Go Outside

I continue to be impressed by the preschool teacher at the Friends school where I teach music here in Portland. She takes her little ones out for recess, even in the rain, and she makes sure they bring raincoats on rainy days with this in mind. She knows that humans won’t melt if they get wet. She knows that human beings need to be outside and to touch nature. An article in the recent issue of the Press Herald echoed her sentiments about people needing be outside, to interact emotionally with nature, and to develop a gut-level relationship with the world around them. It appears that many of us here in the U.S. suffer from Nature-Deficit Disorder, a term coined by author and educator Richard Louv. We don't go outside, and worse, we don't let our kids play freely in the neighborhoods. Instead we over-protect, over-schedule, and allow them a steady diet of technology.

I wouldn't be as keyed into this issue if we hadn't up and moved to Maine, where real natural beauty is turned up a notch or two, and is always beckoning from around the corner. I’m spending more time outside in nature than I did in Boston or D.C., and it doesn’t mean going camping, kayaking or any of those other much-lauded outdoor activities. I’m gardening and building a studio, as well as squeezing in walks by lighthouses and through woods. If I get this blog written in the next half hour, I’m going to try to get out to Mackworth for the sunrise.

Through it all, I feel the importance of contact with real, natural things. Living things. Simply going outside is one of the most important things a person can do anymore. For more on that, check out Louv’s book Last Child in the Woods.

But I am a real technology lover. I could go for days working in a dark studio, ignoring beautiful breezes and sunshine, and never know the difference. I not only have the kind of gadget-fancy and gear-lust that many of my peers do, but I also marvel at the way technology has put creative tools in the hands of so many and has allowed an increasing number of people to share ideas. We are all aware of the success of YouTube and MySpace for these reasons, and you don’t need me to tell you how cool it is to create a things like web-sites and movies with computers. You know this already. It is likely that you do this a lot.

What I’m interested in is finding a balance between LIVING in the idea-world of computers and breathing through the real world of the outside. This is particularly relevant as I raise my two kids in a house of laptops and electronic music composition tools. Now that I have kids, what I do in these arenas models what I think is important, AND I have to be vigilant and thoughtful in the way I introduce technology to them.

For example, I’ve started “doing Spanish” on the computer with my two-year old son, Charlie. He will sit on my lap and watch (or click) as I match pictures to Spanish words. We have a fine time, and who can argue with passively learning a language at that age? Well, the other night, after a while with Spanish, he was starting to get interested in really using the mouse and soon was directing the pointer ALL OVER the screen. So I opened up a drawing program to see what would happen.

The next thing I knew we were making all kinds of squiggles and shapes on the screen. It was a blast choosing colors for the squiggles and that went on for a while. Now he wants to do it more. But he’s still learning to draw with crayons! So, for now, we’re putting a hold on computer drawing for Charlie.

But limiting children’s access to technology is not what all this is about. I don’t see using computers to make creative work as a problem AT ALL. (Constant multi-tasked media viewing is another thing entirely.) In fact, the article on Nature-Deficit Disorder points an equally scolding finger at parents’ over-protectiveness which limits children’s free outdoor play. I guess what I’m thinking through here is how to continue to craft a life which is intrinsically linked to technology without shutting out nature. How to live deeply in the real world while developing ideas which rely on and leverage computers. And this doesn’t mean bringing my laptop to pretty places.

When it comes down it, it’s about deciding whether to develop certain products I have imagined which will be compelling computer-based music creation tools for people of all ages and skill levels. These are tools which will help people with no musical background create their own music doing more sophisticated things than just combining pre-fab loops. Not only will they facilitate instant music creation, but they will help the user understand what is going on under the hood musically. And they will certainly offer a compelling alternative to a walk outside.