SLAG

December 16th, 2020

Back to the salt mines, is a phrase often used by inveterate writers, proud of their endurance and fortitude with that oft-touted impossible task of finding the right words.  Dancing with the half-filled page, or rather warring with it can have the same drudge and drag as that dirty task of being down in a hole, chipping away at a rock face, looking for that seam of gold.  As Ira Glass has pointed out in his infamous prescription to creatives at the beginning of their career, it’s necessary to move through a lot of material in order to get to the good stuff.  And just as in mining, a lot of that useless material is tossed, it’s slag.

Slag is that useless rock that miners chip away at in order to get to the diamond, the gold.  It’s usually just carted away so it can be out of the way.  Many new writers, however, get overly attached to their slag, insecure about whether it’s actually a dull piece of gold or if it’s just some iron pyrite that’ll chip your tooth.  It’s without a doubt that much of the slag in writing should just be tossed to the forgiving oblivion of yesterday.

That being said, the future of one’s writing and one’s creative curiosity and ability is always uncertain, and like a tinkerer who hoards all sorts of salvaged hardware and gadgets, there’s no telling what use some tossed slag might come to have under the same pen commanded by are far superior perspective.

This writer, for example, is slowly bringing about a little side project connected to the weekly Lucilius Parables, and at the heart of this project is embedded one of this writer’s very first short stories from years ago.  While it was once a singular pride and joy since it was the first readable smack-together of words that others said they actually liked, it quickly got tossed as slag when the realization dawned that it was a fairly faithful -though subconscious- ripoff of some recent films at the time.  Nonetheless, the boons of digital memory have allowed that slag to tag along, hopping from computer to computer.  And now, years later, with a new story nearly completely fleshed out, save for one strangely shaped hole, a new realization dawned - that being how perfectly that old short story would slip into this plot hole.  Naturally, that old slag needs to be ripped apart and combed for all it’s juvenile impurities, but the process in this case isn’t really one of removing more slag.  Rather, it’s more like compressing the slag with a muscle of writing that is now far stronger.  All diamond was once just lumpy coal, and where coal is tossed aside in favor of grabbing at the diamond, this slag can be compressed into a diamond.

The analogy goes too far of course: masterpieces don’t spring from juvenile efforts, no matter how much we love to convince each other that some people are just blessed with talent.  Functionally though, the analogy is quite nice: that young wordy dithering will be a solid little keystone in the new project once it’s revamped and honed - even if that keystone isn’t actually made of diamond or gold.

As it’s been noted many times in the realm of Tinkered Thinking, resourcefulness is simply a matter of seeing something as a resource that no one else sees as a resource.  It’s an event of counter-intuition.  And while resourcefulness is often a function of optimism, it’s more generally a function of simply having a different perspective.  Years working through the slag of a writing practice does just that: a writer’s perspective of their own craft, their own work, and the writing of others changes with time.  Inevitably, the juvenile slag of younger years, while once tossed aside as mere trash can suddenly look like a resource worth picking up again, given new creative powers and of course, a new perspective.

The larger point here balances inspiration perfectly: everything can be an inspiration, the difference is always just the perspective we have at the time.  Perspective is a necessary filter for the world we experience, and the slag we filter out simply doesn’t resonate with that perspective.  But change the circumstance, the aim, the sensibility, the interests and suddenly what was sifted out a slag becomes gold.  As the truism goes: one man’s garbage is another man’s treasure.  What the truism fails to take note of is that those two people can be the same person, given a little time and growth.

TEACHING AS SUBJECT

December 15th, 2020

There are many teachers who have little interest in teaching.  Such people really shouldn’t be teachers, but are somewhat pushed into the profession when an intense interest yields no other income.  

Take for instance a piano teacher.  Does an intense enjoyment from playing the piano automatically translate to an intense enjoyment with teaching?

The answer here encapsulates a vital mistake that many often make, when choosing professions and suggesting routes of living to others.  

A degree in literature?  Are you planning to become an English teacher?  Again, an enjoyment of the classics and the intricacies of narrative and form don’t necessarily mean that someone has an interest in teaching.

The problem is that we don’t see the act of teaching as it’s own subject.  We see teaching as a meta aspect of the subject being taught, but this is a grave mistake.  Teaching in many ways transcends any topic that seems to be it’s object.  In order to transfer ability and understanding to someone else, the main skills are communicative.  An excellent teacher pays very close attention to the student, intuiting their thinking, studying their output, say finger placement with the piano, but also their facial expression.  While learning we often become very honest with the signals we broadcast about how much difficulty and confusion we are experiencing.  The good teacher is sensitive first and foremost to these signs and constantly adjusts and adapts the current topic and task to fit the speed and understanding of the student.  

No one is without the experience of sitting in a classroom, paying attention and without understanding the lesson at hand, the teacher moves on to the next part.  So many human pressures are at play in such a situation.  Do we raise a hand, hold up the entire class in order to backtrack in order to get up to speed?  So many simply remain silent, doubting themselves with the assumption that the rest of the class ’got it’.  But if the session had been one on one almost everyone would ask to rewind a bit.  And beyond this, the exceptional teacher anticipates it, seeing the lack of comprehension on the student’s face.

Are the countless teachers working operating on these levels?  Certainly many are, but many many more have found themselves teachers by way of other credentials.  Teaching is considered as an addendum to the subject, when it should be the other way around.

The person who is well practiced in the art of teaching doesn’t even need to know much about the subject in order to teach it because such a person understands that the task lies in communication, not just between teacher and student, but between the subject and those engaging with it: an excellent teacher can simultaneously learn and teach a subject, conveying revelation on the fly, using the comprehension of the student as a gauge and an aide.

The teacher doesn’t just convey information, but collects perspectives, so that they might see and misunderstand the subject from a variety of angles, and by inhabiting the space of the confused student, guide them, as they would themselves to the point of view needed in order to understand.

THE RETIREMENT PARADOX

December 14th, 2020

One of the principles of Tinkered Thinking is a twist on the French scientist Jean Baptiste Lamark’s famous dictate: use it or lose it.  The focus of the phrase is atrophy, but it doesn’t exactly capture it’s relation to growth, and so a slightly different principle is coined:

Use it to boost it or lose it.

Things either grow or they decay, there is no fabled middle ground where we can take some sort of pause, a rest, and get back to things later.  Getting back to it later is just about always going to result in the finding of a depreciated state of affairs.  Even sleep, it turns out is not exactly ‘rest’ as we generally think about it.  It seems, even in that “regenerative” state, our body and brain is hard at work - but it’s simply a different capacity of work.  Any pause referenced here, or the sense of getting back to it ‘later’ is intended to mean quite a while - not a mere few hours.

That being said, even a few days without practice can begin to create an anti-habit that makes it more likely we might not ever pick up the practice again.  Daily consistency goes quite a long way.

So what happens when it’s been decades since a person has done something and suddenly the opportunity arises?  Is it easy?  The answer is common sense enough, and yet we don’t seem to apply that answer equally and appropriately across the board.

For example, is something like curiosity susceptible to our degradative growth principle: use it to boost it or lose it?

The answer seems to have a healthy amount of evidence in the retirement paradox, which is summed up by how retired people spend their new wealth of time.  So much of life for many people is a painful experience of putting all sorts of hopes and dreams on hold while taking care of obligations and responsibilities, often centered around a job and a career that is far from inline with the natural drives of the human spirit like curiosity and play.

Such aspects of the human spirit aren’t really taken “seriously” by the business of society, despite the often enormous and unexpected return they produce - most likely because it’s unexpected and therefore unpredictable and therefor impossible to plan for.  The question still stands however: are things like curiosity, play, self-direction and drive aspects that can degrade if left unexercised in the human experience?

The paradox of retirement is that so many people end up doing very little with that wealth of time finally grasped.  And it’s likely because decades are spent like someone sitting in a wheelchair while dreaming of a marathon.  By the time the chance to run comes along, the legs don’t even work.  More importantly, the work required to get that machinery of childhood up and running again is very difficult - it requires “work” and that concept, prospect and practice is often a complete turn-off for someone who has spent decades and decades doing work as dictated by an employee that was far from fulfilling nor enjoyable.  

School is often an accurate target as a culprit for killing curiosity, but many “professions” finish the job with years of uncreative routine and aggravating group dynamics.  All of these pressures and incentive structures hinder the mental conditions required for curiosity.  Skills like self-direction, drive and curiosity require some very valuable resources: primarily time and a lack of chronic stress, and much of society’s economic structure has most people focusing on alleviating the second by sacrificing the first, leaving no resources left over to keep curiosity alive.

The irony that leads to the retirement paradox is that we are sacrificing our life to the juggernaut of time while simultaneously trying not to risk that life.  Seeing how things are likely to play out and soberly confronting the fact that we usually lose the most precious gifts that make us human can suddenly flip the conventional logic: the temptation to push all your chips into the center of the table can quickly seem like the only sensible way to play.

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: SUGGESTION

December 13th, 2020

The inveterate little printer began it’s loud and unashamed process.  A few seconds of clanking buzz and jerky motors produced a small slip of paper.  Lucilius tore it from it’s thread of umbilical  left by the incomplete sever from the rest of the paper roll hidden within the guts of the obnoxious little machine.  He glanced at the order printed on the slip of paper and got to work.  As he was straining the last drops of mixed drink into chilled coupes his eyes caught familiar shape and movement at the door.  A regular had walked in, and by the quick look of it, the guy wasn’t in his usual jovial mood.

Lucilius glanced at the clock as his hands went about their automatic work of resetting his tools.  It was a little early.  Something must be up.

Without taking the break to go greet the friend, Lucilius instantly set about making a drink.  He used bourbon with an amaro he had imported in special.  He added just the smallest dash of some bitter branca and then set about the long twisted spoon spinning the liquids with two big blocks of ice.  He pulled a chilled glass from the freezer, set the strain to the beaker and then pulled a long silent string of stretched liquid as he poured the drink.  He shaved skin from an orange and then pinched the oils from it above the drink.

Taking up the glass with another filled with water he walked the length of the near empty afternoon bar and set it down before the regular.

“Godbless you my good man,” the regular said as he quickly lifted the drink and took a needed sip.

“In a bit early today,” Lucilius pointed out, testing for the day’s story.

“Ehh,” the man grunted.  “The Miss and I are having a bit of a tiff.”

“Dare I ask?”

“Same as always.  It’s pretty much the only thing we fight about.”  The man’s face curled between sadden hurt and mild disgust.  He dazed at a middle space of memory for a moment and Lucilius grew sensitive to whether the man needed an ear to listen or just time to think.

“Smoking,” the man said looking up at Lucilius, shaking his head.  “She smokes, and it drives me crazy.  It’s so bad for you, and we constantly go through this routine of gum and brushing teeth because I think it tastes disgusting.  And she even agrees that it would be better if she stopped!”  The man’s face was tense with raised eyebrows in disbelief at the irony he described.  “I tell her to stop, but it just makes things worse…”

Lucilius nodded.  “Ya know, I’d make a suggestion, but I’ve found that people don’t ever really take suggestions.”

“Isn’t that the truth!”

Lucilius smiled flatly.  “I dated a girl once who smoked.  It was nothing short of a miracle when she stopped.”

The man’s face brightened.  “What happened? How’d she quit?”

Lucilius shrugged.  “Well, I was very much in the same position you are, but I knew it was useless to simply tell her to stop - I mean that never works, ever.  And if anything it makes things worse just by making the situation more stressful, which is exactly when someone grabs for a pack.”

“So what did you do?”

Lucilius smiled.  “I spent a few months making her a beautiful cigarette case.”

“What?” The man snapped, affronted by the absurdity of the answer.

“It really was beautiful,” Lucilius said, reflecting on the memory. “I used walnut wood, and I routed 6 slots for cigarettes and a long one for an antique cigarette holder, and then another spot for an antique lighter that I got for her.  Even got her name engraved on it.”

The man’s interest intensified with his disbelief. “How did that solve the issue?”

“And then,” Lucilius said, getting excited now by the old intricacy of the idea, “I created this huge scavenger hunt across the city.  Like she had to dig up a lockbox on the beach and inside was a little music player with one song which lead her to the bar where we had a first date - you know, it was ‘our song’, and then something there lead her somewhere else, and eventually after working through all the clues, she found the gift behind some books on a shelf in the public library.”

Lucilius’ audience was now impressed as much as he was completely at a loss for how the story might end.  Lucilius let the premise linger as his smile curled more, looking for the next set of words.

“It had a card with it, and in it I wrote that there was just one rule regarding the gift.”

The man gestured frantically for Lucilius to continue.

“Only cigarettes she rolls herself, nothing store bought.”

“Huh,” the man said. “That worked?”

Lucilius gently shook his head.  “It’s really easy to smoke half a dozen cigarettes when they’re already rolled and just sitting there in the pack.  It’s a pain in the ass to roll them all individually.”

Lucilius paused for effect.  “Within three months she wasn’t smoking anymore and that beautiful walnut case finally began to do what it was made for.”

The man chuckled a bit.  “What’s that?”

Lucilius smiled.

“Collect dust.”

THE ART OF SUGGESTION

December 12th, 2020

The only suggestions worth describing are the suggestions that someone has asked for.  In other words: advice.  All other suggestions are a waste of breath - but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make suggestions - that is, literally build structures that create a particular suggestion.

This is the art of influence, or manipulation.  That last word might seem like a bit of a bad word, but realize how little difference exists between manipulation and influence?  They are rivalnyms, which is to say they have the same functional definition, but one is regarded as positive and desired and the other is negative and seen as harmful.

The word influence carries a bit more of a suggestive air and therefore leaves the agency squarely in the control of the person being ‘influenced’.  Manipulation, on the other hand evokes more a sense of control, as though it’s an attempt to explicitly control someone to a specific end with no choice on their part.  However, if the person has agreed ahead of time in order to achieve a certain end, is it still manipulation?

Take for instance the agreement a person has with a physical trainer.  Someone looking to get fit and healthy turns over all of the decision making to the physical trainer, and then the physical trainer decides how that person should physically and literally manipulate their body to achieve a particular result.  In such a situation, neither influence nor manipulation seem to fit right.  Influence is too wishy washy and manipulate too deceptive.  But functionally speaking they are appropriate.  The physical trainer makes “suggestions” about what to do with the expectation that such suggestions will be followed.  In such circumstance, however, there is a clear and obvious agreement regarding agency, action and decision making.  The nature of suggestion can straddle that uncomfortable divide that we sense with influence and manipulation, and this is easily elicited with language: we can hope to be a good influence by making a wise suggestion, but someone can also try to be manipulative by wearing suggestive clothing - but even that can go both ways…

Someone is fairly likely to wear suggestive clothing on a date they are looking forward to in order to suggest the potential incentive of pleasure and intimacy. This may not be conscious or designed, but it is a rather unwise ignorance of human nature to believe that it won’t function in this way.  As further example, wearing a hazmat suit to a date obviously suggests something quite different.  

Point is everything probably suggests something, but those suggestions that are linked up with a clear and present incentive are going to have the greater practical effect.  Notice how this applies to the suggestions we actually give others.  Is there ever much incentive baked into our use of language?  We might try to bargain, as with “make your bed and you can have some ice cream” but then again, the incentive is very clear and practically available in such bargaining.  

Giving someone the suggestion to develop a practice of meditation in order to begin the long-term process of developing emotional regulation in order to deal with issues of anxiety…. While an excellent idea in theory, is actually a very poor suggestion: the incentive is distant and completely impalpable.

This gives rise to an important and unfortunate aspect of incentive: short-term return is far more attractive than long term gain.  We have a great difficulty thinking long-term, especially if it’s coupled with a short-term version.  But the better results are almost always locked behind long term incentives.  That ice cream in exchange for making one’s bed is far less valuable than the exquisite good of being able to properly regulate one’s emotions.  But one is far closer, so close you can even taste it. 

But change the incentive to meditate, and things can change.  For example: I’ll give you a dollar everyday that you meditate.  Suddenly the incentive is closer, more palatable: but notice, the point of meditation is not money.  It’s simply another incentive that’s been arbitrarily linked up to it.  This is often the game we have to play.  In order to reach for long term incentives we need to invent additional short term incentives that have a suggestive effect and thereby keep the process rolling consistently.

The art of suggestion isn’t so much one of influence, manipulation, but one of structure and incentive.  Proper suggestion requires that those who receive the suggestion always feel a sense of agency, of control over their own destiny.  The best suggestions are never explicit, but ones that naturally arise in the other person’s mind as a result of incentive structures that have been created around that person.  This may sound manipulative - it is: but it can also be an effective way of being a good influence.