{"id":7918,"date":"2010-10-12T05:44:52","date_gmt":"2010-10-12T09:44:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=7918"},"modified":"2010-10-12T12:51:59","modified_gmt":"2010-10-12T16:51:59","slug":"val-derival-dera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2010\/10\/val-derival-dera\/","title":{"rendered":"Val-deri,Val-dera"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

[For information about this image, see the note at the foot of this post.]<\/em><\/p>\n

[Below, click Play button to begin <\/em>The Happy Wanderer. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 3:17 long.]<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

[audio:thehappywanderer_timothyseaman.mp3|titles=’The Happy Wanderer’|artists=Timothy Seaman]<\/div>\n

T<\/span>he Missus and I have a favorite, half-kidding\/half-serious theory about the modern world: that it’s set up to drive its denizens (especially us<\/em>) crazy. Just in case you haven’t noticed: the pace of life never slows down, and there’s more and more stuff<\/em> to fill every minute, and every bit of it is urgent and ever more resistant to prioritization. Music is louder and faster, TV commercials more obstreporous, money tighter, our friends and families both frailer and more distant, food and drink more dangerous, streets more crowded and more polluted (despite new regulations every year pretending to fight both traffic volume and air pollution), “communication” trivially easy and also easily trivial, civic discourse threatening to run off the rails at every nerve-jangling second…<\/p>\n

Furthermore, of course, no one we know is getting any younger — a situation thorned with a thousand frustrations all its own. Speaking for myself, I am certain that gravity is much stronger than when I was a kid, and air resistance much weaker, and objects theoretically meant to be held in the hands seem aerodynamically designed these days to leap away and down to the floor almost as soon as I touch them.<\/p>\n

And knowledge? Pfft! <\/em>When it comes to knowledge, the situation really gets dire. Computers and networks grow ever more stubborn, refusing not only to play with one another but to play with me<\/em>, dammit. I can download books tens of thousands of times faster than I can read their first chapters. Facts once gluey slither around in my head like greased marbles…<\/p>\n

Note the peculiarly Baby-Boomer view of the world: if something hasn’t been set up to make life easier, it’s because we must be beset by enemies, entire wicked cabals of them, bent on keeping us from whatever we want at the moment. Because, you know, it’s all about us<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

This crazy-makingness, I am convinced, is tied in somehow with the laws of thermodynamics. You know: matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed, at best just turned into other forms of matter and energy. The total amount of matter (or energy) in the universe is a constant. All that. Because, see — so my theory goes — the total amount of information<\/em> in the universe is a constant, too. When you move 150 pounds of information from a blog to Twitter, let’s say, it remains at 150 pounds total — just diffused and vaporous and spread out so no one can see the whole anymore, just the individual molecules…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

F<\/span>or those of you keeping score, here are a couple things preoccupying my mind and time (what’s left of both) these days:<\/p>\n

First, here at the ol’ blawg (as Jules<\/a> says), I’ve been working on an entry in my What’s in a Song?<\/em><\/a> series. This task always preoccupies me — intensely — until it’s done. They’re fun and satisfying to assemble, otherwise I wouldn’t do them: who needs yet another dull and\/or unsatisfying distraction in a world already full of them? But, you know, there’s a reason why somebody chose “absorption” as a metaphor for getting lost in a project.<\/p>\n

I’ve also been working on Seems to Fit<\/em>. (I’d like to add “of course,” but such things should not be taken for granted.) This probably requires a blog post of its own. For now I’ll just say that my objective of the last few weeks has been to ensure continuity: when a plot requires a half-dozen characters’ points of view, sometimes together in a scene and sometimes off on their own, it’s easy to lose track of the way they talk, what they’ve experienced and when, what they know and don’t know yet<\/em>. It’s also possible — “easy” probably not the right word there — to simply lose track of an important character who almost never interacts with the others for reasons of geography and\/or time. (See greasy-marbles analogy, above.)<\/p>\n

So how’s everything in your neighborhood?<\/p>\n

_________________________________<\/p>\n

Note:<\/strong> The image at the top of this post appears on a toddler T-shirt designed by “Tom,” of the Wire & Twine online store. (Here<\/a>‘s the original.) I love thinking of those two mice as mouselets<\/em>, overwhelmed by how much they’ve experienced in a given day.<\/p>\n

Further note:<\/strong> Why “The Happy Wanderer” tootling on the soundtrack and referenced in the post title? Hard to say, exactly. I was thinking about simpler times, and suddenly remembered that song from elementary-school music class. And, really, despite the crazy-makingness, I am<\/em> happy. It’s just more fun to bitch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[For information about this image, see the note at the foot of this post.] [Below, click Play button to begin The Happy Wanderer. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 3:17 long.] [audio:thehappywanderer_timothyseaman.mp3|titles=’The Happy Wanderer’|artists=Timothy Seaman] The Missus and I have a favorite, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[183,16,247,12,74,250,5],"tags":[25,966,1036,2010,2011,2012,2013],"class_list":{"0":"post-7918","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-everyday-life","7":"category-themissus","8":"category-ruminations","9":"category-03_runningaftermyhat","10":"category-music","11":"category-art","12":"category-06_writing","13":"tag-baby-boomers","14":"tag-overscheduling","15":"tag-modern-life","16":"tag-the-happy-wanderer","17":"tag-timothy-seaman","18":"tag-theories","19":"tag-wire-twine","20":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-23I","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7918"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7982,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7918\/revisions\/7982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}