Computers have solved a lot of problems for me. My happy little MacBook Pro takes care of almost every facet of my life. All of my creative work is recorded there. My family pictures and my music collection both reside in its domain. Most of the communication I have with my friends and family is computer based. It’s a marvel and an incredible tool. But there must always be balance. For every Logic Studio there is a twitter account. For each video chat between my son and his grandmother there is a Facebook. In truth, the computer in my life is a time altering device. It greatly amplifies or diminishes the quality of my time. I see little middle ground.
Case in point: I have eight songs that aren’t so bad. I’m moving them around and mixing and remixing bits and pieces. Trying to polish them without losing any of the strange edges. It’s not easily done and it’s impossible to do with 100% focus. I should say it’s impossible for me to do with 100% focus. My mind wanders. I lose track of what I was listening for. The flow comes and goes. But if my hands are busy, I can focus infinitely. Since practicing scales or noodling with the guitar while listening does’t work well and I never learned to crochet, I have taken to painting while I listen.
Again, I’m not a painter. It’s one of the things I do without holding myself to any kind of standard. I’m allowed to suck. Everyone should have a hobby like that!
With the music moving and a notebook at hand, I drag the paint around the canvas on a tour of its edges. Colors combine and create divisions. I am calm and centered. It’s a meditation. When the songs end, I remember my comments exactly and I note them. The playlist starts over and I return to the paint.
After a second listening and some notes I’m reluctant to turn to the computer. The constant input is too much. I make more notes in my journal and enjoy the sound of the pencil on the paper. It occurs to me that in terms of creative problems, the pencil has done me more good than the computer. What I feel is a sense of the quality of my time. The computer can take tasks like recording or editing and make them so efficient that I can do more in an hour than I could do in a day ten years ago. I can fit a room’s worth of effect pedals and rack units in its tiny case. In those instances, it is improving the quality of my time. I can do more in less and that’s amazing.
It’s the other chunks of time that concern me now. Breezing through endless status updates or clicking random links. It’s like a slot machine but more addictive and less riddled with guilt. The addiction to the twitches on the web comes easily. Effortless stimulus on demand. Time simply disappears. And that’s the problem. If my time is going to disappear, I would prefer that it go in the pursuit of making things in a far less efficient manner. Pushing pencils. Filling notebooks and idly strumming on the floor of my studio.
I’m unplugging more (he said in his blog). At night, the computer goes into the studio and stays there. Less time on the network and more time using the tools. And much more analog activity. More notebooks. More staff paper. More pencils. And an evil side project that appeared to me in a nap and literally fell from the top shelf of my closet.
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