While mowing the grass, my brain wanders and I get ideas. Something about the drone of the engine and the mindlessness of the task frees my mind up to thinking. While mowing recently, there are three things that came to mind that stun me.
. Musicians
. Multilingual speakers
. Coders
Some Sunday thoughts on these three things follow.
Musicians
Whenever I get dragged into a social get-together involving lots of people, cocktails, and live music, the musicians simply amaze me. I sit and listen and watch. How someone can look at paper sheet music, then turn it into organic, kinesthetic movement to create beautiful sounds...well, that's something I can't comprehend. To do it without sheet music is even more crazy to me, something I'm simply not hard-wired in my DNA to understand.
People have asked, "Do you play an instrument?" "Yes," I say, "I play the radio." That's the extent of my musical skill.
The Pizza crew and @thebeardflex put together a neat Christmas album (post | playlist) last Christmas. I submitted my, ahem, song, "The Christmas Puppy (3Speak | other formats). My song didn't make the cut, and no hard feelings here. Listening to the other submissions that actually were by talented people, it's understandable and it's all good. But, my song does kind of illustrate my musical nonskill. Anyway, it was fun to make!
Just realized, it's almost "Christmas in July" (some folks celebrate that), just in time to check out the music above. :)
Multilingual folks
My guess is that anyone who is bilingual or multilingual, especially anyone who grew up in a multilingual environment, you won't understand this...effortlessly flipping between languages amazes me and confuses me.
I can, to a very, very small degree, decode some non-English languages when I read them. Listening...nope, it's just sounds. If I can see the words and syntax, maybe I can pick up a small bit.
Again, DNA is at play here, along with having grown up in an almost exclusively English-only environment. You bilinguals are like demi-gods with donkey ears, hearing other voices from afar that we mortals cannot here.
Coders
This is really not far different from language, I think. And likely it's not far different from musicians, I think. But, there are some people so innately gifted, skilled and so well-trained, that they can glance at a block of code (which looks like a phone book that has been randomized to the rest of us), and those people can spot errors or fixes with little effort. It stuns me.
These people can type letters and symbols and numbers into text files, do magic, then create something that the rest of us use everyday (with no idea of how these things work).
My only comparison is reading, in English. I think I'm a pretty good reader, my eyes scan the text, my brain picks up the thoughts conveyed. Errors, like spelling, syntax, grammar, usage, etc. tend to get seen and picked up if I'm not reading too fast. Yet, to do this while reading code...amazing to me.
Summary
I'm not sure what my point was here beyond sharing my thoughts. But, summed, these folks amaze me:
- Musicians
- Multilingual folks
- Coders
Maybe my point is to thank a musician, or that person who interpreted for you, or a coder.
Have a great Sunday. :)
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