Danielle Morrill

I’m working on my New Years resolutions - and yes, this is my favorite holiday.  For now, I’ll leave you with a poem I like to read when reflecting on the kind of person I’d like to be.

IF by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
‘ Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And - which is more - you’ll be a Man, my son!

We are all inventors

each sailing out on a voyage of discovery

guided each by a private chart

of which there is no duplicate.

The world is all gates

all opportunities.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tonight I’m taking the Core Values Index for this week’s Entrepreneur University, hosted by NWEN.  This has been the night of test taking, as I’ve also just taking the Thinking Feeling Knowing test for a workshop we’re undertaking at Pelago in a couple weeks.

The CVI assessment found that you are an INNOVATOR/BUILDER.

Innovator

Your primary value set is Innovator and your primary core value is Wisdom. Wisdom is the ability to see the way things work, and to know what to do about them. Understanding and compassion are central to your life strategy.

Builder

Your secondary value set is Builder and your secondary core value is Power. Power is the personal energy used to make a difference and create a positive result.  Your cornerstone core value is Power, the application of pure energy for Good. This primary driver is supported by a strong faith in your own ability to know what to do, your faith that your actions are for the Good, and your faith that once you create change, you will know what to do next.

Interesting.  I guess we’ll find out in the keynote if I have the “right” combination of values to lead to success.

Like most in the startup community, I’ve been following (how could you miss it) the various media coverage of the economic downturn and contemplating what it means to me both as the employee of a startup and as an aspiring entrepreneur.  Here’s what I have to offer for your contemplation, as I continue mine.

Some favorite song lyrics by Onelinedrawing for “Livin Small” come to mind:

These dreams’ll raise you up
Some kids wanna be rockstars, and some kids wanna be firemen

But those dreams’ll mess you up
If you’re in it for the bright lights and the battle scars
It’ll turn you into a liar, man

I don’t know if I’ve seen a million faces
I’m not sure if I’ve rocked them all
All I know is I’ve met a lot of people
Filled a lot of spaces
Learned to jump and learned to take a fall
And if that’s not livin’ large, then
I’m happy livin’ small

Well, most of us, when we go out looking,
as we do, for our lovers and our friends
Yea, we know it’s not just supposed to
be about what looks good
We know it’s not really all about the benjamins
Yea, but business is a lot like love and
business is a lot like friendship, isn’t it?
Yea, well either way, if you just go out
looking for what’s rich and hot
You’ll end up with a piece of shit

I don’t know if I’ll make a million dollars
Yea who knows, maybe if I return those calls…
All I know is when I tune in,
turn on and go out
It’s not my radio
It’s not my tv show
It’s not my rock-n-roll
Looks like one big fashion show
All these punk rock pimps and hoes
Sellin’ this and sellin’ those
Sodas, cars and phones
I mean, what’s the dilly, yo?
This channel isn’t clear at all
And if that’s what passes these days for livin’ large
Then I’m happy livin’ small.

Jonah playing this song live, in a living room (wish I had been there):

I ran into a friend over the weekend, and over a impromptu cup of coffee we talked about many things. One question, which has been in the forefront of my mind lately, is who do we write for?  All this content we put out there, what are we hoping to achieve?  Who do we want to reach?  For me, understanding this is part of the process of getting naked, so I’m going to share a previously friends-only Livejournal blog post that I love:

December 26, 2006

When I was in college (the first time) my boyfriend at that time was in a class for recording music, and one morning we were able to book the studio for an hour and mic the piano with about six mics and record this improv of a theme I’ve been toying with since I was about nine years old. I was 18 at the time this was recorded, and I am 21 years old now. I am still playing with this theme:

Click Here to Listen to: “Soliloquy” Danielle’s Theme

I remember I started playing but the first 30 - 60 seconds were not recorded so the beginning comes in suddenly without some of the quiet build up. This is all improv of a theme that haunts me. This theme that I would play at night when I was stressed out and happy, or overwhelmed with emotion of any kind. I would go to the piano in the foyer and turn on the lamp so that it would illuminate me like being on stage and block out everything. I would play the same thing over and over exploring it, and learning that constant style of playing that would become my own. I loved music, and as repressed as I can be verbally about how I feel, when I would play the piano it was always deeply intimate. There was an unspoken (and later, clearly spoken) rule that no one was to talk to or touch me when I played. If the rule was broken the shock of coming back to the world was often devastating.

This theme originated from my obsession with triads and then later with chords and finding that there were many combinations of three that made incredible sounds. At first I was interested in C-E-G, then C-D-E and now I’ve started to partition my ramblings into sections with their own distinct patterns laid on top of the overall theme.

So what is this theme about? I thought about that a lot, especially when I was faced with the challenge of giving it a name. I chose ‘Soliloquy’, and I still think that is very appropriate to this day.

soliloquy
Main Entry: so·lil·o·quy
Pronunciation: s&-’li-l&-kwE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -quies
Etymology: Late Latin soliloquium, from Latin solus alone + loqui to speak
1 : the act of talking to oneself
2 : a dramatic monologue that represents a series of unspoken reflections

I’m sitting here listening to the recording over and over as I write this and I am thinking about all the imperfections, but also remembering so clearly where I was at. Not just sitting in the cold studio and reflecting on 10 years of playing that brought me to the recording… but of what another 10 years be like. And will I still be playing this theme? Sometimes I desperately want to give it up so that I can write something new, but everything comes back to this theme and I can’t let it go. It’s the only thing I want to play, and I can play it for hours and hours on end without boredom. And every time I go back I find more complexity and more that interests me, more to explore. It’s an obsession.

I was at my parent’s house this weekend. They had sold my piano without asking, but they bought it back when I expressed the depth of my pain to my father. The fools at the piano place managed to tune and voice it to a point of sheer boredom in tone and my sister and I were lamenting that it will takes years of pounding to sufficiently break it in again. The action is still slow (but I like it because it is familiar) and now the E notes still are off at the octave. When you get right down to it, it’s a factory made late 80s Kawaii upright. But it was like a pet to me, it was something I cried on and poured out my heart to in the only way that I ever have been able to bare my soul, through music. I was something I would stroke when I walked by it with the same touch as a lover.

There was a time when I thought I would be a professional musician. I thought that I wanted to make music for a living, but I am certain now that I don’t want to. I don’t give a damn about the audience - I didn’t write this for anyone but me and if people like it I want them to like it because when they hear it they understand all the makes it a part of me. Or maybe they will see themselves in it too, and I will reach some place in them that is hardening and difficult to touch and they will realize that they are getting dangerously numb. I don’t know if I’d ever know that had happened, I don’t think people tell each other when they’ve touched their soul anymore. Heartfelt expressions like that get brushed aside. But music has moved me, since I was old enough to stand I have danced and since I was old enough to sit still I have made music.  I have raised my voice in song with a choir of over one hundred voices, and I know why Christians had a choke-hold on music for thousands of years.  Reverence.  Joy.  Passion.

In music I find exaltation, and I have experienced nothing higher.

We write, and create, for ourselves first.  I still work on this piece of music today, it has changed a lot since this recording and so have I.  I express myself through creating music, and hope that there is someone else out there who will understand that expression and help me see myself more clearly.  Each blog post is a soliloquy, a bit of talking to oneself.  A variation on the theme that is the progression of a life.