Noise Between Stations

Category: Flavors of the One Love

  • Orpheus-style leadership

    This book review reminded me of the conductor-less Orpheus Chamber Orchestra…

    …which has forged a successful recording and performance career without the need of a conductor. Their group is not leaderless, members are keen to emphasize; rather, the leadership role shifts among them within a performance and even within a piece. Echoing Peter Drucker, the author writes, “The Orpheus approach may be the harbinger of leadership trends to come in the business world.”

    I love this example of putting power in the hands of the people doing the work, yet I’m still a little skeptical about how much your average classical musician wants to be on the board and schmooze with rich patrons to keep the endowment funded. Still, I’d like to experiment with the model in businss environments, especially in employee-owned companies.

    The Orpheus Process is built on eight principles:

    1. Put power in the hands of the people doing the work.
    2. Encourage individual responsibility for product and quality.
    3. Create clarity of roles.
    4. Foster horizontal teamwork.
    5. Share and rotate leadership.
    6. Learn to listen, learn to talk.
    7. Seek consensus (and build creative systems that favor consensus).
    8. Dedicate passionately to your mission.

  • David Byrne’s Journal

    David Byrne always presents something new, something interesting, all wrapped in a consistent and genuine funky catchiness. He’s posted an mp3 of his song My Fair Lady to OurMedia, has a new album of opera-influenced songs and has been writing an online journal. From the latter, there’s introspection and honesty not common among his peers:

    On reading Bob Dylan’s book

    It’s beautifully written, though I think it should probably be filed under fiction. I always thought his persona, which early on was that of a young Woody Guthrie, was just that, a persona. … (Call me skeptical, but a Jewish guy from Minnesota talking and writing like a backwoods hick/poet, huh? What’s that about?)

    On a Pixies show in NYC:

    Charles had on some black eyeliner which I couldn’t see from my seat. (Michael Stipe does this too, is this something I should know about?) From the audience I thought it made him look like an Aztec or Mayan God, calmly but loudly issuing baffling cosmic pronouncements mixed with pain and rage.

    On traffic in Southern California:

    I wonder if people here realize that the rest of the world doesn’t live like this? I wonder if, as all this traffic just gets worse and worse year after year, if people will eventually confine themselves exclusively to their home communities – people in Silverlake will NEVER go to Santa Monica and vice verse, hell, people in Santa Monica will probably eventually stop going to west LA!. The area will revert to little isolated villages. It’s already somewhat like that, but as gas doubles and quadruples in price, as it’s bound to do in the not too distant future, well, then only the wealthy will be able to suffer these hellish commutes.

  • The Story of the Weeping Camel

    “The Story of the Weeping Camel” is the best movie I’ve seen recently. Their description introduces it nicely…

    An enchanting tale about a family of herders in Mongolia’s Gobi desert who face a crisis when a mother camel unexpectedly rejects her newborn calf. Uniquely composed of equal parts reality, drama and magic, the movie provides a window into a different way of life and the universal terrain of the heart.

  • The Gates,

    People At

  • Recycle those old CDs

    We’re taking the digital+hard drive plunge and getting rid of our CDs. Ulrike discovered Second Spin to buy our used CDs. One just types in the UPC code and they tell you how much they’ll pay. After you’ve entered the discs in their system and get a receipt, you pack them up and ship them off.

  • We are all in this together

    Just returned from San Francisco where one of the best things I saw was a billboard of Mark Mumford’s WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER.

  • The best cooking show ever

    New Scandinavian Cooking is just so wonderful. I love when someone takes a format that is already popular and full of variation and just takes it in a whole other direction.

    In the episode I saw, host Andreas Viestad skied through a sunny day over to a man pulling three char out of a fishing hole. Andreas immediately pan fried them and served them with an orange-curry filling. And then, on top of the mountain, orange chicken and for dessert ice cream and meringue served in an orange. All done outside, cooling ingredients in the snow, with the mountain range in the background. This has spoiled me for all other cooking shows.

  • Espresso has less caffeine than brewed coffee

    Zap recently told me this, and I was happy to confirm it: 1 oz. of espresso has 35mg of caffeine while 8 oz. of coffee has 250mg (31.25mg per ounce). So I’m happily downing my second double-espresso of the morning.

  • The Postal Service, explained

    A lot of bloggers are getting hip to The Postal Service (iTunes), the band behind the infectious electronic The District Sleeps Alone and others from the album “Give Up”. Most don’t seem to know the mind behind the songs is Ben Gibbard, front man of Death Cab for Cutie. To explore Death Cab, I’d recommend starting with We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes, although all of their albums are very good. If you like lo-fi, sweet adolescent songs you might also like his early solo album “All-Time Quarterback”, like the track Rules Broken.

  • The Flamenco store

    Juan Sebastian gives me a heads up to es flamenco, a storefront crafted with care and content. Once spare time returns to my life I plan to study some Flamenco guitar, instead of the pigeon technique I have now.

  • Terminal 5

    Oh yes, we youngins finally get to see the inside of Terminal 5, Eero Saarinen’s gorgeous sculpture of a building at JFK airport in New York. And if that wasn’t enough, there will be — inside the terminal — an exhibition featuring “major artists responding to the site with works reflecting on the transitory nature of travel, architecture and contemporary art.” October 1 through January 31, 2005 (Tues-Sat, 12-6, voluntary donation).

    Link courtesy of MUG.

  • JPG Magazine

    From Heather and Derek: “JPG Magazine is for people who love imagemaking without attitude. It’s about the kind of photography you get when you love the moment more than the camera. It’s for photographers who, like us, have found themselves online, sharing their work, and would like to see that work in print.”

  • A foray into paper publishing

    An essay I wrote in 1991, Music and Censorship, will be included in an upcoming Pearson textbook, Music and Culture. Even more surprising is my company, the likes of (beware shameless name dropping) Copland, Paglia, Quindlen, and Bloom. It is some of my better writing: though the argument is weak in sections my style hasn’t been as sharp as when the university had me pumping out an essay a week. Mostly the piece has the distinction of being rare; apparently there aren’t many rigorous looks at music censorship, at least not on the internet where this continues to get a fair amount of page views.

  • Blather

    Blather “is words. bunches of words, strewn about in a twisty tangly web of pontification, insight and nonsensical delight.” Exposing the intertwingularity of language.

    I used to love the smell of freshly-mowed grass.
    It smelled like barbecues at dusk.
    Mosquitoes, kids with chicken greased fingers
    butterflies, and Spring.
    The hot sun on my freckled face.

  • Ted Kooser

    Ted Kooser was just named the new U.S. Poet Laureate. Here is A Happy Birthday:

    This evening, I sat by an open window
    and read till the light was gone and the book
    was no more than a part of the darkness.
    I could easily have switched on a lamp,
    but I wanted to ride this day down into night,
    to sit alone and smooth the unreadable page
    with the pale gray ghost of my hand.