The Big U

This is not a post about Neal Stephenson's first novel. Perhaps it should have been.  He writes some killer novels.

I've been feeling gloomy the last few days.  You read about my farcical Thursday and disappointing Friday.  Further disappointment on Friday afternoon when I proofed a report I've been working on and realised it needed more work than I thought..  Further disappointment when I got the nanoKontrol more or less working in an hour last night, but found today I will need to do far more to have it really seamlessly integrated - I need to learn about Cakewalk's implementation of a midi-learn mechanism (ACT), and I need to design a scheme for it to map usefully to the K5000, Synth1, Cakewalk's mixer and throughout, Cakewalk's transport controls (stop, play etc). My friend's mythTV which I built for her is not working well. Listening to J Bernstein I realised I have to be doing close-reading of my own if I actually want to understand Hegel. I have not nearly learned as much as I could.  I got an email reminding me I could enter a screenplay in a competition if I would just sort the structure and finish it. As Hegel and Hajime Tanabe (and Heidegger I suppose) remind me, you don't learn something without confronting that you don't know, that you are something with no way to be in the situation: you have to face up to your 'nothingness'. You find that who you are is wrong about the world. It's very lowering.

My experience is that I then don't learn at once.  I learn by a series of digressions and misunderstandings, and as each one shows its failure, I lower my estimate of my own understanding even further, and at long last, listen and learn.  Eventually, I have made all the mistakes there are to make, and I might start to exercise a little familiarity and have some success.

Today I was thinking of this as a big U.  From the top, I look across and see a lovely vista of  MythTV leading to years of seamless entertainment, nanoKontrol leading to home studio greatness leading to extra income and notoriety, philosophy mastery as a path to lucidity and purchase in the world of ideas, screenwriting as a way to have an impact on society, even if its just to give an alternative 2hrs of tedium*. Serious work as a way of earning my living, some dignity, and helping clients and colleagues.

But then I start, and the descent down into the bottom of the U is painful and hard.  I have to face my shortcomings, misunderstandings and hubris again and again.  And I really hate that, far more than any normal person (or just as much, but with much scanter resources of courage and tenacity). So much so that this blog probably owes most of its existence to my refusal to keep trying at any one thing.  I look down into the big U and 'the grave opens up before me like a big hole in the ground.'**  And I run, and write a blog post or read an article or ten instead of solving a problem.

One good thing about this blog is that I find writing things out can clear my mental image.  I realised that there are four things I want to control with the nanoKontrol and that it has four 'scenes' - perfect. It also can act as a Pennebaker Essay, helping me process this and see a U, where I have historically looked back and see only the climb down and from the perspective of having won through, the climb down looks doubly ridiculous.

* all the possible readings of this are meant.
**  Blackadder season 2.