I might be just a little obsessed with Sharon Van Etten's 'One Day' from her album Epic.
That is if listening to a song every day and finding as many live versions as possible can be considered obsessed. This is one of those rare songs that never becomes tiresome and I get some new insight from each performance.
There are times when I sing along and the thought I have is "this is the perfect song".
For me, the song puts me in the mind of of my favorite sonnet. 'I Know I Am But Summer to your Heart' by Edna St. Vincent Millay. The use of the seasons as metaphors for seasons of love and the wish that just as summer comes after winter, love can return after leaving.
Here is Edna in 1922:
I know I am but summer to your heart,
And not the full four seasons of the year;
And you must welcome from another part
Such noble moods as are not mine, my dear.
No gracious weight of golden fruits to sell
Have I, nor any wise and wintry thing;
And I have loved you all too long and well
To carry still the high sweet breast of spring.
Wherefore I say: O love, as summer goes,
I must be gone, steal forth with silent drums,
That you may hail anew the bird and rose
When I come back to you, as summer comes.
Else will you seek, at some not distant time,
Even your summer in another clime.
And here is Sharon:
Snow is outside but I'm by your fire
I feel all the love you'll bring
You gotta see how we can see this out
Summer in mind and spring by your side
You'll see all the love we'll keep
Gotta see that we couldn't be there
Here is a different St. Vincent performing 'Surgeon', one of my top songs of 2011.
I used to do my utmost to suspend belief
Until the day it hit me like a kick in the teeth
-Ivy, I Guess I'm Just A Little Too Sensitive
I usually listen to Ivy when sad. It happened when hearing about Steve Jobs. These two lines are what came to mind. Because...
We suspended belief when we stood in line for the new iPhone.
We were kicked in the teeth when heard the news Steve had died.
When Steve Jobs resigned in August I posted my thoughts. I'm finally able to read stories about Steve Jobs without tearing up and becoming consumed with grief. So I finally feel able to explore why I, and people from all over the world, felt this unexpected sadness.
I believe it was a relationship with Apple and by extension Steve Jobs that people felt. Because Apple and Steve were inseparable right to the very end.
My relationship with Apple started because I was hoping for a relationship with a fellow Geology student. She used Cricket Graph on a Mac in the computer lab (in the entire lab there were only two Macs) and so this is the computer I used too. Then when I needed help I had to ask her. It seemed like a crush but was much more and would impact the rest of my life. Steve Jobs sat in on a calligraphy class at Reed College and this seemingly small chance opportunity changed typography on computers forever. I feel that my seemingly innocuous attempt at flirting by choosing the same computer as a girl I wanted to talk to changed my life forever.
This little Mac was what I used to first experience the Internet, originally with NCSA Mosaic then with something called Netscape. And it was with a Mac that years later I found my callings.
Once I used an Apple computer there was no going back. It was the first time I saw design mattering. And that mattered to me, hence Apple has been a part of my life.
And Apple was Steve Jobs.
Ivy's song is about a relationship and that is what we had with Apple - with Steve Jobs. A relationship we never thought would end.
He wasn't my hero. I looked up to him but never wanted to be him. I looked up to him as people would look at a mythical figure. He was mystifying in that what he did seemed obvious in hindsight; so why did no one else have the foresight?
With that said, I do not believe Steve Jobs was a visionary. He was an evolutionary. He made evolutionary changes that led to revolutions. He was a change agent. He joined the loose connections.
And he set the standard of standards.
Consider these:
-all commencement speeches are now compared to his 2005 Stanford commencement speech
-all Superbowl commercials are compared to his 1984 ad. Plus he made the Superbowl the platform for big commercials.
-how devices are un-boxed or judged against Apple's packaging and now there are web sites just about unboxing.
-advertisement campaigns are judged against Apple's 'Think Different' campaign which he wrote copy for
-Tim Berners Lee invented the World Wide Web on Steve Jobs' post-Apple NEXT computer
-Apple stores are the most successful retail stores in the world and Steve Jobs had final say in their architectural design
-then of course, look at phones, music players, tablet computers, computers, music stores, and video rentals before Apple entered those markets
Steve Jobs really did change everything. So when you see comments from people saying "I never used Apple products but..." they are misguided. Everyone has benefited from Apple. Because to compete, companies have had to be more like Apple in order to succeed. For just one example look at Android phones before and after the iPhone.
Apple design has spilled over all of our culture.
There won't be a "next Steve Jobs". But what we will start hearing is "so and so is the Steve Jobs of X industry".
Steve Jobs was our team captain. If we were visited by extraterrestrials and they demanded one specimen of humanity to interact with the world would have chosen Steve Jobs as our captain. And the amount of one word expletives I saw at the news of his death sounded to me like our reaction when the team we love loses unexpectedly. Our team captain had failed.
Steve was an actual Monomyth but we are used to our stories having a happy ending. He was supposed to live at the end of the story. If he can succumb to the inevitable then we all must succumb to the inevitable too.
That was a kick in the teeth.
Perhaps his greatest evolution is yet to be seen? Perhaps he did succeed in creating a culture of innovation of innovation at Apple.
I just can't stop thinking "What Now?"
For me, I plan on getting his biography this weekend.
Some of the things I have been reading about Steve:
"For an entire generation of young Americans who had every reason to believe what they were being told by their teachers, their friends, their bosses, even their family - that their dreams and ambitions were unattainable and that we were just cogs in a great machine we could never understand - Steve Jobs was living, breathing, human proof that it was all wrong. We were all vessels for something greater, we had it within ourselves to put on a game face and stand up to everything and everyone. He was the personification of "Hell, no!""
I remember the day in 1997 when Gil Amelio left and Steve Jobs came back. For me it was a day of confusion as at the time I did not have an understanding of how and why Steve left Apple before. These were the days of endless rumors of Apple's Rhapsody OS to replace System 8 - of Red Box, Yellow Box, and Blue Box. And the days of factions of what Apple should do next. I was one of those who wanted Apple to buy BeOS. Others wanted Apple to keep pursuing Rhapsody. The NeXT aquisition was a surprise to many, but when you saw that it included Steve Jobs, then in hindsight it all makes sense.
What no one saw is that Steve Jobs was returning from his personal diaspora with a new focus. But he knew it "Focusing is about saying no". (YouTube link) And this is why Apple has been such a great story. Like Neo returning from the dead in the Matrix, Aragorn returning from the Paths of the Dead, Luke Skywalker returning from Dagobah. What Joseph Campbell described as the Monomyth.
This is the path Steve Jobs has been on. Kicked out of Apple, years in the wilderness, and returned to lead what arguably is the most successful company in history.
When he came back he re-focused Apple.
The biggest change I see CEO Steve Jobs making is he returned Apple to what it was always supposed to be - a hardware company. While he was away Apple became mired in the OS wars. As the technology caught up with Steve he leapfrogged these arguments of the past and that is where I see his genius. To always be looking forward. To make Apple hugely popular but still innovative. To be appealing while having a mass appeal.
I do believe that his resignation as CEO but staying as Chairman of the Board is about Steve searching for a higher purpose at Apple. To finally let go of the details.
Because he has always been about the details and there is only so much mental energy you can devote to these things. When he announced he was resigning there were two anecdotes I read that, for me, capture what makes him so effective.
Later, I asked him why he had seemed happier with the boy than with the two famous artists. His answer seemed unrehearsed to me: ‘Older people sit down and ask, “What is it?” but the boy asks, “What can I do with it?”
And it reminded me of three long reads about chases that I have read in the recent past:
Outside: The Ballad of Colton Harris-Moore In the Northwest's San Juan Islands, best known for killer whales and Microsoft retirees, a teen fugitive has made a mockery of local authorities, allegedly stealing cars, taking planes for joyrides, and breaking into vacation homes. His ability to elude the police and survive in the woods has earned him folk-hero status. But some wonder if the 18-year-old will make it out of the hunt alive.
VF: A Declaration of Cyber-War Last summer, the world’s top software-security experts were panicked by the discovery of a drone-like computer virus, radically different from and far more sophisticated than any they’d seen. The race was on to figure out its payload, its purpose, and who was behind it.
Though like many writers, I find that Mr. McPhee has trouble ending his books. They are either annoyingly abrupt or come at you with a newly taken "I don't really like to but..." tone.
Enough to make a 31 yr old Canadian woman write "I’m trying not to be distracted by how stunning she is". See WalrusMag: Still Standing 6’1″
Another interview in SPIN: Tough Questions for Liz Phair The press materials for Funstyle refer to you as a MILF. Is that a badge of honor?
I would say, yeah.
Neither I nor the listeners who called in thought he redeemed himself. On the other hand, what other news organization would allow their staff to openly question and discuss the firing of an employee? (though technically I understand Diane is employed by American University, but this topic has been discussed on NPR's news programming)
You were never supposed to hear these songs. These songs lost me my management, my record deal and a lot of nights of sleep.
Yes, I rapped one of them. Im as surprised as you are. But here is the thing you need to know about these songs and the ones coming next: These are all me. Love them, or hate them, but dont mistake them for anything other than an entirely personal, un-tethered-from-the-machine, free for all view of the world, refracted through my own crazy lens.
This is my journey. Ill keep sending you postcards.
Liz is talking about 'Funstyle' - her latest release which surprised everyone.
My personal thoughts are that 'Funstyle' is a funny album. I'm glad she did it. And as I have told people, this woman made 'Exile in Guyville' which gives her a free-pass for forever. But that can also be a trap as she discusses in an interview.
Which leads me to ponder talent versus skill.
There are some industries where it is expected that the workers will spend a long time honing their skills before they reach the full-fledged professional level. Baseball players have their minor leagues and chefs are expected to work their way up from being a line cook. These are skillful endeavors where the best in the business usually do not emerge until they are 30-somethings.
Artists, inventors, and entrepreneurs usually have their best output in their early 20's. These are lines of work that reward raw remarkable talent.
In music you usually see increbible first albums. In college 'Liz's Exile in Guyville' seemed to me to be like Fugazi's '13 Songs' and Green Day's '1,039 Smoothed Out Slappy Hours'. Not only were these albums demonstrations of raw talent but it seemed that the artists, intent on creating something great and in their own vision, applied themselves in a way that a veteran would not and hence created some of the top albums of my lifetime.
Which makes someone like Neko Case so interesting. She clearly has talent, but in listening to her albums, from The Virgianin and Canadian Amp to Middle Cyclone you hear someone finding her voice and finding her confidence. Her rise to indie all-star is more like a baseball player working their way up the minor leagues than like an indie queen with a mythical demo tape who then gets signed for an album.
This difference makes it so that each Neko Case album is met with optimism that it will be better than the last one, and for Liz Phair and artists like her, their new releases are never able to escape the pessimism that critics and fans want every album to be that once a generation album.
If you find true love be happy. Enjoy it for what it is. Liz created a masterpiece. Appreciate it and move on. She has.
Elections matter because of who the elected officials appoint. When those people are competent then government can be effective.
What is prompting this for me is how Energy Secretary Steven Chu told BP how to get images of their failed oil well. That's right - a government official helped a private company because the government knew more.
An eternal fact of Washington is that government gets much more attention when it performs badly than when it performs well...
Now consider Chu, the Nobel Prize Winner who has been at BP headquarters in Houston with a team of government scientists trying to figure out how to stop the leak. According to a government official, BP initially "dismissed" Chu's gamma ray suggestion, but came back a week later and admitted "Chu's right."
Ha! And I believe this is an example of epistemic closure:
Twenty years ago, Fehr had a seemingly sensible idea - that a deep-seated human preference for fairness might play an important role in economics. He thought it might explain why companies - even in countries without a minimum wage - don't offer jobs paying wages far below the standard, despite research showing plenty of unemployed people would willingly take the work. It doesn't happen, he suggested, because companies know that workers hired at a lower wage feel they are being cheated, causing them to grow disgruntled and work less hard.
(Amazon link)