I got up early and revised my organ piece. I worked on it yesterday, drastically recomposing bits of it. Here’s the current version: pdf.
Parties to a conflict tend to think that while they see the issue “objectively,” the other side is biased. Stanford psychology professor Lee Ross dubs this psychological characteristic naive realism
This is the temptation. To be sure that people you disagree with are biased or short-sighted.
I sometimes say we always make sense to ourselves even those of us who are insane.
Another interesting idea:
informational cascades:
Someone out there who won’t take the lead in using cloth bags is almost ready to do so. Just one example will tip that person’s behavior. And once there are two adherents, other people, whose “tipping threshold” is a bit higher, will come on board. This will make it easier for others, and so on. Before you know it, plastic grocery bags will have gone the way of the rotary phone.
Barry Schwartz’s article leaves me musing quite abit about interpersonal relationships. I like the ideas of “informational cascades” and “tipping thresholds.” At my church, I would like dearly to change the choir. It seems stuck in its old ways. Or maybe I’m stuck on the idea that choirs need consistent attendance at rehearsal to perform well. I sent out an email yesterday asking people to no longer sing at services if they miss the immediate rehearsal prior to it.
I instantly received four emails from members questioning this idea.
The problem is that I have allowed choir members to define their own commitment and they have continually defined it to less and less time at rehearsal.
Another quote:
overly cooperative strategies [are]… vulnerable to exploitation by defectors…
Schwartz is talking about negotiations between countries. But he also says that he is basing his ideas on interpersonal psychology.
So now I’m trying to work my way out of being overly cooperative. We’ll see if I can succeed. People can react strongly to leadership these days. The four emailers perceive my request as policy. They are wrong about that. It’s just a request. I’ll remind them if they show up at rehearsal. Heh.
Other Links:
The Changing Sound of Music: Approaches to Studying Recorded Musical Performances by Daniel Leech-Wilkenson
I am very excited about this. Daniel Leech-Wilkenson has done something radical. He has published his scholarship online. I especially like it when in his introduction he says
“Books (if one can still use that word) are for readers, and it is quite unreasonable to ask the reader of a book like this, who may well be a student or an underpaid musician, to invest (as buyers of my last two books were required to invest) £60 ($85/120) or more in order to have a copy on hand for future reference” link
So at least one musicologist is experimenting in the face of an intransigent and unreasonable approach to information in his field by publishing a book entirely on line. Very cool. His footnotes are links to other places on the page, of course. But he also has a link by the footnote that says “return to context.” Very handy.
Tarusa Journal – Revealing Secret Spots That Evoke Dark Secrets – NYTimes.com
This story is about little tablets Russia has quietly started installing all over the country to memorialize nuclear tragedies it formerly covered up.
A Short Manifesto on the Future of Attention: Observatory: Design Observer
This is truly a short piece. But that makes sense.
I imagine attention festivals: week-long multimedia, cross-industry carnivals of readings, installations, and performances, where you go from a tent with 30-second films, guitar solos, 10-minute video games, and haiku to the tent with only Andy Warhol movies, to a myriad of venues with other media forms and activities requiring other attention lengths. In the Nano Tent, you can hear ringtones and read tweets. A festival organized not by the forms of the commodities themselves but of the experience of interacting with them. Not organized by time elapsed, but by cognitive investment: a pop song, which goes by quickly, can resonate for days; a poem, which can go by more quickly, sticks through a season. A festival in which you can see images of your brain on knitting and on Twitter. link
He also mentions The Gift by Lewis Hyde.
Well that’s enough for today.