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After some searching, mail today from inventor, musician, old friend and Prometheus bandmate Sanford Ponder who has left Washington and purchased a huge plot of undeveloped land in Southern California. Also heard the story and status of his start-up, Icosa Villiage, dedicated to making the Pod:
Getting a business off the ground, even a business backed by a genius idea, is very difficult. Seems raising money for business ventures in 2004 is also proving to be very difficult, even if your business involves manufacturing a 'Time Magazine Invention of the Year.'
BTW, great to hear Sardukar again: Fractal Music + the Pod somehow work well together. Nigel Gavin and Pat Mastelotto made for a pretty scary rhythm section.
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Evening work: The Missing Lens. (7.3M mp3.)
More from In the Middle:
“Like you, I am a primitive person living in the Dark Ages of organization behavior. My lenses are as primitive as yours. But over the past thirty years I have had the privilege of observing many hundreds of organizations. Some of these organizations are like the ones you work in and are familiar with, others are simulations we have created for the purpose of education and research. I have seen things that give me a glimmer into what is missing – the lens we don’t have.What strikes me most about organizations is their regularity – the same scenarios keep happening again and again in the widest variety of settings – manufacturing, high technology, religious institutions, schools, community groups, government agencies, universities. The same patterns keep showing up, but rarely do people feel that they are living out a pattern. Each event seems very specific to their unique organization, circumstances, and people. It matters little that all over the world, many thousands of people in all varieties of organizations are having the same experience.
The lens we are missing is a systemic one. We don’t see systems, we just see people. We don’t see system spaces, we only see the effects spaces have on us. So when things go wrong, we blame what we see.”
In the Middle by Barry Oshry
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Work, almost all day. Deadlines loom next week.
Happy to hear from Florida -- all is well. Unless you count no power and massive destruction three times in a row.
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Also, happy to hear from Joel this afternoon with an invitation to see a documentary on Bob Moog at an excellent new indie film space about three blocks from home. More inspirations. Wish Fernando Samalea could have been here for the articulate Rick Wakeman backstage interviews. The design of electronic music instruments is a spiritual practice for Bob Moog. The value of his work is undisputed, and this is a film worth seeing.
Bernie Worrell was also priceless in his own charming politically incorrect manner. Boy, can that guy rock.
Afterwards, pizza with TravisM, Heather, Joel and John. Discovered John is on the ballot for November, although he refused my offer to assist him with realtime in-store campaigning.
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Evening work: New Hope. (6.1M mp3.)
More from the retreat last week:
"1. Middles tend to be involved in a hectic work pace. Middles generally work long and hard throughout the duration of these system experiences. They are continually on the go, doing their management work, meeting with the Tops and with Bottoms, bearing messages, structuring and restructuring work, mediating, negotiating and so forth. It is an illuminating experience (and often aerobic one) to track the life of a Middle in New Hope for a thirty-minute period. In contrast to the relatively stationary existences of Tops and Bottoms, Middles tend to be in perpetual motion. They carry in their heads a seemingly endless list of items to be accomplished: quick management meetings with the Tops, setting up work for the Bottoms, back to the Tops on some other matter, an errand to run, paper work to be cleaned up, a piece of business to be transacted on the run between one meeting and another, and on and on it goes."In the Middle by Barry Oshry
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Very happy to be back home. Many coincidences yesterday, esp right outside my door. Ran into two old friends within two minutes. Quite strange, even surreal, that these two people would be on the same street corner at exactly the same time.
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Way too much mail to catch up in one day.
Morning: practices at home before diving into catch up on some doc and patent writing due for a 2pm work meeting. Yep. That time of year. But still riding a wave of deep inspiration from last week's retreat.
Also, carrying a nagging awareness all day about Jeanne sweeping away large parts of Florida. No phone contact possible all day, via cell or landline.
Home, early evening, counting my blessings -- and continuing to migrate from the past to the future.
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Later evening work: Middleness. (13.7M mp3.)
From the retreat last week:
Middleness is not a position; it is a condition. It is a condition all of us experience at various times and in varying degrees, in what ever position we are in, where we are at or near the top, on the bottom, or in the middle of the organization hierarchy.Middleness is the condition in which we exist between two or more individuals or groups; these groups have differing priorities, perspectives, goals, needs, and wants; and each of them exerts pressure on us to function on its behalf.
Middleness is a potentially disempowering condition. It tends to weaken individuals in the middle: confusing them, muddling their strategies, sapping their energies; and it tends to weaken groups in the middle; alienating members from one another, and diminishing their capacity to function as an integrated and effective unit.
Middleness is also a potentially empowering system condition. It offers individuals and groups unique opportunities for sensitive and effective influence over the course of system life.
Which way it goes for us when we are in the middleness condition - toward powerlessness or power -- depends upon our ability to understand and manage the unique dynamics of that condition.
In the Middle by Barry Oshry
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Evening work: Transfering Gigabytes of files between machines after spending all day working to get my old 1995 Mac 8100 Nubus system networked to my newer Mac. Finally succeeded early evening via a cross-over ethernet cable. During the day it was a boxing match -- Nubus vs. 1394 and USB and 802.11 and Ethernet. Ethernet won.
Also this evening: backing up old files, and while in the process, I found this from a demo session at MS Studios with Steven Rhodes and Brock Pytel: When the Money's Gone. (3.4M mp3.)
That's Brock on drums demonstrating his excellent, pure, and essential pop sensibility. Steven Rhodes on Bass. Me on acoustic guitar and vocals. At one point, I thought Curt had played electric guitar on this as well, but I don't hear him in this mix? This may have recorded before the four of us rehearsed and recorded some demos as a band for a few months in 1999? Either way, interesting to hear this snapshot demo from 1999 in light of my recent daily recording projects.
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Tomorrow morning: I'll be up at 5:30 and out to door to North Bend where I'll be in an all week 'management training' offsite care of the Management Development Group at MS. This is an intensive 12-hour per day retreat, and they warn us that we will not be online all week.
This will likely put a serious crimp into the musical contributions to this 'musician's diary' during the week. Back with more daily music snapshots next weekend. Of course, I'll be bring a guitar (my Taylor) with me for evenings, but recording will be unlikely...
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