Heading into the office late today, I just happened to be on I-5 shortly after the two charter buses crashed into the guard rail.  To say they were “dangling” over the freeway is an exaggeration, but there is no doubt in my mind that the driver and passengers must have been terrified.

Here’s the video:

Listening to talk radio this morning, the host asked listeners what the deal was with their reaction to the financial situation of this country.  Why aren’t they panicking?  Why is everyone continuing on as if nothing has happened?  As large sums of money get thrown around in conversation like they’re nothing, it does seem a bit odd that the average person on the street seems somewhat disinterested in talking about the economy.  Is it because we’re just so sick of the doom a gloom — or do people actually buy into the idea that this crisis is a creation of the media, as opposed to a legimately disasterous policy debacle?

I’m certainly aware of these bailout and their long-term impact on me, my family, my business, my goals, and ultimately my entire future.  I’ve heard so many people say that the losses of the stock market had no impact on them, and therefore how can it really be that bad, as I’ve watched my investments’ value cut nearly in half.  Investments that aren’t just stocks, but 401(k) plans I packed tight with money for the 2 1/2 years I worked at Expeditors for tax reasons.  Le sigh…

I also notice the price cuts all over the place, even Starbucks was offering 20% off all merchandise and whole bean coffee in their store – and if you imagine that is happening nationwide then that could indicate a significant drop in profits.  So what am I doing, panicking?  No, but I do think it’s important to have our eyes wide open now and through the coming months while Barack Obame takes over the roll of president.  The risk of further dillusionment of Americans towards their government is great.

Love yourself with great music.

This song resonates with me deeply, and while I’m on this Mark Kozalek kick in the blog I’ll include a video that has the song (a redone version of the original) in it, AND scenes from one of my favorite foreign films “He’s Loves Me… He Loves Me Not” (1992) with Audrey Tautou playing an erotomaniac (only the French, I swear!)

Enjoy!

Thinking you recognize this sound. Red House Painters (Mark Kozalek lead singer) has a song on the movie “Excess Baggage” called “All Mixed Up”. You might like it if you like this. Click here to view (embedding has been disabled).

Megan just sent me this video of her playing John Denver’s “Around and Around”.  If you know much about me or my musical influences, you’ll recognize John Denver as one of my earliest folk singer favorite (thanks to summer camp).  Most of his songs make me nostalgic.

This is played in the style of Sun Kil Moon (and Redhouse Painters) lead singer, Mark Kozalek – who is one Meg’s main influences.  Check out her YouTube channel for more songs and videos.

Meg Clark singing Around & Around by John Denver

Lyrics (by request):

Time as I’ve known it
Doesn’t take much time to pass by me
Minutes into days turn into
months turn into years
They hurry by me

Still I love to see the sun go down
And the world go around

Dreams full of promises
Hopes for the future
I’ve had many

Dreams

I came across this post by Randy Zuckerberg (via Valleywag) on her (or “our” since she’s speaking for The Daily Beast) dislike of lip-dubs.  How perfect for follow up to my post on lipdubs in mainstream media.  She says:

In case there was any doubt that the chief purpose of the internet is to perpetuate narcissism, lip dub videos put that to rest.

Hmm, really?  I’m not so sure we’re all narcissists on the web – but I guess people write about what they know.  Truth: the first time someone sent me a Julia Allison lip dub it was with a note that said, “Wouldn’t this be fun to do some weekend?”.  I watched the vid, and thought, this goofy, photogenic chick looks like she’s having a lot of fun.  (I’ve added it here, because you’re probably too cool to go search for it *wink wink*):

Lip Dub! Disney’s Little Mermaid from Julia Allison on Vimeo.

Other than the echo-chamber of internet celebs and their requisite snarky haters, few people give a damn about all the context/scandal/fifty-thousand blog posts/page rank yadda yadda yadda – they’re just looking for a fun and entertaining three minutes and thirty seconds.  At least that’s what I’m interested in.

Aside from Zuckerberg’s self-condemnation (as Valleywag points out she’s been in lip dubs as well) and bashing of coworkers and friends (ah, harkens of Paris Hilton – burn those bridges!), she’s got the chief purpose of the internet all wrong.  All this media – our pictures, video, tweets, comments, status updates, posted items on Facebook and elsewhere are tied much more deeply to the chief purpose of the internet than mere narcissism.  The internet is about scalable information sharing, and all the little pieces of information we put out there about ourselves paints a picture of who we are that we share with our networks of friends and family.

Who Are the Content Creators?

I don’t know many people who are that into creating content on the internet for its own sake.  Sure, there are media personalities making videos to further promote themselves and there are Twitter-addicts who are sharing every mundane (to me, anyway) detail of their lives with the whole world.  Even these people are telling stories.  I think there is a very core human need to tell stories, and I certainly feel a strong desire to be known by the world through the day-to-day things I do. The reason for this is that I want to offer some continuity. I want the little details to be captured, because they matter to me. It seems like there’s something beautiful, strange, or otherwise remarkable that I want to remember and share at least once a day.

What Happens When I Die?

What happens?  When I die in 90 years (fingers crossed!) all the content I’ve contributed will be out there in the world.  If people want to remember me, they can.  It seems like there might be a business in collecting all that up into a lasting memory place… but death doesn’t sell well… and I digress.

Beware Revisionist History

People are storytellers.  Like all stories, the teller can try to shape the truth into a form that is closer to the image we WISH was true.  As someone put to me succinctly, “life gets messy”, and often we can make it look neat and tidy with the right editing, the right context.  There are valid reasons for romanticizing a story appropriately – such as sharing pictures on Facebook like “first week with baby” pictures that don’t show the exhausted parents or “Sarah’s bachelorette party” that doesn’t include the photos of her sh*tfaced friends flashing the camera in the limmo.  Then there is outright faking a life you don’t even lead – thinking LonelyGirl15 here – for the sake of attention, without telling the world that what you’re offering is fictional.

Favorite Lip Dub, Lately

LipDub – Undone – Weezer (in Paris) from Chryde on Vimeo.

The Seattle 2.0 events calendar just got some much needed TLC from yours truly, and I’ll continue to update it with events as I find them.  Marcelo gave me some serious props in his post today on resources for Seattle entrepreneurs, so I want to make sure I can live up to it.

Events I’m particularly looking forward to this month:

Dec. 4th – TiE Funding Forum because hearing other people’s business plans always motivates me to write my own.

Dec. 10th – WTIA Cocktails & Contributions Holiday Party because it’s a party at a cool venue (ACT Theater) and I’m in the Christmas spirit

Dec. 11th – Hops & Chops Happy Hour because I don’t show up nearly enough and the people who come and a lot of fun to talk to and drink with

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):

You might have noticed I have been posting as frequently here as in the past, and in part that’s because my attention has been diverted to writing posts for Seattle 2.0 as the events editor.  Marcelo Calbucci, who runs Seattle 2.0, has brough together a team of contributors and we’re on a schedule to generate at least one new post a day for the Seattle 2.0 blog.  In addition to this content, posts from Seattle tech blogs are aggregated in on the front page.

As the events editor it is my job to cover events taking place in the Seattle tech community, with a particular focus on startups.  I go to events, write about what happened there, who I met, what I learned, and what an individual should expect to get out of the event.  I also will be featuring various community organizers as they talk about the events they host; everything from how they plan to what their vision is for the future of the Seattle tech community.

Check out my first three posts:

• No Business Cards Allowed – October 9th
• Weekly Coffee Dates Help Fuel Eastside Startups – October 16th
• Planting Seeds with Six Hour Startup – October 17th

Of course, I’d love to receive feedback on how I can make my posts interesting and useful so if you want to reach me please leave a comment with a valid email address and we’ll talk.

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.