Contingency

Well it’s Sunday and I’m a bit out of sorts. I was supposed to be in Toronto for an old friend’s wedding this weekend but my flight went through New York and the connecting flight was canceled, along with all other possible alternatives, due to snow (it sounds like they have had quite the storm over there! I hope things are returning to normal gradually).

Luckily I found out about this before getting on the plane so rather than being stuck at JFK along with 10,000 other frustrated stranded travelers I just turned around and headed home. Disappointed friends and an unexpected weekend off, and I’m a bit confused about what to do with it. Not for want of options – there is no great lack of things I should be doing – but shifting gears when the rug is pulled out from under you like that can be tricky.

This coincides with the publication, tomorrow, of my first ‘big’ guest post, on the wonderful Lateral Action blog. It’s a meditation on some of the ‘mythology’ we seem to have erected around creativity, and how it can hold us back, and what we might be able to do about it. I hope you check it out, and leave a comment! I’ll be monitoring and replying to comments there for the next few days.

I’m really happy to have my work featured there among such fine company, and I’m also happy to welcome anyone who might click through to find out a bit more about li’l ol’ me… so, if that’s you, welcome! Make yourself at home! Pull up a chair! Read the rest of this entry »

photo credit: kenicii

So, it’s update time. Since time is a valuable commodity these days, I’m going to kill a few birds with one stone here (figuratively, of course – I like birds and have no intention of harming any). In a dazzling display of multipurpose efficiency, I’m going to combine a) a blog post… b) more precisely, a ‘contest’ post for the MSNW series… and c) an email newsletter. Since the next chapter of MSNW is all about email newsletters, I figure rather than telling you what I’ve learned I will just show you by including the newsletter here.

Before we get to that, I will preface by pointing out that my list is actually still pretty small, since I don’t play a lot of shows and have really only recently begun to get myself organized and maintain a list or a newsletter of any sort. Still, I’m a fairly quick learner, and I like to wade into the thick of things, so that’s what I’ve been doing: learning the ropes and laying the groundwork for more serious list-building later on…

I did some research and selected MailChimp as my email and list management platform – as far as I can tell the features rival anything out there, they have great tutorials and a very low-key, easygoing and fun vibe. Also, the whole service – not a limited or dumbed-down version, the full premium package – is completely free until you hit 500 people. From that point on their prices are in line with their competitors, so I figure this is both friendly and smart on their part. A nice way to get started on a serious platform without spending too much until you have the numbers to justify it. Read the rest of this entry »

I spend a lot of time with my little boy. He’s pretty great, and everyone tells us he’s their favorite toddler (obviously he’s ours), but I’m pretty sure he’s exactly as special as every other almost-three-year old, which is to say amazingly, unimaginably special. I figure he probably does much the same stuff they all do. Which is to say, he plays. And I play with him, as often as I can between the dishes and the laundry and such. I also watch… and learn.

Here are a few pearls of wisdom I’ve distilled from observing (usually in jealous awe) his effortless, totally un-self-conscious creative play. Read the rest of this entry »

Hey everybody, just a very quick note to say, Happy New Year!

It’s nearly 2am here in Berlin and things are gradually slowing down, might be able to consider sleep soon.

As outlined in my previous couple of posts, I am preparing for a very big year in 2010, with some challenging and personally important projects underway – and I’m looking forward to sharing them as they unfold!

Thanks for your attention, support, comments, and so on…I hope it has been a good year for you and that the next will be even better, more fulfilling, fascinating and fun!

more soon…

- tobias

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‘Passage’, by tobias tinker

As mentioned previously, I am participating in a ‘blogging contest’ sponsored by Ariel Hyatt of Cyber PR. The objective is to write 9 blog posts, one for each of the 9 chapters of Ariel’s book, ‘Music Success in Nine Weeks’. This is part two of my first ‘official’ blog entry.

Well, as promised in Part 1, I went off to battle with my demons and came back victorious, carrying the Spoils Of War: some goals for 2010 that I am prepared to stand behind. I wrote these by hand last night, after turning the computer OFF, as it’s about the only way I can really isolate myself from distractions completely enough for such a task.

I also did this between 2 and 3 am – a time when the phone is extremely unlikely to ring, the family is asleep, and really nothing else is going on. My brain, if I am not asleep or exhausted or surfing, is often a kind of neuron furnace in the wee hours… and when I get going, I can usually more or less keep up with it in a kind of frenzied chicken-scratch shorthand I used to use when taking notes in university. It takes some time to decode later, but it’s effective.

I have divided my results into Personal and Professional categories; only the Professional set will be included here, as I don’t really think personal ‘resolutions’ are particularly relevant to others. In fact, I don’t spend a lot of time on them, for various reasons; I may try to install a few new habits this year, but I won’t bore you with the details here. I’m actually pretty happy with my personal life, so I’m not looking for major changes there. One or two long-term goals that are better kept private.

Having said that, by its very nature this kind of thing is ‘all about me’… all I can do is try to keep the focus, as always, on aspects of my own experience that seem likely to be more universal; hopefully readers will connect to those. If so, please leave a comment and tell me what you think!
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I suspect this is no way to go about writing a book. No, let’s take that one step further: I am absolutely certain that by any normal measure of such things, it’s an insane way to attempt such a thing. Books are written in private, right? You toil away for months or more likely years on end, researching, scribbling out draft after draft… mountains of paper pile up, you rewrite and edit, rewrite and edit some more, all alone (darning his socks in the night when there’s nobody there!)… and at the end of it, somehow, is a finished thing, which finally you can unveil to the world – which for some reason is supposed to care. Yes, the final product is public, but the actual writing of books is not a performance art, right?

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I just came in from taking part, in a very small way, in Berlin’s celebration of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It’s interesting how this city seems to have a knack of capturing the attention of the world in moments like this… or perhaps it’s more than that: Berlin seems from time to time to assume a role as a kind of microcosm of the rest of the world (at least the Western world), its struggles and its constantly evolving ideas about itself. Tonight was a re-enactment of a moment 20 years ago when the eyes of the world were upon this city, and saw something many never thought they would see: the victory of people over a repressive regime, the fall of a Wall that was supposed to last 100 years. Read the rest of this entry »

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I have a piano concert tonight. It’s a solo concert, and it’s also a CD release – for an album that was recorded at another solo concert a few years ago. These events are a little out of the ordinary, and I don’t do them often – but I’ve done a number of them over the past decade and I think it’s worth saying a little bit about them here.

Mount Lhotse, Nepal - photo by tobias tinker

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Warning: this is a bit of a long one, and contains much of my basic philosophy of life, some of the deepest truths I have uncovered in a lifetime of looking… I’m sure it’s not particularly original, but it’s important to me, and seems important to express, so here goes!

The particular leap of faith that I am about to take has in fact been a long time coming, and a long time in preparation. I realize that seems a little contradictory but remember, jumping off cliffs (whether real or metaphorical) can be a dangerous business and preparation is not necessarily anathema to the essence of the jump. It just happens that this is kind of a major undertaking, and while it is very much a leap into the unknown, I want to at least have all my raw ingredients in place before I let too many people in on what I’m cooking up. Don’t worry; once the oven is warm, it’s going be very much an open kitchen kind of affair.