Savor Every Sip

“I bet a couple workin’ class heroes like yourselves could use a little Socko! I know the routine (wink wink): party all night, then you gotta wake up and work.” These were the words of a marketing rep from the Socko energy drink company who approached my friend and me at a fast food establishment in Spokane, WA. I ran a painting business in college, and we were taking a lunch break from a job. We left the place with two 22 oz cans of Socko, and made our way back to the job site. The Socko lived in the truck for a couple days- neither of us were especially interested in it. Then we got to the last day of that particular paint job, and we were behind...it got to be 3:00, and we had a mountain of trim to paint...so we drank our Sockos. There was a discussion about how we would finish, whether we could put off the next job for another day. We didn’t have an alternative, we had to finish. Socko was the answer. I vividly remember watching Tim practically run along a narrow section of roof, madly painting trim faster than I had ever seen him paint. Energy drinks quickly became our silver bullet, our “closer.”

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Recently Lizzy and I traveled to my hometown of Spokane, WA, to visit family, and do some renovation work on my mom's bathroom. On our drive home we stopped for gas in George, WA (yes, there is actually a town named George Washington) . The late July sun was just setting, and the rugged central Washington desert was beautiful.

A family pulled up in a SUV- I gathered that they were traveling from somewhere in central Washington to Seattle, and had never been to Seattle before. The family consisted of a dad, two boys, ages 11 and 13, approximately, and a teenage girl of about 16. The boys each had cell phones, and immediately were texting, upon stepping out of the SUV. While negotiating their cell phones (undoubtedly responding to very serious messages) the two boys sauntered into the quick-y-mart. Out they came with "tall boy" sized (22 oz) energy drinks in hand. They cracked open their drinks and started to guzzle the sugary liquid energy.

As I observed this little moment at the quick-y-mart, my first (cynical) thought was "ugh, how American." Then I thought sympathetically about how these kids must be continually dehydrated, quickly working towards a middle-age onset of diabetes.

* * * * *

The other day Lizzy and I had lunch with a friend and mentor of mine, Joan. We got to talking about the orchard in central Washington where Joan grew up. Joan had just returned from visiting her sister and nephew, who live near the site of the old orchard, which no longer exists. Joan’s nephew has been cultivating a raspberry farm, a new venture for him. (Central Washington isn’t known for it’s berry farms, but as the apple has less of a presence in our state agriculture, farmers have turned to other crops.) Joan’s nephew’s berries won’t show up in your local market, however. No, his berries are bred to be a component, a building block for other food. It turns out that there is quite a (growing) market for essence of raspberry. As Joan described riding atop a raspberry picking machine, my mind began to compile a list of the sort of products that might contain raspberry flavoring. Soft drinks immediately came to mind.

* * * * *

In A Moveable Feast, Hemingway describes the fogged windows and warmth of a cafe on the Place St.-Michel where he whiles away Parisian winter days, working on stories, fueled by coffee. Hemingway later describes Gertrude Stein’s salon, where he and his wife called upon often, and enjoyed, among many things, “natural distilled liqueurs made from purple plums, yellow plums or wild raspberries.” Somehow, I cannot imagine Hemingway reminiscing about anything as he sips Red Bull in a cafe in Paris. Yet the image of a twenty-something Ernest Hemingway sipping his cafe au lait, writing some of his first novels is immediately romantic, just as partying with Gertrude Stein, nursing a glass of distilled wild raspberry liqueur seems much more human than downing a glass of Red Bull mixed with cheap rum (a popular bar drink).

There is a lot of potential for commentary on our progression (digression?) to needing compact, instant energy boosts. That topic is almost too obvious. The occasions for consuming energy drinks are old news; people have been short on sleep since the dawn of man, I’m sure. But it is the rate and speed of consumption that concerns me. On a typical visit to a cafe, Hemingway may have consumed a dosage of caffein comparable to one energy drink. I can only assume, however, that he savored it, that he took it in, just as he took in his surroundings and the people with whom he came in contact. Coffee is hot. It cannot be consumed rapidly. It is something one savors.

Coffee beans typically are picked by hand.

* * * * *

It is blackberry season, here in Seattle. Wild blackberries thrive in Seattle’s climate. Blackberries cling to hillsides, and spread in valleys. They grow on the side of the freeway, and in people’s yards. So Lizzy and I have been picking blackberries often, as of late. Picking wild blackberries is a process to be savored. Negotiating the many thorns, searching for clusters concealed by leaves- it’s slow, delicate work. Regardless, I’m amazed at how few people take advantage of our plentiful, free supply of blackberries! But the other night, as we were picking blackberries, dusk quickly approaching, I was reminded of Joan’s nephew and his automated raspberry picking machine. Say what you will about the quality of life for a typical migrant worker, there is something very human about gently plucking a berry from it’s branch, and placing it in a basket. I can just see Gertrude Stein and co. on holiday, romping about the countryside picking wild berries, and having a grand time of it. If their writings are any indication, Hemingway and Stein lived in a world where people relished life, savored the things that wanted to be savored.

The rising popularity of energy drinks worldwide signals a disquieting departure from Hemmingway’s and Stein’s world. But savoring provides its own kind of energy: a long lasting, slow burning energy. Fortunately, it is an energy that we have not yet figured out how to harness and distill into a compact form. I hope we never do. I also hope that as we search for new, sustainable forms of energy, we also turn inward, and once again come to appreciate what we already have, and what we’ve had for thousands of years. On the surface, savoring is appreciating what you consume. True savoring, however, is a highly efficient form of energy extraction. When you truly savor a good cup of coffee, you do not need as much coffee to feel satisfied.

When Tim and I were struggling to finish our house painting job on time, there was another option. Although we might have ruffled some feathers in the process, we could have delayed the next job a couple of days. We could have accepted that our current job would take us another day or so, taken our time, and finished the job without rushing. Which is not to say that the job we did was of poor quality. We certainly did not savor our work, however. On that last day, our labor went from being a skilled craft, to being work. Of course, we weren’t being paid to savor our work.

Vinyl Sounds So Good!

I recently picked up a first pressing, near mint vinyl LP of J.J. Cale’s Really. It sounds incredible. So does my copy of Michael Jackson’s Off The Wall, also on vinyl and in really great shape. I’ve grown accustomed to hearing Off The Wall and Really on vinyl, and I can’t imagine hearing them any other way. While the chances of hearing J.J. Cale on the radio are slim, in the wake of Michael Jackson’s death, there have been ample opportunities to hear MJ’s music on the radio. In digital form, the re-mastered older stuff (such as Off The Wall) doesn’t sound very good, at least, not to my ears. Why is that?

I remember when I first really got into music. I was in seventh grade. I had recently occupied the unfinished converted attic of my mom’s house, complete with orange shag carpet, plaid couch, and the family’s old hi-fi system from the ‘70s. My daily routine was to ride my BMX bike home from school, head to my room, and crank some old records. My favorites: Led Zeppelin II, The Jimi Hendrix Experience- Smash Hits, Heart- Little Queen, and anything by the Beatles. My memory of the sensation of feeling that music come alive out of those wood grained, 10” hi-fi speakers, filling up the room, is still vivid and exciting.

I haven’t really grown out of my seventh grade music listening phase. In fact, I recently made a pilgrimage to my mom’s basement, where I found the box of old records. My Little Queen record still sounds great. Led Zeppelin II is a little worse for wear- I guess I really liked that one. I suppose that my affinity for vinyl can be attributed to me listening to vinyl in my formative years. My brain associates the excitement of listening to records with the sound of vinyl. This may explain why a lot of the people my age who record and mix music tend to like things brighter, and more compressed than I; they didn’t grow up listening to vinyl. I listened to vinyl because it’s what we had, and I couldn’t really afford CDs of my own.

Does vinyl sound better than digital? I sure think it does, but this question really boils down to a matter of taste. Or does it? We recording engineers spend a lot of time these days trying to mimic the old analog sound. We lust after vintage pieces of recording equipment, the values of which have ballooned in recent years. We design and use software that aspires to model analog gear by way of complex algorhithms. I have been on a personal quest to achieve and master that typically ‘70s dry, warm studio drum sound.

But whether vinyl sounds superior to digital does amount to a matter of taste. I liken it trying to argue that music from the Classical period (i.e., Mozart, Haydn, etc.) sounds better than the music of 20th Century composers. Music from the classical period is generally more pleasing to listeners, but it is impossible to make a case that it sounds better.

Vinyl as a medium has two things going for it, though. First, vinyl is more dynamic, in terms of loudness. The limitations of the vinyl medium dictate that the overall volume (loudness) of the recording can only be so high, otherwise the needle is likely to “jump” out of the groove, or the music can distort. This means that the engineers who record and mix music for vinyl are forced to keep the overall loudness of the record at a conservative level, thus they cannot simply compress and limit the music, so as to “jam the needle,” as it were (and as is the standard technique in modern recording of pop music), because too much loudness causes distortion, etc. Ironically, this results in recordings that are arguably more “punchy” and exciting, because they are so dynamic. The listener “feels” every snare hit, every guitar attack more because the dynamics have not been squashed.

The second thing vinyl has going for it is the experience of listening to it. During my graduate studies at the University of Washington, I took a great seminar with Larry Starr, a renowned American music scholar. The theme of the seminar was “Great Albums.” Each of us presented a critique of a significant album to the class. Starr gave several of his own presentations throughout the quarter, one of which covered Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The Beatles took great care in how they presented Sgt. Pepper’s, including the pace and sequence of songs on the record. As a class, after having listened to it on vinyl, we found it incongruous to listen to the record straight through, as one might do with a CD. The record was intended to pause between “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” and “WIthin You Without You.” You could argue that converting Sgt. Pepper’s to digital goes against the artists’ intentions for the work (not to mention the cover art!).

It takes time to listen to vinyl. You carefully pull the record out of the sleeve, clean it off, set it on the turn table, drop the needle, and close the lid. Five or six songs in, you have to turn it over. The listener is involved in the listening process in a very real, physical, visceral way. My parents reminisce about eagerly awaiting the release of the White Album. When it did come out, they sat in their living room that night with a few friends and some beer and wine, and listened to the record, over an over again. The experience was a community event. Listening to records was an activity in and of itself, not something you did while driving, or while doing something else.

I know a guy who has a life-sized bust of Michelangelo’s David, cast from the real statue. He had it shipped from Florence to Seattle. His reasoning behind the extravagant purchase is that art should be handled, enjoyed in a very real and human way. With the casting you can run your fingers over Michelangelo’s chisel marks, you can give your whole attention and presence, physical and otherwise, to the work of art. While viewing art at a museum may not be as physical as touching David, museums offer the next best thing: a dedicated place to enjoy the art, free of any distractions. We seek the same sort of physical experience of the art when we go to a live show. But more often than not, we experience music passively. When was the last time you put a copy of the Mona Lisa in the background, to view while you were cooking? Vinyl demands your physical presence, it’s a ritual. Somehow, rifling through my iPod doesn’t feel nearly as human as pulling a record out of the sleeve.

Humans are more than just physical beings, however. There is a magic that happens when humans convene in one place and make music. Call it magic, call it metaphysics, call it what you will, but sometimes that magic is really special- it’s what we try to capture when we record music. I sometimes wonder whether vinyl is better at translating that magic. It’s not that digital doesn’t translate “vibe,” a James Brown record still grooves like hell, regardless of whether it’s on vinyl, CD, or mp3. But here’s my crackpot hypothesis: sound waves are in essence analog, they are physical waves made up of molecules. Analog recording mediums transfer these waves in an electro-physical way. Digital mediums, on the other hand, at some point along the way convert the sound waves into ones and zeros, and back again. The sound waves temporarily leave the physical world (at least the physical world on a scale which we can comprehend). Could it be that our ones and zeros can’t capture that special energy at a high enough resolution to compete with analog mediums? For that matter, analog doesn’t really have “resolution” to begin with, it’s not rendered at all. Analog simply transfers the energy. When analog energy morphs into digital energy, can it morph back to it’s original form, without losing information along the way? Do we (or at least some of us) perceive that loss, but can’t fully comprehend it? Has our technology still got some catching up to do, or has our technology gone too far?

All I know is that I love the sound of vinyl. It sounds like music to me.

The Public Option

The recent hysteria over the various town hall meetings about Obama’s Public Option is perplexing. The question of whether we should have some form of publicly-run heath care is not perplexing, however. The whole debate can be reduced to one fundamental question: is health care a basic human right? If Obama were to look America in the face, as it were, and ask that question, America would have no choice but to support the Public Option.

If you give a man a choice between doing what is just, and doing something that is (if not evil) less just, but will make him more money, more often than not he will choose the latter. It is human nature. Health care cannot be put at the mercy of human nature, it should not be left to the market.

Now, I don’t want to suggest that all humans will always choose making money over what is just. Compassion is as much a facet of human nature as greed, it’s just that compassion often succumbs to matters of money. Another way to frame it is this: if you give man a choice between what is just, but will cause him to make less money than he currently makes, and an option that is less just, but will allow him to maintain his current income, he will choose the latter.

What I can't figure out is why all the radical conservatives have chosen health care as their battle. Why on earth would anyone not want a nation where health care is available to everyone? There would be fewer pregnancies (so fewer people drawing down welfare), less disease, fewer homeless, fewer poor people, fewer people unable to work because of chronic health problems, and more jobs in the medical field. The pharmaceutical companies stand to benefit, even if they can't demand as high a premium, because there would be more doctors prescribing more medicine to more people! AND, most people would still have a choice- if they wanted to go with private healthcare, they still could!

The semantics within the name “Public Option” are no accident. Ironically, one of the main arguments against Obama’s plan is that people fear that they would lose their ability to choose a doctor, choose a health care provider that best suits them. But Obama’s plan is called the Public Option. The plan simply adds another option. The naysayers will have more choices!

Of course, there is the matter of taxes. No one wants more taxes, and if you’re a hard working American whose employer provides healthcare, funding for which comes out of your paycheck, you don’t want your taxes to be funneled into someone else’s healthcare. I get it. But how about compassion for your fellow man, for the greater good? After all, everyone wants healthcare for themselves and their family. You could argue that everyone thinks that they deserve health care, that it’s a basic human right. Well, at least for working Americans, right? Herein lies the crux. It is a matter of justice. It is a matter of morals. It is not a matter of economics or politics.

Elephant in the Prius

We've got it all wrong.

The great "elephant in the room" is not Global Warming, it is our unwillingness to scale back our progress. Or perhaps it is our definition of progress that is to blame.

With progress comes a certain sense of entitlement. The retired insurance worker who has worked and saved all his life feels entitled to finally reap what he has sewn, in the form of a dream house, or an R.V., or vacations to Europe, or that Corvette he has long lusted after. And why shouldn't he?

Are we entitled to progress? We seem to accept wholesale the idea that entrepreneurship is basically good. After all, our country is essentially founded on the very idea of entrepreneurship. Of course we should reward engenuity. But should we necessarily reward growth? An entrepreneur fosters an idea, and helps it grow. Our system rewards successful growth, but what if the idea is no good? Someone had the idea for a new household cleaning product, they fostered it, helped it grow. Is the Swiffer really a good idea?

The so-called "green movement's" presence in our culture is growing. It is an idea that is being fostered by many. The green movement is misguided, at times, however. Auto companies are scrambling to produce the next Prius because consumers want more efficient cars that pollute less. And as Priuses continue to replace gas guzzlers, we progress towards a greener, cleaner earth. The real problem, however, is that we need to drive less! As a nation we have progressed to the point that almost every American has his or her own personal transportation. We can hop in a car and go anywhere, anytime. The bottom line is that no one wants to give that up. We feel entitled to it. I liken it to telling a kid that if he eats all his peas, he can have desert. So the kid eats all his peas, and gets his desert. Just try to take that desert away from him. We shouldn't reward him for eating his peas- it should be a given that he'll eat his peas. Peas are good for you.

One last example: someone has the idea to start a little mom and pop office supply store. The store does well, and soon they open another one. Eventually the store grows to become a world-wide chain of big box office supply stores. Most people would consider this a great success story: small beginnings lead to wealth and power. What's wrong with running a small office supply store, or even few small office supply stores, and making a decent living? Why did the store need to grow? Why is this growth considered success? Is it really progress to put small office supply stores around the country out of business because they can't compete with big box prices? Yet we are not willing to call into question our right to entrepreneurship.

My hope is that entrepreneurship and moderation can exist harmoniously. Now, if someone figures out how to capitalize on moderation, we'll truly be making progress.