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It took a two year, and still continuing pandemic but it has finally become mainstream to teleconference. It took over a 100 years to become so easy inexpensive and routine to become commonplace.

Apart from saving time and money to communicate which are fantastic benefits, there is an even great outcome. Historically, the majority of meaningful human relationships have evolved and been maintained between people who lived and worked near each other. This is no longer the only way to generate a critical mass of people excited by an idea.

We can now much more easily choose to spend time with those whose ideas seem to feel relevant to us. New relationships now also form between people who have never “met” each other in-person. People can now work together for years never experiencing each others physical presence.

This is potentially extremely important to the creative outliers who often have a hard time finding likeminded companions to co-create products, projects, processes, prototypes and programs. We can now solve problems or simply hang out with people all over the world. Work groups and classes almost effortlessly span time zones.

I myself recently completed a New York City based composition class, where the majority of the participants did not live in NYC nor in the same time zone. Raj was in Poland and Germany, Maretha was in the San Francisco Berkley area, Kimberly was in Hawaii and Seattle, James was in Colorado and Russia, Robert was in New Jersey and Vermont, Ray our Juilliard professor was in NYC, and I was on the New York side of the Berkshires. We were spread across twelve time zones. Lifelong friendships now can and do form across the globe. Our extremes would require 19 hours $1000 flights.

Humanity has transcended geographic proximity!

What does this mean for SVII? It means it is time to expand from our regional roots in Silicon Valley on Sand Hill Road to become international and virtual. Stay tuned.

There are many ways to tell a story. There is the voice of authority presumed to accurate due to being confirmed by the illustrious they or them. He, she, or they said. And how often was the reporter/storyteller actually present. This voice is not one that takes as much responsibility for accuracy as the first person. And in this case, there is still the choice of past or present tense where the writer invites the reader to accompany them back in time to more directly experience what happened or at least to what they think happened.

And here is the problem in all storytelling and in every type of writing for even reporting is storytelling. No “fact” is ever published or increasingly even uttered without consideration of the optics or way it will be perceived. Many of our role models are increasingly more concerned with optics than factual accuracy. Annual reports are like giant commercials. The news seems designed to inflame or do whatever it takes to gain attention. Advertising is the largest business model even for new tech companies. It is getting challenging to access the accuracy of anything heard or read. Even photographs are more often photoshop airbrushed to look fantastic but not necessarily honest. Pitch correction technology has become so ubiquitous that everyone seemingly can sing or play perfectly. And people who do not look or sound as wonderful as the artificially enhanced depictions they are deluged with, are increasingly afraid to be alive and real for they can not compare to the unreality which has become standard. Our politicians and increasing our judges are owned by our businessmen just as much as our artists are owned by publicists. Reputation manipulation is regular business and now governance practice.

For me and most of the people I know, it has become incredibly difficult to know what the truth is in many situations. Although this is dangerous, there are plenty of honest and accurate situations, and they are the ones where we are personally present and can witness with our own eyes and ears and process with our own brains precisely what we are experiencing. This is the first person present tense and perhaps not coincidently it seems at least to me to be becoming the voice of the newest hottest branch of writing called Creative Nonfiction.

Nonfiction has traditionally been factual, authoritative, dry and therefore usually not as emotionally engaging as fiction unless of course, the facts are incredible which is sometimes the case. Creative Nonfiction seems to be the practice of increasing the emotional content of nonfiction by utilizing the literary devices of fiction. This is not an entirely new practice. Remember Ayn Rand, a philosopher who wrote many nonfiction books but achieved fame through her novels, which embodied her philosophies in the acts and personalities of her characters.
Perhaps memoirs told in the artist person are more honest if not the most accurate sources of information. My Mac’s dictionary defines memoirs as a historical account or biography is written from personal knowledge or special sources, with the synonyms: account, history, record, chronicle, narrative, story, portrayal, depiction, sketch, portrait, profile, biography, monograph or essay on an academic subject.

At least when one writes a memoir, it is usually in the first person, and presumably, the writer was there witnessing hopefully in their right mind, what was happening in their life. Could they be lying? Sure, but at least as the author they are taking responsibility for what they wrote, unlike most of the information coming to us these days.

If you were to write a memoir where you depicted someone as a jerk but their family members voiced their difference of opinion that this person, let’s call him uncle John, was a real gem and wonderful human being. You as the author could just say, that is not my recollection of John, as to me, he was a jerk. And no one could sue you for libel for it was your opinion which you are entitled to.

Well, if you were able to round up more people who knew John than perhaps it would be possible to tell if John was a Jerk or a Gem. Or maybe the only existing photo of John was photo-shopped, into an airbrushed perfection of a super kindly soul. Or maybe John was really good at faking wonderfulness. We can never know.

But increasingly I am going to look for first-person narratives where the author takes reasonability for what they say. Perhaps this is another reason why so many memoirs are written by people many years after their exciting experiences, with the first one being they were too busy living them to be writing.

Most memoirs may fall under the heading of Creative Nonfiction, so if you now have the time and the inclination to write your memoir and take reasonability for what you say for after all it is a subset of your personal recollections, and you had better write them down before you forget or enhance the details too much.

Composing connotes additive synthesis as in a work of music, literature, or art. My Mac has a large number of definitions. Here are the first three: 

1) the nature of something’s ingredients or constituents; the way in which a whole or mixture is made up: the social composition of villages.

2) the action of putting things together; formation or construction: the composition of a new government was announced.

3) a thing composed of various elements: a theory is a composition of interrelated facts.

These imply a bottom-up path. Could a top-down approach also work?

In carving, the presumption is the final result is already present within the stone, wood, or any other medium and everything that is not the final result needs removal. Visually, this the case in optics, where white contains all of the colors in the spectrum, which when filtered cause one or more colors to remain. In electronic music, there are both additive and subtractive synthesis which produce results of very differing character. Joining smaller pieces of wood into a larger one is not the same as starting with a more substantial portion.

Carving subtraction can less forgiving than assembly, but is this always the case? Is there a Meta-Level in the arts in music, where a composer conceives of multiple themes and variations simultaneously, just as white light contains all of the colors?

Is the act of improvisation or composing in real time, one of addition or one of subtraction? Is there a larger musical structure which can be comprehended or imagined more instantly as a sculpture within a large chunk of marble? If so how would one characterize this structure? 

How about instead of beginning with a single melody, if one began with harmonic waypoints as sonic meta milestones each of which by definition contains more than a single note and often four, five or six. Moving from one harmonious construction or chord to another implies a set of potential melodies all coexisting much as the more massive block of wood has within it a collection of possible carvings. 

In music building blocks can be chords, not notes, providing both content and context simultaneously. Each chord can be expressed in many ways through inversions, voicings, and timbres, not to mention dynamic, expressions and articulations. As notes to be meaningful usually exist within the context of phrases, phrases can exist within larger rhythmic or harmonic contexts as well.

This embedding of components within meta level contexts is everywhere we look from wisdom embedded within stories to probiotic bacteria enabling us to digest food effectively.  

Perhaps it is time for us to consider or even invent, more meta-structures to solve large societal as well as artistic problems. We are all to varying degrees context managers. Presumably experienced adults know much more than children about managing context. The act of collaboration requires shared context without which projects stall.

We have to innovate our way out of problems as it is not possible to go back in time. Perhaps we are now being forced through our increasing interdependencies to collaborate to be effective? If so, shared context is the only path to collaboration, and this meta-level concept may not be able to be achieved through an additive process. We may have to sort with white light, large pieces of marble and coincident variations and themes. Also, then we may have to subtract elements to yield the results we need. 

It could be time for Subtractive Composition. A good stating meta structure could be the golden rule. Treat others in the way you would like to be treated. Then we can carve away the exceptions, but from my perspective right now society needs a restart. A new process informed by a new view. We had better begin to be top down instead of bottom up if we are to prevail over the current fractious state of affairs. 

The oft-quoted “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” by Wayne Gretzky a famous hockey player, shows up often in motivational literature. What do innovators, athletes, deal makers, and psychologists have in common? They are all focused on Showing Up. And they all know that physically, mentally and emotionally showing up are all required.

This can be very difficult for innovators who often get punished for showing up as they tend to rock the boat which understandably makes many if not most of the other people in the boat nervous. In fact the more unusual your point of view, the more rejection you are likely to experience which initially can have the tendency to diminish your enthusiasm for showing up. Sometimes you even show up but find the situation may not be conducive to opening your mouth.

In fact, this is often the case, for the insensitive inventor may become the friendless and unfunded inventor. This showing up business can be tricky. Bearing witness to what you have seen, heard or imagined can get you in trouble which is why sometimes the people who keep their heads down and are politically sensitive often win out over the Insensitive Insightful, creative innovator type.

This is a real dilemma. You can never change the world by keeping your head down. Or if one can, it would take so long that few creatives like you would be willing to wait. On the other hand, charging into the C-level decision makes office proudly showing up with the attitude I am here to change your entire company will not likely yield the resources you need to accomplish much. I know this from personal experience.

Therefore, although it is critical to show up, it is also crucial to be a Complex Collaborator at the same time. For showing up and then wholly following the leader is not going to cause change either. Innovating is like walking a tightrope. It requires courage, balance and a lot of skill as well as showing up. But without having the courage to show up, or insensitively showing up both result in not being able to apply the balanced skills and insights.

Yes, you have to show up, but you also have to zoom out to see the other potential stakeholders perspectives as well. After all, you want them to look at your point of view right, then the ‘quid pro quo’ requires you see and demonstrate that you see, understand and value their opinions not only as well but usually first. You end to have to pay forward in the creativity business for known boat rockers are often denied entry to the boat.

So to add to the burden of showing up with insight, one also has to have a pretty idea of how to apply it within a framework, not of your making. So yes you do have to show up, but you also have to let your stakeholders show up as well for them to be interested in you showing up.