To Boil It All Down

As I said at the top, none of this is very glamorous stuff. The successful people do it well, because they have to in order to survive. This sort of bedrock planning and implementation of studio layout, ergonomics and archival organization is a big part of what makes extended and consistent creative work possible. Once you get these things under control, you will find that you have much more time and resources available to devote to your creative activities.

However, until you have these things under control, you'll find it's hard to get going in the morning, because you can't find the project you were working on last night because you set a stack of old magazines on it in order to get to the phone that rang while you were trying to figure out whether the buzzing noise that showed up while you were trying to reset levels was on tape or in the disk drive, and you were resetting the levels because you couldn't remember which take was the keeper and used the wrong one after the hard disk crashed and you had to find your backups (they were under the pizza box left over from the night before that George set on the synth-player's chair, even though you asked him not to), which you did, thank God, in only about half-an-hour, not like the time last month when it took close to a week, at which time you swore up and down, never, never, ever again!

Happy memories, and here's to being able to find them!

Dave Moulton is trying to find his old passport. It isn't in the files under 'P.' So, he still lives in Groton, Mass, and teaches in Boston and Lowell.