake. While using the same words, on the same occasion, talking about the same thing, we were actually saying opposite things, without knowing it. While I intended to communicate ‘I’m not interested, thanks anyway’ she was intending to communicate ‘I would really like this, please ask me directly!’ And everybody thought she was saying the same thing I was.

On one level this is really cool. On another it’s really sad. On a third is horribly frustrating.

There’s also an important lesson for me here: do not take for granted that just because a person is using the same words you are he/she means the same thing.

Misunderstandings

Sometimes people totally get things wrong. They misunderstand everything about it, from the very beginning to the very end.

Sometimes that causes disaster. But sometimes, not often but sometimes, it leads to something pretty good.