Walking the dogs on the old Bangour Hospital is all the more foreboding on days like this.

It was on a foggy day like this fifty years ago....

Posted via email from theweir's posterous

Can you hold music?

Isn't it funny what listening to hold music does to us.

We can get impatient - the pace at which this happens depends on the reason we were put on hold. Having worked in the front line of a customer service department for 7 years, I've not got a problem with being put on hold. Far from it.

I found myself on hold, all in all for about 15 minutes last night. There was music playing while on hold. It was romantic-period classical music, I think. Nearing the end of this time on hold, I found my mind drifting to the episode of The West Wing where Josh is trying to call someone (I can't remember who, and not had a chance to watch episode 14 of season 2 to find out) and ends up in "some kind of hellish hold world of holding".

To me it's such a memorable portrayal of that character's exasperation - and our impatience. I was chuckling at my own trip into the stereotypical response - then suddenly I heard what the flute player was doing. I head the effort that had gone in to making the sounds I was listening to. I heard the breath that flute player was pushing into that piece of metal with such skill that the notes were dancing out.

At that moment, I really didn't mind being on hold. I was caught by what I was hearing.

How often is music (be it on hold or in person) limited to a nice, useful, background noise? There was so much effort put into developing the craft of playing the instruments as the passion of people's lives had been poured into it. And I could listen to it nonchelantly as though it was hardly even there. Perhaps it's because the atypical hold music is bland?

All of this reminded me of the clips in The Matrix where you see the *code* that sits behind the construct. That there's depth to our lives we can miss by not being fully present.

Sure we can't give attention to all that's going on around us, but I'm confident there's times where I can be giving my attention to far fewer things, and as a result paying more quality attention...

I see people

Catching up on my Google Reader feeds earlier, I read what Garr Reynolds' short piece on "we notice faces". It reminded me of something that's gone 'round my head for a few years.

I'm sure we've often had moments of thinking "do I know you...?" when we genuinely don't. For the more socially awkward, this can lead to embarrassing moments of "you look just like my last best friend" or "you look just like my old boss. I couldn't stand them".

They say you can tell a lot about someone from their face. I for one have been prone to more than the occasional bit of facial leakage. You know, where you inadvertently pull a face when speaking with someone - or doing something. However, I have often wondered if you can tell which strand of the human genome - not that I *really* know what that means - from the features on someone's face.

I remember faces, I guess because I try and remember what things look like. Don't we all. It seems like I remember features of faces too though - and not the extra-ordinary ones, but the regular, ordinary - just-like-me faces.

Sometimes you see the similarities between people - they might come from different parts of the country, or the world, but there might be a defining feature that looks familiar. The way their eyes sit on their face, the way their nose hangs like a piping bag that's lost some of it's icing.

I would love to have some pictures to share to demonstrate this, but I've found it tricky to ask people if they'd mind taking part in this wee un-scientific experiment.

Next time you are near a lot of people, look at their faces and see if you can spot the bits of their faces that are similar. Or maybe I'm just a wack-job!

Why? Well, if we're all connected, then it's nice to be reminded of that now and again.

Just don't stare to hard, or you might end up with a few extra features on your own face!