Front for a frown

I like things to be neat and tidy in print, but there's a wall. There's a limit. When I'm reading anything but a logo or heading, I want the font invisible. The best font most of the time is the one I'll never notice. That's how I choose fonts 99% of the time: what do I not even see? Good. That's what I want.

I will go through things I've written and replace dashes - like these two - with proper long em dashes, which look a lot better to me. Back in the day, I'd always double the hyphens--like this--and then at a specific moment in my life I switched to space, hyphen, space. But ultimately it all looks wrong to me unless it's an em dash.

I've put down ebooks before (permanently) after noticing a typo and a poorly placed comma or two. It feels like I can't trust the text anymore. (My reading of I, Robot was sunk by sloppy text. One day...)

While I am evidently picky about punctuation, I still have trouble understanding people who get upset about seeing straight quotation marks and apostrophes instead of the curled, slanted ones. That seems like a very high-maintenance preoccupation for very little return. There is no easy way to type oriented quotes and apostrophes. And if you aren't looking, and you are most people, you aren't going to see the difference. I'd really prefer not to see the difference; I wouldn't consider it an improvement if the difference started jumping out at me.

It's already bad enough that when I copy and paste, momentarily paying closer attention to atomic symbols, I often replace any curly quotes with the straight, lower-maintenance, "less correct" ones. Consistency does matter.

See, I'm as bad as people who bitch about the uncurled ones being wrong :p

But I do recognize it's a useless preoccupation (I'm being mean) unless you're typesetting for publication. For my aims, I entirely refuse to go hunting the snark of quotation marks everywhere to curl them so they'll look marginally more proper—unless someone is set on doing that for me—in which case I won't stop them, as long as it's consistent. Entirely refuse, I say!

The curled ones look a little nicer, I admit. But I also don't want to notice. Magic happens when you stop noticing font and every other surface.

As long as both quotation marks are included, nobody spends time wondering whether a particular mark is the start or end of a quotation. I see the potential use, but in practice it's almost never needed. Even where it could help slightly, the amount it helps is negligible. (For some readers, say with dyslexia, this may be different, though. I'm not sure, but I apologize for being inconsiderate.)

The joke's on me, of course, for spending the time and energy to actually put these thoughts in print.

The fractured monarch

The King of Limbs is so experimental it's a fractured album. I even believe shattering is a hidden meaning in the name—"limbs"—but I can't confirm this. A couple years before it came out, Radiohead said they'd never release another album, just singles.

I remember their website saying it. What they eventually did was break parts off the album and release them as connected singles. The art on these non-overlapping fragments plainly shows that they're all part of The King of Limbs. Indeed, they're from the same sessions. The band's recording technique was also intentionally out of order. Staccato. TKOL is one of their least appreciated albums because the weirdness lost even Radiohead fans, haha.

The author of a Stereogum article diving into this ("In Defense Of The King of Limbs") says he's made an uber-playlist of all the associated songs. A reintegrated album that works fantastically, but he doesn't give the ordering. Then someone in the comments offers one up. So a while back I made Ass-Kicked89's list a Spotify playlist. It's pretty good—yeah, yeah to say the least! My guess is that Radiohead wanted to encourage us to make our own playlists... a jigsaw puzzle album.

It would be seriously remiss to talk about The King of Limbs without sharing that many consider the filmed live performance (The King of Limbs: Live from the Basement) better than the original, "better" as in "so much better that these fans see it as the album itself." Definitely check that out, but I say give the complete playlist a try as well! Personally, I love it.

I used to think I'm a good writer. It's taken a lot of practice to realize I'm not.

Not being a good writer is as constructive as not being a mathematician. When you aren't a good writer, nothing is ever good just because you wrote it. When you aren't a mathematician, nothing makes sense just because someone says it's logic.

The only thing that makes a difference when you aren't any good is your willingness to keep at it.

Generators

Making a music generation engine that could learn different styles from music scores and recordings was my senior tech project in high school. The thought was to get started on something like LucasArts' iMUSE engine or Sid Meier's Bach generator, only shooting for what unites all music. I... didn't get very far. At all. Tried to learn Lisp, studied fractals and neural networks, dipped into papers on other music generators, outlined code that never got to the point of compiling. Getting nowhere was an issue at graduation time. There was even a question about whether I would, and it meant I didn't get a fancy emblem on my diploma.

It was a great excuse to learn music, though. As the year began, I signed up for the available semester-long theory class and convinced my dad to buy me a cheap guitar, which I gradually taught myself to play. And I've been fascinated ever since. Besides failing, which can be a healthy thing—it's better to take on an interesting challenge and fail than not challenge yourself—I realized that I like improvising my own melodies way too much to want a computer to do that for me. Sour grapes? Maybe. Maybe—but I really think they're sweet. Anyway, neural network research keeps closing in on what I over-ambitiously tried to do in 1999-2000. Eerie stuff!

Rules of democracy

While trying to piece together my memories of the places I lived when I was really little (it's a jumble!), I found myself going down the rabbit hole of Czech political history. Czechoslovakia was a communist state the entire time my mom lived there, from 1951 to sometime in the early 70s when she gave up her only citizenship to get out of there, even though it meant she could never go back.

The first time I went to the country was (I had somehow forgotten this) during the Velvet Revolution of 1989. It was still underway, but the president had resigned. Though I don't remember seeing any protests, I had a faint idea at the time. Change was afoot. After all, we were suddenly able to visit.

We'd watched the Berlin Wall fall not 6 weeks before on television, and Vaclav Havel, the man about to become the last president of Czechoslovakia (later the first president of the Czech Republic) had been arrested only 5 weeks before our arrival, during the first big protest in Wenceslas Square. He became president about 3 days after we flew back.

From my perspective, we went to see family for Christmas, which was wonderful for multiple reasons, not least of which was that it was so different. Everything was utterly grey, though. The Czech capital, Prague, looked nothing like how it looks now; it was a shock a few years later to visit again and discover that it's a gorgeous city. (Digression: history in the making again, take a look at Prague during COVID-19 lockdown in the short film The Silence of Prague. In the second to last shot, just as the title gets to the top of the screen, there's an old city square with a clock tower on the left. My mom was just telling me that she lived right around the corner of that clock tower in college, meters from what you can see in the frame.) My parents had mentioned protests and communism ending in the country, but it was all pretty distant to me, even though technically we were there.

The moment in history is called the Velvet Revolution (or the Gentle Revolution) because it wasn't violent, in general, and this was no mistake. Hundreds of different pamphlets had been circulating in the capital, and the sentiment on the street was to keep a premium on peaceful protest and maintain "humanness" under all circumstances. Of the two most famous flyers going around at the time, one was called "The Eight Rules of Dialogue." My mom has mentioned it to me before and read it out loud, translating it for me, but that was much later and I didn't put it in context until now. The Eight Rules set the stage for a new democracy.

More than 100 years before, Marx and Engels had called for a "violent revolution" as the only way to get communism up and running. But once Marx could see the consequences of those words in persistent brutality and dysfunction, he admitted that the statement had been a grievous mistake. Which brings us back to Czech communism: mistakenly brought in with violence, peacefully dismissed with protest when it simply didn't work anymore.

Vaclav Havel, the new president, had long been a popular playwright, poet, revolutionary, and essayist—since the 60s. Here's a quotation I like:

"I really do inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of government, where words can prove mightier than ten military divisions."

To me, that's a reminder of what democracy is about and why it works. We use words.

Here are the Eight Rules from that famous flyer, courtesy of the book Revolution with a Human Face by James Krapfl:

"The Eight Rules of Dialogue"

1. Your opponent is not an enemy but a partner in search of truth. The goal of our discussion is truth, in no case intellectual competition. Participation in dialogue assumes a triple respect: toward truth, toward the other, and toward the self.

2. Try to understand each other. If you do not correctly understand the opinion of your opponent, you can neither refute his claims nor accept them. Formulate for yourself the objections of your partner, so that it may be clear how you understand him.

3. Don't present insistence without objective reasons as an argument. In such a case it is just a matter of your opinion and your partner need not concede the weight of the argument.

4. Don't skirt the issue. Do not avoid unpleasant questions or arguments by directing the issue elsewhere.

5. Don't try to have the last word at all costs. No quantity of words can make up for a missing argument. Silencing a partner does not mean refutation of his argument or disavowal of his ideas.

6. Don't undercut the personal dignity of your opponent. Whoever attacks the person of his opponent, rather than his thought, loses the right to participate in dialogue.

7. Don't forget that dialogue requires discipline. In the end it is with reason, never with emotion, that we form our claims and judgments. He who is unable intelligibly and calmly to express his opinion cannot conduct a worthwhile conversation with others.

8. Don't confuse dialogue with monologue. Everyone has the same right to express himself. Don't get lost in minor details. Consideration toward everyone else can be expressed by your ability to save time.

I must say that's a truly awesome way to have a revolution.

Hooking the singing fish of time

One of my favorite things about art is connecting your ear more closely to your mouth, yet over greater time spans. The link may even be a roundabout way of defining art. When you are inexperienced, you see or hear or taste or touch something you like, and you know that you can't make the same. This may upset or excite you; it could encourage you or push you away, spur you on or sap your energy. Your reaction could be any of an endless number of combinations of these facets, and it'll change over time.

But, at the critical core, with practice you slowly, slowly begin to realize something. Whatever you can perceive and appreciate—you eventually begin to feel this is true—you can express the same quality yourself. The fact of your appreciation begins to seem a potential for the same acuity, subtleness, emotional power, whatever it is. This takes quite a long time and piles of hard work, and for much of it you will believe what I've just said is untrue.

A wondrous artist can draw on ancient influences, ones maybe from childhood or a lazy day-trip to a local museum, influences whose sources may rest entirely forgotten, and reproduce the same kind of effect without duplicating the original expression. And what makes the artist truly great is that the artist's "mouth" will still be finding influences a century or five later. Do you see what I mean? Art is a strong connection between ear and mouth over very large distances in space and time.

You can make that connection. You can strengthen it. Many things are mysterious, including the dizzying multitude of potentials in expression and art, but that fact isn't. That fact is as stable as the big rock you lie on for a windy view of a valley.

Know how a hook works

There's still a stigma against both video and board games. It's perfectly socially acceptable and normal to spend countless hours binge-watching shows, and the more hours spent reading, the better. Yet as soon as someone's playing, each minute is seen as squandering life potential. Huh. Tell me how that works.

The alternate reality of a game world is no more one that you can live in instead of this world than the alternate reality of a tv show or book. In all cases, if you are normal, you know it isn't the real reality, and you balance that against the rest.

As someone who studies and tries to make interactive media, a field that includes (but is not limited to) games of all kinds, I'm almost the opposite of the general public here: I'd find it productive to play more games. Rather than worrying about whether I'm wasting my life playing a game, I worry that I'm not playing enough games (a legitimate worry; since I was a teenager I don't play games very much).

What I can say in light of all this is that my own potential to be addicted by games is very low. It's no more than my potential to be addicted by a good book. I'm constantly bothered that I don't get addicted by all these things enough to go back to them and finish them.

There is a segment of the population who have troublesome gaming addictions, but it's 1-3 percent, and you probably know who you are. And I think it can be helped by becoming aware of whatever hooks you, seeing how it works, and distrusting designers who want to hook you as much as possible without providing emotional and intellectual value. For example, though it has plenty of good qualities, World of Warcraft often snags nefariously because the cooperation is so intensive that team members shame each other into attending group battles and quests and dungeon crawls that benefit the entire group. There are professional sports and professional competitive games. There is nothing inherently wrong with taking a game seriously, but anyone whose life is diminished by social demands in a virtual world should massively distrust such social demands as having no real currency. There is no shame in not attending an online raid, whatever anyone tells you or implies to you. Similar realizations—and sticking up for them—can, I think, help other sources of game addiction.

I've spent entire weekends locked in some game or other, barely moving. This was mostly when I was much younger. But you know what? I loved it. I've never felt I was harmfully addicted to a game. It was like getting lost in a book or miniseries or in something I'm writing. It's satisfying. It's meaningful. You remember it the rest of your life. And in balance with other things, like standing up and taking walks so you aren't sedentary for more than say an hour, it needn't bring any harm at all. But I will say: I happen to have an almost extreme distrust of things that don't have endings. If a television series is more than two seasons, I almost certainly won't ever see more than an episode or three to get a sense of what it's like—even if I want to watch all of it!

In a weird way, my form of ADHD might actually protect against game addiction. But according to the numbers in this article, it's rare in the general population regardless. Like plane crashes, we overblow the image until it seems to mean something it doesn't.

And I think we can look to our expectations to remedy our relationship with play. If you see a game as a waste of time, as a low-brow activity, as shameful, necessarily unproductive, then why would you look for an especially good one? And if you are playing just to kill time, why would you judge a game on anything but whether it feels addictive and you want to try another level? If your expectation is that games are for killing time, then that may be the fate of games for you. Personally, I love games, but I never seek to "kill time": I hate the very idea. Is that maybe why I appreciate all the games I get around to playing?

Playing games is a healthy part of life if you approach it in a healthy way. My go-to comparison is drinking. Many people drink, if not most people. Yet the benefits of drinking are less than the benefits of playing games, in my opinion, and the risks are far greater. If anything, drinking should be looked down on, and games celebrated everywhere.