Tedium and Te Deum

Part I:  Technology Revolution Redux

Before posting my intended topic, I have to address Sara’s last contribution, (“Parents Just Don’t Understand”).  I’m amused because she admitted to me that I was the inspiration for it.  I needed to download some files the other day that needed “unzipping,” and, having never done this before, found the process difficult and frustrating.  Sara, through the wonderful medium of googlewave, walked me through the process and, at last, I had success!  What was for her a simple thing was new to me.

In her blog, Sara wrote, “being raised in the ’90s, my generation was not only raised on computers, but we are much more capable of adapting to new technologies than our parents generation.”  What a fascinating perspective!  I reiterate here that I find this entire discussion amusing.  It truly tickles me!  Sara is wonderful, bright, and extremely helpful, but I must take this chance to dialogue about my own, different, perspective, which is what blogging is all about.

I doubt very much that this generation is indeed capable of adapting to new technologies with any greater ability than my own.  I am nearly as old as Sara’s mother and have daughters nearly as old as Sara herself, so I have experienced what she is talking about.  In my lifetime a tsunami of new technologies have washed over the planet.  As you know from earlier entries, I grew up during the space race.  Watching rockets evolve into space shuttles hardly proved to be a gap in the evolution of technology.  Holograms and lasers were nothing to sneeze at either.  (I was one of the earliest to view the Laserium concert at Griffith Planetarium in Los Angeles.)  I’m also not entirely out of the loop when it comes to computers.  My first university job, pre-PC, was at the computer lab at Wright State in Ohio.  Oh, and just in case the “younger” generation missed this, I, and my ilk, have been alive over the last few decades to watch, and take part in, the computer revolution that they have experienced today.  I even own, and use, (gasp?!), a Wii.

My point is this: I would argue with Sara that online data or technology of any kind is not reserved for different age groups.  I have chosen not to learn new computer skills til this point in time.  I haven’t needed to.  Both that fact and age, however, do not call into question a person’s ability to do so.  There are plenty in my generation, and older, who have needed and/or chosen to use the technology we share today.  As a matter of fact, some of them hold doctorates in these fields and teach this younger generation just how much their flat magic little boxes are capable of.  I have had the luxury of using mine for recreation alone.  Now I need to learn to use it as a tool.  The engineering side of my brain is usually bemused, actually, by what my laptop can’t do as it seems that creating certain applications really shouldn’t be that difficult.  We’ve come a long way from Fortran and Basic, but I’m not convinced that we’ve come as far as people would like to believe.  In fact, adaptability might explain just how much some people don’t need to use computers at all.  Adapting to new technology has been going on since the “invention” of fire.  Whether or not people use new technology is based on choice, not age.

Part II:  Tedium and Te Deum

This is the topic I originally intended to write about.  Tedium, according to my beautiful old Oxford Universal Dictionary, describes something that is “wearisome by continuance, irksome, disagreeable, painful.”  Te Deum, (from the Latin “Te Deum laudamus ‘Thee God, we praise’”), is described as “an ancient Latin hymn of praise in the form of a psalm, sung as a thanksgiving on special occasions, as after a victory or deliverance.”  Though the two are pronounced very much alike, their definitions stand in stark contrast to each other.  (Unless you’ve had to endure a particularly long Mass, at which time the two might coincide.)

Joking aside, these three words beautifully illustrate my internship focus this week.  As I mentioned in Our Extant Past, I am currently working on the Lakka Skoutara project.  Not all parts of the projects that my peers and I tackle are sexy.  Right now, for instance, I am renaming photos of the old houses I wrote about.  What was “DSC 0133″ needs to be renamed as something like “House 2_Image 3_Corinth_June 2009″.  There are hundreds of them to be renamed.  The work can be tedious, as in “wearisome by continuance” and even “painful.”  My back aches after a while, and I’m never pleased when I realize, a dozen pictures later, that I’ve missed a number and need to rename a few.  Yet I find that I really don’t mind the process.  In fact, I enjoy it overall.  In order to explain why, I need to tell you about music.

I have a bit of a commute everyday to school.  Along the way, I listen to music.  All kinds of music.  I have a multi-disc CD player in the car and controls on the steering wheel, so the drive can get pretty exciting.  Today, however, I stuck with a single CD:  Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.  The third selection, titled “The Knight Bus,” is some of the most chaotic jazz ever written.  It’s fascinatingly disturbing.  The composer, John Williams, is a true genius and one of my favorites.  I love this song because it is nearly impossible to follow the rhythm or to anticipate the next note, yet the song resonates and somehow “makes sense” to the listener’s ears and psyche.  The more I listen to it, the more I want to listen to it to try and figure out how/why that happens.  In a later composition, Williams introduces the most striking timpani solo I’ve ever heard.  Yes, timpani solo, the introduction to “Buckbeak’s Flight.”  This song, obviously, is about flying, but if you never knew the title, you’d understand that just by hearing it.  Williams’ songs are inspiring.  They evoke “Te Deum” and provoke the psyche to “praise” and to “be delivered.”

Let me put the last two paragraphs together for you.  John Williams, composer and conductor, spends countless hours not just creating fabulous music, but also writing thousands upon thousands of notes.  Notes, as in little black dots, on lines, on paper.  Page after page, ream after ream.  Some for oboe, others for flute, viols, cymbals.  I suspect that, at times, his back aches.  I’d lay money on the notion that he also has to erase and rewrite.  Obviously, the thought I am trying to convey is that tedium is, to my way of thinking, necessary to achieve Te Deum.  While I lack Mr. Williams’ gift, and while the work of Lakka Skoutara is not composed for thousands to enjoy, the act of renaming pictures of houses is made less mundane when considering the helpful contribution to the field that these photographs may yet make.  So the work is tedious, what of that?  It is not the individual note that is so striking.  It is the yet unrealized fulness of the project that matters, and I find that wonderfully inspiring.