The Way Home - 2011 In Review

In January of 2011 I left my job of four years. Since I was a fixture of the company at the time (one of its four department supervisors) it was a messy lot to extract myself from, dragging on two painful additional weeks into the new year than I had originally planned. I trained people, documented all the software I had built over the years and gave multiple tutorials about how it was all set up. And then, like that- I was gone.

Unfortunately I had no break, save a very short weekend, in between the end date at my old job and the first day at my new one. The transition was rough, but I was excited to have a change of scenery. While I'd never worked there before, my new company has been a San Francisco Bay Area visual effects landmark since the late 1970s. Having expanded as large as it has since then, it had attracted many of the people that I'd worked with over the last 10 years of my career.

These friendly faces welcomed me as I ran into them in the halls, in the campus's gorgeous cafeteria and even on public transit going to and from the studio. It was like a giant vfx class reunion, which was really fun for me for those first few weeks as I got settled in. I also had the pleasure of working on a film that I actually had high hopes for- not a common thing in our business to be sure.

But the honeymoon was never meant to last. In March I was laid off, a few days after my birthday. I had prepared for this- my contract was up and I wouldn't be needed until the next round of projects, set to launch sometime in the summer. Truth be told, I was ecstatic to have a few months to myself, to catch up on the video lectures that I'd abandoned the year before and to continue work on my blog series, Becoming, that I'd started at the end of 2009.

Most importantly, I took this opportunity to pursue a trajectory that had been eating at me since I'd finished 2010's In Review post: the composition of electronic music. This was something I hadn't done since the mid-late 1990s, and those attempts were novice at best. Nevertheless, I jumped in and found myself surrounded by a strange and unfamiliar landscape.

When I'd made electronic music before, there were about three manufacturers of software for the endeavor which couldn't do very much. Decent synthesizers and samplers were rack-mounted hardware with tiny monochrome lcd screens. If there was a computer involved at all, it was assuredly a Mac and everything was REALLY expensive. You couldn't compile a decent setup for anything less than a few to several thousand dollars. But that had all become ancient history. Now high-powered equipment and software were ubiquitous and completely affordable to almost anyone who had the will to get their musical ideas recorded and distributed, with near-professional results.

Among the flood of new electronic music pioneers that had adopted these cheap and widely available technologies, many had taken it upon themselves to share their various workflows via screen-captured demos and tutorials on youtube- for free. I was blown away by the openness and camaraderie that had sprung up in support of contemporary electronic music composition, and I was even further inspired by the growth of the movement's online communities, which had exploded since the internet's infancy in the 90s.

I spent weeks researching and learning the new methods. I read message boards, blogs and reviews, watched the aforementioned youtube demos and downloaded trial software. I totally felt like a kid in a candy store- it was all so fascinating to me, but I had many questions, the most pertinent of which was: What was the minimum amount of funds and effort that I needed to get my own small electronic music studio up and running?

I learned pretty quickly that I already possessed most of the components that I would need, so I dusted off my old Roland keyboard and early 90s-era electronic drum pad and plugged them into my computer. I downloaded a program called Reaper, an ultra-cheap but powerful stand-in for more expensive professional audio/music creation programs like Protools and Cubase. I bought discounted synthesizer software from a company called Native Instruments using old credit card reward points I had laying around. I learned online how to connect everything up, and I was ready to ROLL.

I thought I'd start out by recording some drum tracks over an old A Capella Imogen Heap song that I'd always thought would sound better with a beat. The result was awful- not in concept but in my own personal execution of it, meaning that I couldn't keep the beat at all, even while using a metronome. For hours I tried to sync up, changing tempos, modifying drum pad configurations, changing sticking methods, but made no progress. I decided after much frustration that my high school era drum skills had been lost, and if I was going to continue to do this I needed to practice every day and get a lot better... or maybe I just needed to assume an alternate, perhaps more intimate method of composition than swinging sticks around.

It was around this time that I discovered Maschine, a complete hybrid hardware/software musical composition system. Initially I didn't feel like I was Maschine's target market. It seemed like it was more geared towards legendary hip hop producers and beat makers, with its grid of soft, square pads that triggered drum and keyboard samples, its design deliberately echoing the famous Akai MPC series drum machines used throughout the 1980s and 90s. I couldn't possibly be worthy of such an awesome tool... but it was SO DAMN COOL!!!

After much hemming and hawing I decided to get myself a Maschine, and since then, it has been my closest musical ally. I was looking for a completely fluid creative musical experience and Native Instruments nailed it. Finally I'd found a tool and workflow that was immediately satisfying and something I could look forward to using day after day. Music composition now stood in sharp contrast to the much larger, nebulous projects I'd habitually committed myself to in recent years. It was now conceivable that I could finish a whole song in just a few hours with Maschine, whereas if I were writing a screenplay or philosophical essay, the end product was inevitably months in the making before it saw the light of day, if it ever did.

Over the next few months I expanded my setup. I revived Sadie's old art shed that had sat idle by the side of our house for a year and a half, turning it into my own little hideaway and re-dedicating it exclusively to musical creation. In a slow evolution that took place over many months, financed through more credit card rewards points and some cash that I'd earmarked long ago for the purpose, I eventually constructed a respectable working studio where I could write my tunes in peace from the rest of the world. I now work regularly making music in my studio about 2-3 days a week. Thus far I've created seven finished tracks and started countless others. You can check out my latest work, if you are so inclined, at naturalrevenge.net.

nat ~ rev studio, dec 2011

In addition to making music I continued my studies in philosophy, read stacks of nonfiction books, marathon-watched Akira Kurosawa films and Anime and spent considerable amounts of time in libraries across San Francisco. As Sadie would say, I was the busiest unemployed person she'd ever seen.

In celebration of Sadie's 40th birthday, we spent the month of July in a medieval village along the Dordogne River in Southwest France. We ate, we drank, we attempted to speak French and had an incredible time with a procession of friends that stopped by and spent time with us along the path of their various summer travels throughout Europe. If there ever was a question of whether or not you can eat enough French food, the answer is unequivocally yes. In all honesty I had to take an entire week off from Foie Gras during the trip because just the thought of eating any more of it just made me sick to my stomach. However- one thing I never got sick of were Pommes de Terre Sarladaise (potatoes cooked in goose fat). These little buggers are, I imagine, a lot like what crack must be like. I believe I may have eaten some every single day. Yum.

When we returned from France I had expected to get right back to work, and in fact I was even given a job offer AND a start date from my most recent employer, which were, after a celebratory sushi dinner, quickly snatched away, leaving my unemployment status intact and without much of a clue what to do with myself. At that point I had been off for five months straight, and while I'd been enjoying myself, funds were running low and options in the Bay Area for alternative sources of income in my field were running out.

Outsourcing and relocation of vfx work for the benefit of studio tax breaks were now running rampant, effectively moving a lot of Hollywood's visual effects work to places like Vancouver, London and Singapore. Since I wasn't too keen on moving to any of these places, and with a new dog, three cats, my wife's painting career and a mortgage, we weren't exactly about to move to another country to chase the whims of Hollywood's bottom line. I needed to figure out something else.

I decided the best thing to do was to diversify skill-sets and to invest myself into a new career in computer programming, something I could easily pursue in the Bay Area when the vfx industry here finally evaporated. I started out with two months of intensive mathematics re-learning using one of my (now) most favorite sites on the internet, Khan Academy. Salman Khan did an excellent job setting up this fantastic site for educating kids and adults alike, with exercises as simple as 2+2, extending all the way to advanced calculus and beyond. And of course the entire thing is free of charge (though they do take donations).

After only a few months of practice I successfully got over the bastard math anxiety I had developed during my high school years. I had not only passed all of the exercises (there really is no "passing" on Khan Academy- you have to get 100 percent of the answers correct before you can move to the next subject!) but I absolutely dominated concepts that I never could understand back in high school (I dropped out of calculus my senior year). Now I'd actually begun to enjoy doing math, a turn of events that my high school self would not have been able to foresee in the slightest. I can see him now, sitting at a classroom desk, wrapped in a black trench coat, head in hands, muttering "It's not possible..."

In November, after nearly eight full months of unemployment, I was finally called back into work... for three weeks. I tried to figure out what exactly, in addition to refreshing and possibly having to re-learn the company's entire pipeline, I could get done in only three weeks, but I didn't argue- I needed the cash. I dusted off my spurs and jumped into the grinder. By the end of the three weeks I'd finished a whopping three shots for the movie I'd worked on, one of which would almost certainly never make the cut. It was an absolutely pathetic yield for a vfx veteran with 11 years of experience.

In addition to my job ineptitude, the social landscape of the company was much more tricky for me this time around. I found myself actively avoiding connecting with people I knew from my past period of employment there because I got sick of explaining that yes, I was only there for three weeks, and yes, I had actually been out of work all of that time since I'd wrapped in the spring. A lot of them figured I was just there the whole time, hiding out somewhere in the company's maze of real estate, and that they just hadn't happened to run into me since March.

But something heavier than damaged pride weighed on me during this particular vfx season that I'd never experienced before. I began to loathe little things, like the black paper covering the huge bay windows of the office, deliberately plastered up by artists who wanted to shut the daylight out in order to sustain the dark cave-like atmosphere that I'd known for so many years. Instead of being the cool, artsy environment it had been in years past, it was now just depressing. I couldn't bolster the enthusiasm and team spirit that was there before. My heart just wasn't in it. I ate lunch by myself at my desk with my headphones on, did my job and went home.

The whole experience was disheartening and sad. On my last day as I waited out in front of the building in the rain for Sadie to pick me up, I decided that I was done. I vowed that this year's vfx project cycle, even if it were to resume in the spring of 2012, would be my final dance with professional visual effects.

Having no solid job prospects for the rest of the year, in early December I figured it was a good time to lend my otherwise idle hands to Sadie, who was gearing up for a major expansion of her art studio and school. I quickly took over the administration of her business's operations, organizing class lists, dealing with finances and other simple tasks that would have (and have notoriously) taken away an entire studio day from her. Now she could just paint without having to worry about all of that stuff, and I was actually having fun doing all of it, because in addition to helping Sadie it allowed me to engage in day-to-day business that was active and exciting. Ordering supplies, dealing with banks, tax people and insurance brokers, making phone calls, setting up appointments- I think I may have become just a little bit addicted to the momentum of it all, of things actually happening!

Things went so well in fact, that in mid December, Sadie and I decided to incorporate and sign a lease for a much larger studio and teaching space for her- an 1800-square-foot industrial suite with huge north-light windows and 18 ft ceilings, located on the border of the Soma, Portrero Hill and Mission districts in San Francisco. Sadie's first class in the new space was January 14th of 2012. I remain actively involved in the studio's day to day operations.

I suppose it was inevitable that Sadie and I go into business together. Aside from my disenchantment with the visual effects industry and the increasing demand for her classes and paintings, the compulsion towards entrepreneurship in my family runs deep. My mom and dad have owned a manufacturing company together in Pennsylvania that has served the global semiconductor industry for over 25 years. My sister and brother-in-law own a real estate company in Florida, actually thriving in the markedly difficult real estate markets of recent years. If all goes well this year Sadie and I will add to the list of family business successes as the new owners of SJNV Creative Associates, a fast growing and powerful classical realist art school in the heart of one of the most cosmopolitan cities on the planet.

This year overall has been a trying but important journey for me, wherein I discovered what it was like to finally grow into my adult self. My success in establishing music as a viable creative outlet, the conquering of old mathematical demons and my realization as an independent businessperson each played a part in changing me into a much more confident human being than I had been only a year earlier. I had no idea it would turn out this way, yet at the same time I feel as though it was somehow inevitable. Regardless, it's nice to have finally found my way home.

Best to all of you for a great 2012!!!

Tribute to Little Girl: A Love Lost

On the final day of 2011 our sweet kitty Simone (aka Little Girl) tragically passed on. She was only three and a half years old so her death came very unexpectedly. All signs point to an undiagnosed heart condition.

In her short time with us, her little presence filled our days with joy. I remember when we first got her and she hissed at me coming out of her cat carrier. For the first few days we kept her behind a closed door in our guest room so the other cats could get used having her smell in the house, but she was very timid- she would only come out for short stints and then scamper back under the bed every time we entered the room. But on the third day when I came in to feed her she was already out on top of the bed and instantly flopped over onto her back to greet me. I rubbed her belly, scratched her behind her ears, and she purred and purred. From then on we were pals, our bond growing ever stronger over the years.

My favorite memory of Little Girl is one particular bright sunny day while I was walking across the courtyard in front of our house when something out the corner of my eye caught my attention. It turned out to be Little Girl, playing in the grass in the neighbor's backyard. She hadn't noticed me walking by, so I stayed out of sight and crept up quietly, peering through the fence at her to get a better look. She was frolicking, in the purest sense of the world- chasing bugs or butterflies or whatever invisible playmate, running back and forth wildly, flipping and somersaulting and squirming around on her back in the grass, catching the sunlight in her orange fur. She was all by herself but completely in bliss, not a care in the world. I'd like to think of her still this way, frolicking in happy sunny days forever.

Little One, I loved you far more than you could have ever understood and it hurt so much to see you go so soon. I hope you had a good life with us and we will always remember how much happiness you filled our lives with. You will be dearly missed. Rest in peace, my little muffin.

Top 10 Things Learned or Reinforced in 2011

10. When we lose a loved one, the amount of grief that comes from that experience is directly proportional to the strength of the bond that connected us to them.

9. There are two types of things we do in life: process-based and objective-based. They are very different animals.

8. Energy, Information and Language work in concert to construct everything we know as reality. (stay tuned for the conclusion of my Becoming blog series, coming in 2012)

7. The best way to get something done is to get down to the business of actually doing it. Then you will never have to wonder whether or not you can.

6. Enjoying and learning how to do many types of things is a blessing and not a curse. (Polymaths rejoice!)

5. Facebook has replaced television as the most addictive, brainless, time-sucking invention of our time. Repost this as your status for the next 24 hours if you agree.

4. Making music can be much more fun than consuming it.

3. Without a day job around to define you, you will soon discover who you really are.

2. A rainy day is a great day as long as it is spent around a big wooden table with fine wine, good food and great friends. (Viva la France!)

1. Working under someone doesn't bother me, as long as it is MY WIFE. (Hottest. Boss. Ever.)

Favorite Quotes of 2011

"My soul is like a hidden orchestra; I do not know which instruments grind and play away inside of me, strings and harps, timbales and drums. I can only recognise myself as a symphony." -Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

"Ultimate excellence lies not in winning every battle, but in defeating the enemy without ever fighting." -Sun Tzu, The Art of War

From Seven Samurai:

Villager: "How are we to feed samurai when we live on rice gruel?"

Elder: "Find hungry samurai. Even bears come down from the mountains when they are hungry."

From Ghostbusters:

Peter Venkman: "For whatever reason, Ray- call it fate, call it luck, call it karma... I believe everything happens for a reason. I believe that we were destined to get thrown out of this dump."

Ray Stantz: "For what purpose?"

Venkman: "To go into business for ourselves."

Favorite Movies of 2011

Selected Films of Akira Kurosawa:
Rashomon, Throne of Blood, Seven Samurai

I can't believe it took me this long to set aside some time for Emperor Kurosawa, and soak in the Japanese cinematic masterpieces he bestowed upon the film-going public during his lifetime. I decided since his catalog was so vast that I would focus on his samurai films instead of a broader sampling of the whole gamut. The three films I chose were Rashomon (1950), Throne of Blood (1957) and Seven Samurai (1954), and they turned out to be a perfect variety.

Rashomon was one of Kurosawa's earlier films, and was much more raw production-wise than either Seven Samurai or Throne of Blood, but still had incredible cinematography and a dark, engrossing story, mixing quirky characters, the supernatural and a multi-level, twisted narrative structure that would have given current-day director Chris Nolan a run for his money had he and Kurosawa been contemporaries.

Throne of Blood is a complete adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth. The characters are as intense, bloodthirsty, greedy and tragic as the players in the original story, but set in feudal Japan, on the slope of Mt. Fuji. It has been called the most successful adaptation of Macbeth ever made, and rightfully so. It is a near-perfect film.

Seven Samurai stands on its own, and defines the word "epic". The famous American Western "The Magnificent Seven" is direct remake of Seven Samurai, and the film was largely the inspiration for the now run-of-the-mill plot device where a motley crew of experts is gathered to accomplish a seemingly insurmountable task.

In the film a farming village is threatened by bandits who annually invade and steal a large portion of their crop. Many of the farmers go to the village elder to ask his advice of what to do and he recommends hiring samurai to defend the village (you can see this awesome line in my Favorite Quotes of 2011 section). Regardless of their inability to pay for their defense with anything but rice they grow, they slowly build up a crew of seven samurai, the perfect number according to their leader, Kambei Shimada. Toshiro Mifune (the go-to frontman of many of Kurosawa's films) stands out as the zany Kikuchiyo, who in the beginning isn't a trained samurai or even invited to join the group, but by the end of the film proves himself as one of the most fierce of them all. It's great to go back to this moody, fun and exhilarating piece of cinema to see where it all started.

One of the things I find most interesting about Kurosawa films is the resonance they have found with American audiences. In fact they've affected US directors like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg so deeply that, when Kurosawa's films fell out of favor in his home country of Japan, both directors (at different times in the 1970s and 80s) stepped in to bankroll his films. They couldn't stand the thought of their all-time cinematic hero as lacking the resources to commit his visions to film.

You can now consider me a hardcore Akira Kurosawa fan. This year I plan to continue my consumption of the Kurosawa catalog, with Kagemusha, Yojimbo, Hidden Fortress and as many others that I can get my hands on.

Buck

An incredibly touching documentary about the original Horse Whisperer. This guy is the real deal, able to tame seemingly wild animals and in the process revolutionize our understanding of the deep connections between us and our fellow mammals. What was most surprising to me was how closely his method unknowingly follows the principles of Tai Chi, which Sadie and I have been studying for a two and half years now. So many times in the film we looked at one another in disbelief at the uncanny similarities between the two.

Super 8

While I'm not a huge fan of movies trending towards out-and-out nostalgia, this one hit a soft spot with me. Set in the early 1980s, Super 8 tries to bring back the magic of the films like ET, Cocoon, The Goonies and Stand By Me, and does a pretty dang good job of it. It was also one of the extremely rare films that I've worked on, where I have a screen credit and I actually liked the film, so it gets a thumbs up simply for that reason.

The Tree of Life

Another masterpiece by Terence Malick that shifts between intense visuals of natural phenomena and a gradual narrative that chronicles the pains of a young boy growing up in 1950s Texas. Some viewers (including my wife) felt as though some of the more "eye-candy" visual sequences in the film dragged on too long but I found them stunning, poetic and meditative. Not a film for everyone to be sure, but definitely a repeat-watcher for me, maybe even qualifying an extremely rare household blu ray purchase (we stream or rent the majority of the films we see these days).

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

You knew I was going to give this one the nod- another Fincher/Reznor collaboration? Come on. But seriously, this one could have gone wrong in so many ways and it just didn't. Stieg Larsson's twisted murder mystery set in the snowy Swedish winterscape, featuring one of the most compelling female lead characters of all time- the hot-tempered, punk rock, kick ass genius computer hacker known as Lisbeth Salander (played impeccably by Rooney Mara) finds a perfect partner with the dark cinematic vision of David Fincher. The film is brutally violent, at some points beyond distasteful, but the story is electrifying as are all of the performances from its bulletproof cast. See it if you dare.

Favorite Music of 2011

Adele - 21

I discovered Adele last year on Pandora, literally right before 21 was released and Rolling in the Deep EXPLODED. This album is expertly crafted and stunningly original yet with a sweet dose of American blues/soul nostalgia. Pretty incredible genre choice for a gal from Ol' Blighty (shocked when I heard her speaking to the audience on a live track with an English accent).

The lyrics on 21 are soaked in pain and longing, with sass and headstrong defiance riddled throughout. Adele's powerful voice can fill any venue to the brim, enveloping one's soul and rocking it back and forth like a sweet grandmother. The instrumentation on the album ranges from light acoustic guitar to solo piano to full-on blues/rock arrangements. It's a great listen in the car, on a turbulent, exhausting flight (had many of these this year) or in an amber lit lounge while sipping tea or a cocktail. Can't wait to see what she comes up with next. Bravo, Adele!

Florence and the Machine - Lungs

My good friend and premier musical resource Kyra K introduced me to this album back in the summer of 2010 but it wasn't until this year that I got Flo and the gang into heavy rotation. Since early 2011 I've listened to this album AT LEAST once every other day. It's one of those albums that gets deeper and more complex the more you listen to it. I daresay it is a masterpiece.

Moody and melodic with a fat dose of reverb, Lungs swings between delicate strings (harps, guitars, ukuleles) and pounding, merciless drums. I think my favorite thing about this album is its vastness, a product of all of the aforementioned elements, giving it an infectious, epic, even cinematic quality. Florence's lyrics are visceral and richly poetic, making a perfect pair with its backing instrumentation. My favorite tracks are Howl, Drumming Song, and Blinding, though the album is best consumed continuously from beginning to end, just like a great film.

Lungs has apparently been a hit in Europe for years now, unsurprisingly, as so many amazing musical acts are before they tend to fall on American ears. Florence, like Adele, is also a Brit, which begs the question: Why are the Europeans still making better American-sounding music than America? You'd think we'd have learned our lesson by now.

Katy Perry - Teenage Dream

Yeah, it was probably one of the most popular albums of the year worldwide, and for good reason. I LOVE this album, and I don't care who knows it. To my ears, Katy Perry far exceeds any other mainstream pop music act out there at the moment. She has six singles off of this album alone and they are ALL good.

While some will get all high and mighty condemning her work - she doesn't write her own stuff, her range isn't that great, the album's lyrics convey all the wrong messages for our youth and serve to reinforce the ever-lingering misogyny of American culture... Listen- Katy Perry is American pop music at its best, far better than the Britneys or Gagas who don't even try to pretend that they aren't blatantly ripping off Madonna. We want a new voice, not a sequel, and Katy Perry is that voice.

The production value of Teenage Dream is off the scale (awesome synth work!), and the songs are catchy and highly listenable on repeat. Of the songs on the album that didn't turn out so well (there are admittedly a few on there), the track "Who Am I Living For?" is one that, I swear to you, in 2012 I will remix into metal MAYHEM. The thought of Katy's voice singing those lyrics over searing guitar-distorted chaos gets me verrrry excited. Stay tuned.

Tim Hecker - Ravedeath, 1972

I honestly have no idea how I came across this album but I am very glad I did. It was apparently recorded entirely in a church in Iceland. It's literally like nothing I've ever heard before, and I mean NOTHING. Well- I suppose it gets kind of close to the fuzzy atmospheric strangeness of Flying Lotus and maybe a teeny bit of Boards of Canada, but Hecker surpasses both in mood and texture.

The best way I can describe Tim Hecker's music is a perfect sampling of reality (the core instrument is the church's pipe organ) that has been manipulated to sound as though the instruments used on the album wouldn't be found anywhere on this planet. If I had to conjure up a specific image to represent the work, I would pick some sort of perpetual hazy desert sunset, with undulating dust flying through the air, flirting with the formation of patterns before disintegrating again into dancing particulate streams.

You certainly have to be in a specific state of mind to listen to the album but it is not at all challenging. If you are a fan of successful experimental electronic (yet not electronic-sounding) music projects, I can't recommend this release enough.

William Orbit - Pieces in a Modern Style 1 & 2

I enjoy William Orbit's work because he doesn't shy away from reinterpretation of the classics and he doesn't mask the electronic-ness of his orchestration. Pieces in a Modern Style has become a somewhat disparate but very successful catch-all collection that ranges from well-known Bach pieces (Prelude to Cello Suite #1) to the traditional requiem mass In Paradisum, to the time-honored one-act Mascagni opera known as Cavalleria Rusticana (Rustic Chivalry), used most famously in the opening credits of the film Raging Bull. If you enjoy bite-sized classical pieces and electronic/classical crossover you will absolutely love these two albums. Great for any situation, especially on headphones for relaxing during a long day at work.

Hans Zimmer - Inception (score)

Last year I crowned Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's The Social Network score as cinematic music champion, but that was only because I'd given Hans Zimmer's Inception score short shrift. As 2011 wore on, TSN quickly receded into the background of my musical favor, eclipsed by my near-obsessive diet of Inception.

While I did indeed love Inception as a film, I didn't fully appreciate the score, with its hybrid orchestral/modern/synthesized approach, nearly as much as it deserved until I'd given it a true, exhaustive headphone listen. Fluid airy guitars, perfectly warbly Blade Runner-esque synthesizer progressions, serene string harmonies and gripping, mammoth brass hits bring this intense work of genius beyond the silver screen to stand on its own as one of my favorite albums of all time. Listen and listen again. And check out this amazing short film that repurposes the cue from the Inception score known as "Time":

Favorite Books of 2011

The Information - James Gleick

The best thing about James Gleick's books is that they hold so much for the lay reader, even though they are thoroughly technical, opening up doors to difficult scientific subjects without dumbing them down. His latest masterpiece on the history and implication of information and information theory is both relevant and fascinating.

I've been a fan of Gleick's since his landmark work Chaos, which explored the ins and outs of chaos theory and its modern applications. In this offering, Gleick goes all over the map, covering fully the historical roots of information technology, its major players and the philosophical implications of the movement's development. Along the way the book passes through lands of ancient African drumming (the earliest known form of long distance communication) through to the development of early mathematics, thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, the discovery of DNA, cybernetics and cryptography. It even spends a good chunk of time exploring Richard Dawkins's concept of memes, a fruitful discussion that rescued this subject for me from the dark haze of Dawkins's annoying modern-day media cult.

The star of the book is Claude Shannon, the too-often unsung "father of information theory", whose groundbreaking mid-20th century approach to "meaning agnostic" information transmission facilitated and inspired the architecture modern computer systems, from the first microprocessors to the internet. In the book's final chapters Gleick discusses the information "flood" that the internet has presented us with and discusses how we might navigate these very muddy waters in the future.

An authoritative, captivating work on the subject and a feast for any nonfiction science reader, not to mention my favorite book of the year which I will most likely be reading again very soon.

Refuse to Choose: A Revolutionary Program for Doing Everything You Love - Barbara Sher

Barbara Sher's self-help-ish book guided me a lot this year while I figured out how my mind works. In this useful life manual she identifies what she calls "scanners" (a stand-in for the often misleading term "polymaths")- people who have many interests that pull them off in all different directions, often to a detriment. Modern society isn't properly equipped to deal with scanners, which seems to expect its constituents to follow a "diver" lifestyle, in which a person sinks themselves wholeheartedly into a life where they do one and only one single thing expertly, forever. Trying to apply this blanket standard to scanners like me has disastrous consequences, which can lead to disillusionment, isolation and depression.

While some of the coping solutions for scanners she concocts are a bit uncreative (such as adopting 40 hour a week "good-enough-job" and pursuing your passions in your spare time), other ideas Sher presents in the book were pivotal for me in remaking the landscape of my life, such as the multiple streams of income model and the LTTL (Learn, Try, Teach, Leave) approach to working professionally, which I had actually already done at my previous job- it just dragged on unnecessarily for 4 years. It's much more productive (in retrospect) to view these types of outcomes as strategies instead of things that just happened by default, which avoids unnecessary guilt or unease about the entire situation and using phrases like "If I only I had...", etc.

What struck me most about this work was that it gave me permission to be myself- to pursue my mountains of different interests without feeling like I was weird or silly or misguided in doing so. It also led me to realize that I am not alone out here in scanner/polymath land. We are strong in numbers, and we have a lot to offer this planet!

The Four Hour Body - Tim Ferriss

Tim Ferriss has a knack for mastering the business of getting shit done and making us happier people. In his latest work he sets out on an entirely different frontier than the one he explored in his last New York Times Bestseller, The Four Hour Work Week which I read and loved last year. In The Four Hour Body (4HB as Tim calls it on his blog) he dispels any notion of linear progression through the book and asks "Which 150 pages will YOU read?" Parts of the book are on diet, fitness and muscle tone, while other sections focus on hacking your circadian sleep cycles so you can have more productive hours per day and yet others focus on how to improve your sex life and induce massive orgasms in your partner.

While I didn't put too much of this book to practical use, of the things I DID try I found that the sleep cycle hack totally WORKS. For a few weeks I slept six hours a night with one 30 minute nap in the middle of the day (being unemployed allows these type of luxuries) and only quit because of digestive trouble, likely caused by the crazy increase in adrenaline and energy (no caffeine necessary!). I would definitely do it again if I had some kind of project crunch that required it. Despite the side effects it's an awesome method for procuring some very valuable extra free time when you need it.

Sadie also adopted this book as her guide for weight loss this year and lost 30 pounds using the book's "slow carb" diet, which is restricted to protein, vegetables and legumes, with one "cheat" day a week where you can eat anything you want (ice cream, pizza(s), a whole cheesecake, etc). I've largely adopted this diet since Sadie and I share many of the same meals and I've been having trouble staying ABOVE my all time low weight as an adult. Bottom line- this stuff works. Tim- you rock, sir.

The Art of War - Sun Tzu

I'm not going to lie and say that I read this cover to cover, but this book sat on my desk the whole year (within reach as I write this) as I explored my various interests. It gave me a lot of perspective about how to deal with life situations in a non-destructive, passive, but firm disposition, presented in an utterly poetic and beautiful but highly readable style.

2011 was also my second full year of Tai Chi classes, during the course of which many works of Eastern philosophy were quoted by our teacher. One maxim that we hear often repeated is this, from The Art of War:

"Know the enemy, know yourself, and victory is never in doubt, not in a hundred battles."

This passage is one of my favorites because it deals directly with the unpredictability of situations that come up in life. Knowing thyself was a high ideal of the Ancient Greeks as well, recommending this practice most famously with a carving in the Oracle's Temple at Delphi. But knowing yourself is only one side of the coin- Master Sun also professes that you must understand the forces you are battling against in order to interact with them effectively.

For example you generally wouldn't launch a nuclear missile at a hurricane to stop it- you'd probably choose a more practical option, like taking shelter and hunkering down until it passes. In other words, there is no single magic bullet that is going to work for all situations. There are consequences for overreacting and overextending, as well as there are for underestimating and under-preparing.

Of all the Ancient Chinese and Taoist works I studied this year (Tao Te Ching, Chuang Tzu, et al), The Art of War provided by far the most practical and down to earth advice, directly applicable to modern life. Highly recommended- read it and please, spread it around. Our world will be a better place for it.