Author Archives: Dave

Author, blogger, thinker, developer, and all-around digital creative. Applied theatre professional. Mac enthusiast. Coffee fanatic.

What’s Behind Door Number Two?

Monday night, I was retreating into good conversation with a friend in the corner of a local coffee shop. My friend was telling me a story about his daughter, who is currently in her freshman year of college. He said his daughter was recently interviewed at a chain coffee shop (not the one of which you might immediately think), and was asked the question upon which he claimed the interview likely hung, which he paraphrased this way:  Which is more important: a good product, friendly service, or fast service?

He then asked me which answer I would give. I immediately responded with “a quality product.”

Apparently, the correct answer for the interviewing coffee shop was friendly service. I should have guessed, since the interview took place in North Carolina. Don’t you just love the South? I was amazed. I’ve seen this principle in action, but have never been a believer. Producing the best quality product is by far the most important concern in my eyes. I immediately write off the “fast” answer, because almost nothing worthwhile is done quickly, be it coffee or friendships. I simply cannot comprehend the “friendly” view.

Take, for example, the coffee shop in which my friend and I were sitting. You see, my friend agrees with his daughter’s interviewers: friendly service is paramount to such an establishment. My friend knows the proprietor of the coffee shop we visited last night by name, as do I. He feels welcome  in that shop, and this is what brings my friend back. I feel just as welcome in that shop. However, frequently, of late, they have not been able to offer me the coffee I wanted from their selection. I would rather pay a local business for my coffee than a national chain. However, if I can’t find what I want, I tend to go where I can get what I want: high quality coffee (in this case of a specific brew). I don’t care about how friendly the service is if I can’t get great quality coffee.

Now, let me insert a caveat. I have left restaurants and not returned (at least not for a long time) because of someone being needlessly rude to me. I’m not saying that treating an individual with respect isn’t important. I’m just saying its not as important as the product you’re serving, be it food or coffee or action figures or tomatoes.

(I have no idea where those last two came from, either)

Why is my perspective different from my friend’s? My feeling on this, at first blush, is that it is part of the creative instinct: whatever one is making must be as near to perfection as one can make it. Perhaps, though, I’m suffering from consumerism: I feel entitled to exercise my choice of products, thus placing the value on what I purchase instead of the human beings involved. There’s a third option, also: perhaps I’m again experiencing the angst of being a Northerner transplanted into Southern culture. We don’t waste so much time being polite up there. Its simply too cold. And, moreover, we don’t engage in false politeness (as in saying anything you want about someone as long as you end it with “bless their little heart”).

So, I pose a question to you, dear reader. Which of those three do you think my perspective is? Or is there something at play here I haven’t seen?

And, perhaps most importantly, which would you choose: service, or quality?

Dormant

I did something uncharacteristic just after Christmas. I spent gift money on slippers.

You know, slippers that one wears around the house. I’ve always sort of held the opinion that real men didn’t use them, but apparently I’ve been in error all these years. So, I finally gave in to Karen’s promptings, and ordered a pair that turned out to be very warm and comfortable. I almost find myself looking forward to coming home and getting comfortable in them, staying in from the cold weather and enjoying a fire and a good book.

“Who’s writing this, and what have you done with Dave?” you might ask. And, your question is well-founded. I assure you, though, I’m in as sound a mind as I’ve ever been since starting this blog (albeit that’s questionable at best). And read on, because this is going to get stranger.

Shortly after returning from Christmas travels, I found myself in the local Lowe’s searching for a new snow shovel. Now, ever since leaving home, I’ve always lived in apartments, so there’s not a great deal of home improvement I find myself in need of. Aside from the occasional minor project, I typically only see the insides of these establishments when I’m working on set construction or some other stage-related venture. I still succumb to the male impulse of browsing through this-and-that and thinking about what I could get into while I’m there, however, and as I  worked my way through the “seasonal” section looking for my shovel, I found myself actually enjoying the fact that it was winter.

Go ahead. Go back and re-read the sentence. Your eyes are fine. I actually wrote that.

Anyone who’s read this blog for longer than a year or so as been exposed to the less-than-flattering terms I use to describe this season which I have tolerated at best and barely survived at worst through my life. Phrases like “making it through the cold is hell” and “if I never see snow again I’ll die happy” have long permeated my conversations through the years. And while it is true that I physiologically continue to tolerate the cold poorly, I’ve come to a psychological…and perhaps even a spiritual…epiphany about the season of which we are in the middle.

The epiphany began with my realization that snow in the South East of the U.S. is seen as an unscheduled chance to decompress and slow down from the daily rush of life. Then, a friend recently emailed Karen a reflection on the seasons. Her thought was basically that winter is necessary, because it is a period of dormancy that permits rest and better growth in the Spring. The spiritual metaphor here is obvious…winter is perfect for enjoying a fire and a good book because it affords us the opportunity to do exactly what snow forces to happen in the South East: to move more slowly, to sometimes even stop altogether for a period of time to re-charge. Call it dormancy, call it rest, call it a Sabbath…whatever your terminology or perspective, it is something that I’m realizing is necessary, yet sorely lacking for us.

One of the things that has always frustrated me the most about winter is the fact that it is more difficult and time consuming to accomplish the things I feel I need to complete during my day. What if, however, I accepted winter as the period of dormancy it may be intended for, and permitted myself to slow down and be less productive for a month or two? Or to be productive in different ways? Who knows? I might just find myself enjoying the season I’ve always claimed to have no use for.

Or, at least to tolerate it more effectively.

You realize I may have to deny writing this later…right?

Photo Attribution:

A Boy in a Bubble

Let me paint a story about a boy in a bubble.

The boy in said bubble was safe from everything. Seriously. Everything. The bubble kept everything out that might harm him, be it germs or diseases or big bad people with weapons. Pedestrians with bad attitudes and family with an all-around irritable disposition: all out. Nothing can touch him. The boy is safe. Completely, totally, even irrevocably, safe.

His bubble is clear…that is, everyone can see through his bubble. The boy is on display. Anyone who passes him can see completely through his bubble, and thus his privacy no longer exists. Everything he does is subject to the scrutiny of people he does not know at times he does not know and in ways he does not know. He has given them permission to do so, however. Because he must be safe.

The bubble doesn’t travel well. You see, its actually quite difficult to use any form of public transportation and maintain the safety of the bubble. Because, what the boy realized is that the bubble isn’t quite enough. He had to permit those who govern him to prevent anyone that they suspect may have ill intent from getting anywhere close to the bubble, because a handful have tried, and even gotten too close. Who knows? The bubble may prove to have a flaw, and that would mean that the boy isn’t safe. The boy must feel safe. Therefore, everyone else must be expected to surrender their privacy and rights in order to maintain the boy’s safety. That’s only reasonable. He surrendered himself. They must do the same.

The boy’s life has been seriously curtailed. He doesn’t interact with other human beings much, at least not in any actual, interpersonal sense. The important thing is that the boy himself cannot be touched.

The boy is willing to sacrifice anything for the illusion of his own safety and security. He is so frightened that the perfect lifestyle that he has worked so diligently to obtain might be compromised, that he will give up whatever those who protect him deem necessary in order to preserve that. His material possessions are much more important than the interaction and pleasure and sanity that are sacrificed in order to obtain the security he feels that he has. Therefore, feeling secure has become paramount. The boy must feel secure.

Don’t tell the boy, but it is actually impossible to be completely safe. It is impossible because, tragically, there will always be those who do not value human life and are intent on doing others harm. Catching them all is impossible unless everyone is forbidden to do nearly everything, which, ironically, makes a high level of safety an amazingly lifeless place to exist. However, the boy is so desperate to feel safe, to be surrounded by the illusion of security, that he is constantly forcing those who are in power to take more steps and write new scenes in the genre of security theatre, so that his emotional needs are met by an appearance of something that is false. His safety is portrayed by a facade. That is acceptable. After all, the boy lives in a culture of appearance management.

The boy has been in his bubble for so long that he has forgotten things that have been said about this subject previously.

Do you know anyone like that?

Or am I just telling a story?

Photo Attribution: 

If You Can Read This…

Its been a while since I’ve thought about this, at least in any sort of coherently recordable form, but yesterday I caught this article. Its worth your time to read, and is essentially arguing that technology, specifically the Internet, is actually increasing the number of people who read, at least according to a University of San Diego study. Their logic, it seems, is that words remain the dominant medium by which information is communicated through websites. Thus, the Internet is not only not doing any harm, but is, in fact, doing good toward increasing literacy.

The issue with studies like this one is that they draw broad conclusions from a very focused social observation. The argument certainly can be made that we engage in the written word more frequently than we have in the past if we spend any time at all online (which you obviously do if you’re reading this), even if its only scanning Facebook stories and Twitter updates from our friends. Many of us take the time to digest CNN or NPR or New York Times articles by way of their websites, which are still more text-based than video-based. So, by strictest definition of the term, yes…society is reading more.

My question is, though…how are we reading?

Back in the summer of 2008, The Atlantic ran a story by Nicholas Carr that gained quite a bit of traction: “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The thrust of Carr’s argument is that the Internet is changing the way in which our brain functions during the process of reading, that we become more accustomed to reading small chunks of information broken up by tangential hyperlinks and being packaged in easily digestible formats and lengths. Thus, sitting down with, say, Tolstoy, Tolkien, Salinger or Updike, becomes more of a chore than it once was, because the length and intensity of attention required to really engage a work of literature is much more than we are used to.

I’ve experienced this as well. The bulk of the information I consume during the average day comes by way of the Internet. I read news stories in the same “inverted pyramid style” in which they are written; that is, something really has to fascinate me to get me to turn to the second full page.  More frequently than that, I  scan headlines and two-line synopses of stories in my RSS reader instead. When the blogs I follow have lengthy posts, I intentionally have to put them off until later, to make certain I give them the attention that they deserve. Even then, however, engaging a blog post for 5 minutes is significantly different than engaging a novel for two hours. I find myself agreeing with Carr at some level: it is more difficult for me to “curl up with a good book” for more than an hour or two.

The study that Wired mentions is settling for quantity over quality. Taking in more words during the course of the average day isn’t the same as actually spending time with those words, loving the language, acquainting oneself with the author and characters. As reading is taught in our public education system as a means to an end, a technical process to facilitate the hard sciences instead of an appreciation of eloquent language, so has our definition of “reading” become: utilitarian instead of something having value in itself.

Obviously, I’m not against technology. I found the Wired article by way of someone I follow on Twitter, ironically enough. I just feel that its important to not confuse the tools we use for daily communication with the validity of the language(s) we use them to facilitate. In a recent Facebook conversation, a friend referred to Twitter as a “literature sniper.”  Other friends have referred to it as the height of narcissism.  That might be a bit harsh, but it could also be true if the only reason we use our language is for basic communication, at the expense of enjoying and loving and exploring our humanity, of which our language is a part.