Doing a Lick of It
There are these people we call workaholics.
You’ve met them, I’ve met them.
We’re not always kind about them. Generally, the options are pity and derision. Sometimes envy disguised as disdain.
- “Yes, she does 15 pages a day, but she’s just a workaholic, you know. I’d rather have a life.”
- “Yes, he had 12 newspaper op-eds about the book ready for submission before he’d turned in his last draft. What a ridiculous workaholic.”
- “Sure that guy’s already on his third novel, but he’s not even on Twitter. The man’s a workaholic.”
And yet look at the plethora of phrases we have for progress based in work.
We work our way through it, we work something out, we work wonders. We get down to work on works in progress with working theories as to what’s needed to work it out.
And those who have come best through the weird ways of this year frequently seemed to be working.
Some, of course, were the heroes of mercy who work the overcrowded hospitals of the coronavirus’ most damaged victims. And our honor of these workers is absolute, unstinting, profound.
Many more, however, were those who made leaps of faith and daily ritual to work from home without a word, to keep things going without complaint. You could sometimes catch a sense that they’d found something interesting, even engaging and curiously intriguing in seeing just how gracefully they could appear to make adjustments while all around them were struggling to … make it work.
Those are the people, in my experience, who are are still at it, nine months into the best documented pandemic in history: They’re not just watching, they’re working.
Works a Cappella
I’m listening to work of Thomas Tallis as I write this. An English 16th-century liturgical composer of the Chapel Royal, Tallis’ life and work bridged Henry VIII’s break with the Vatican in 1534 and to listen carefully is to hear a body of work that all but floated a deeply shaken and conflicted nation safely to a new shore of rising power. He worked not only for Henry but also for Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I.
What you hear when you listen to Tallis’ work is an endless conversation–with himself, with his singers, with his royal patrons, with his congregations, perhaps with a deity.
This is the kind of music that works like a winding path through a forest of incidents. Sung without accompaniment–a cappella (of the chapel)–his music sounds as if it never stops. This is intentional. World without end. The celestial conversation surges forward, singers cueing and answering each other in long, legato lines of gorgeously timed intersections and diversions. So good were he and his contemporary William Byrd at this that Elizabeth granted them a monopoly on polyphony (there’s a phrase, huh?) for 21 years.
And what did that royal grant include? A patent to print and publish music. So it is that we have that polyphony, in which more than one melody is being pursued at once, each singer prosecuting a line of inquiry, sometimes aligning in generous harmonic agreement and at other times branching out into new directions. It’s an enormous canon. One of Tallis’ works features eight choirs, each with five voices.
All this transporting sound, sheer sonics spun on Latin, took work. Talent lives in work. Skill lives in work.
Working Through It
Like Tallis, today’s writers of books have a certain advantage. While you may not yet have been handed a royal grant by the crown and brought to court to work your magic, the best writers are something Tallis had to be to meet the endless demands of the monarchs he wrote for: a self-starter.
We who write are blessed with safe work in an unsafe time. And we don’t have to have “By Order of Her Majesty” stamped on our efforts in order to do what we do.
Our work is attached to an industry that has thrived despite the nightmare.
As Kristen McLean at NPD BookScan told us earlier this week, as of the week ending December 5, the US book industry was “on the holiday rocket ship” with weekly print-sales volume topping 25 million units. In manufacturer’s suggested retail price, the value of the first week of this month in books was $190 million more than in the previous week. Barack Obama’s A Promised Land alone has sold more than 3,320,000 copies in all formats in the States and Canada. That’s just two of its territories. It was released on November 17 into 23 additional world markets.
(McLean notes that this puts the former president about 77,000 units up on the first lady’s memoir, Becoming. at the December 5 mark. Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets.)
The book publishing industry is on track for a very strong year, which is not what might have been expected in March or April. This gives us much to be thankful for and it reflects, of course, that reading, especially with the adoption of ebooks and audiobooks accelerating during the contagion, has its essential importance in times of struggle and fear and doubt and danger.
And as Tallis must have known while working through the upheaval of the Tudor storm, the blessing of work is a stabilizer, a constant ebb and flow of words and their secret melodies that you can focus on at any time. Or, if you don’t mind being called a workaholic, at all times.
We’re anticipating a 2021 of recovery, of new health and certainty, of much needed civic sanity and much longed-for delivery from pestilence. Please be careful this season. Many are dependent on each of us being scrupulously careful as we await the vaccines. Hunker now.
And my wish for you is that you have the luck to work your way into 2021, as you see fit. May the work help you feel grounded and in touch with progress. May it be something you remember to return to when you’re scared. And may you demand your best work of yourself precisely when things are darkest.
Workaholics, after all, may not be the unthinking, driven souls they seem. They may be onto the fact that their work is a gift they can deploy for themselves and others in good times and bad. There’s peace and light there, even in exhaustion.
Does your work help you get through tough times? Is it something you can return to as a haven? Do you sometimes think you’re becoming a workaholic? If so, any problem with that?
About Porter Anderson
@Porter_Anderson is a recipient of London Book Fair's International Excellence Award for Trade Press Journalist of the Year. He is Editor-in-Chief of Publishing Perspectives, the international news medium of Frankfurt Book Fair New York. He co-founded The Hot Sheet, a newsletter for trade and indie authors, which now is owned and operated by Jane Friedman. Priors: The Bookseller's The FutureBook in London, CNN, CNN.com and CNN International–as well as the Village Voice, Dallas Times Herald, and the United Nations' WFP in Rome. PorterAndersonMedia.com
So enjoyed this post!!! To borrow a thought from a certain movie, you had me at Tallis! Love to listen to his work and to sing it. The beautiful themes, harmonies, and use of astounding polyphony truly touch the soul as a singer and lover of music. As you pointed out, he worked through turbulent times and surely his work is the richer for it. His music had to have come from deep within his soul.
As you also pointed out, writers are working through turbulent times today. Soul rewarding work keeps us sane during times like these and I, for one, am glad to be able to shut out the messy world and write. It keeps me out of trouble!!
Here is my fav Tallis piece to sing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1WwNSfCom8 Love those Kings Singers!!
Linda, you are a kindred spirit. If ye love Me is one of my favorites. I had to sing along too.
Porter, like Linda, you had me at Tallis. I love this music and often think of the secret Masses during Byrd’s time. In March, when our church was closed, we were working on his Mass for 3 voices (we are very tiny schola) and Ne irascaris Domine for 5 voices–give it a listen, it’s so full of longing, esp. when you think of how desolate we felt, the longest Lent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wo8qfyK9c3c
This Advent, on Dec. 8th, we sang our first High Mass since the closures and we’re preparing for Christmas. It’s work that lifts my heart and soul to God. As does the writing. Alas, after my shoulder surgery I was unable to write for several weeks, pain a constant companion, and only just begun and how good it feels to again put pen to paper. I am so grateful we can do the work we love. All I can say is Deo gratias!
Merry Christmas, Porter. Here’s my favorite recording of Handel’s Messiah: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFjQ77ol2DI Enjoy!
Hi, Vijaya,
And thanks for the lovely note. I’m glad you’re over your shoulder injury and able to write again!
Do be careful with the singing. (And I say this repsectfully and out of care, not to overstep your own judgment.) God does not want anyone to risk their lives singing in a religious setting — and you can take that from your friend the son of a Methodist minister and chorister with a special connection upstairs. :)
And thanks for the links, I’m a great fan of the Academy of Ancient Music and this is a lovely rendition of the Handel.
I’ll see you that one and raise you the Hamilton Harty arrangement that Sir Thomas Beecham recorded many decades ago for RCA. Do you know it?
If you’ve never heard this, you have a treat waiting.
Harty, an Irish conductor most closely associated with the Halle Orchestra, wanted to imagine what Handel might have done with the 20th-century orchestral forces Handel never had. The “Handel-Harty” edition of Messiah is known as a landmark for its astonishing power and energy — and speed. Beecham’s recording with the Royal Philharmonic perfectly captured the energy of what Handel may well have written if he were creating the oratorio today.
Here’s where to find it — https://amzn.to/2M4J3Gt — and if you have a Prime membership, you should be able to stream this without charge. RCA sent me a copy on vinyl many years ago because they were (apologetically) out of retail stock and wanted to be sure that all their critics had a copy. It was that important to the company.
I recommend you make two stops before you hear the whole thing.
First, go to “For Unto Us,” which I’m sure you love as much as I do.
The tempo here is quite standard, but from the very first note, you know something is different. There are at least three harps used in some performances of this work to open the piece, and you start to catch on to what Harty was doing with contemporary instrumentation that Handel would have killed for. Our bass brass power today alone could blow Handel’s orchestra off a stage, and Beecham coached his singers to work just as hard as the instrumentalists. In “For Unto Us,” you hear the tenors tear into their lines in a way almost unknown in most performances. And by the time they get to his names — “Wonderful! Counselor!” — the entire orchestra is engaged, triangles jangling above it all with glistening sound.
Then jump to the “Hallelujah,” just to get a sense for where Harty (and Beecham) were headed.
Suddenly that majestic wonder of a piece that normally clumps into a concert hall (and makes everybody stand up because the king did, lol) actually sounds real — with all the panicky, scrambling glory, the mad, ethereal dynamic and eagerness such a world-stopping event as the birth of a deity would bring with it. Cymbals crash, tympani thunder, the strings (an augmented contingent in all three chairs) are whipped up, and the singers almost wrestle with each other to control the ecstasy of the moment.
It’s an amazing achievement and it helps a modern listener — freed of the kind of stately, buttoned-up progress of most renditions — hear just what a celestial fury is being described by the scripture and by Handel’s skill. At several points, you actually wonder if Beecham is completely on top of it, especially in the final bars. The thing goes so fast, it gallops — racing with the urgency of it all, as I think Handel might have wanted it to.
The entire recoridng is fantastic, hence my going on so long. In the same way we work so hard in theater to bring Shakespeare and Racine and Moliere and Sophocles to modern audiences, someone tried to do this with important music. Purists are not happy with this, of course, which I understand — we know this from the theatrical experiences. But I think reinterpretation for an era is a great way to keep a work (that word again) alive and to show its long-term vaibility.
You’ll pardon me for saying it’s a revelation. :)
And all the best to you and the family for the holidays. We surely need them this time — and better moments are just ahead.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Thank you Porter. I got busy with Christmas preparations and missed reading this until now. And no worries–our Latin schola is so tiny, it’s easy to stay apart and sing from the loft. God is good and we are well and grateful to be allowed to sing.
Linda, thanks so much for the note and for the terrific link to the King’s Singers’ “If Ye Love Me” — I like those guys, too, and what a beautiful piece.
If you haven’t seen this yet, they’re putting up some seasonal work, too, including their “Stille Nacht,” also terrific.
Glad you find the work “soul rewarding,” too, as I do. (The sanity part may be going better for you than me, LOL.)
Best for the season and thanks again !
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
I think about becoming a workaholic quite often, now. They seem like the people who achieve the difficult feats in life, and I have some difficult tasks (maybe feats) to complete in the near future.
Hey, Brian,
You’re right. In so many cases, the great successes have been reached by the people who seemed to others to be “driven” or “crazed” or “pushed” by some unseen force to work until they got it right.
A lot of people don’t experience this and thus don’t understand it. Those who have been taught that the “good life” is about ease and comfort are nonplussed when the intensity and determination of a worker flies by them. That’s okay. Just let the ease-and-comfort people enjoy sitting on the couch. They will be your audience and will marvel at how you did it. :)
All the best with the difficult tasks (maybe feats).
If you can imagine yourself excelling in them, you can do just that. And it sounds to me as if you have a good handle on what success looks like.
That’s all it takes. So go for it.
Cheers,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Hi Porter. Did you count how many times you wrote Work? In these times having a novel, a work in progress is a bright spot in my day. Reading a work while resting at the end of that day is necessary. You can get lost in the work. Even inspired. Wishing you health and a stack of new works under your Christmas tree.
Hey, Beth, thanks for the great note!
I was scared to count how many times I said “work” but it was a relief not to worry that I’d repeated a word. :)
And you’re right, the peculiarity of work is that it is your energetic focus at one point (in the day, if you will) and your rest and rejuvenation at another time. Incredible, isn’t it?
I know you know all about this, and I wish you all the best with it.
2021 is very close. Light is coming. Write your way to it.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Porter, your descriptions of Tallis was transporting. I’ll take any opportunity to time-travel back to Tudor England, so I know what I’ll be doing this afternoon. We have snow and land around us, so I’m going to cut loose the voices of the angels right into that silence. But only after I finish working. I’ve been accused of workaholism pretty much all my life. I think a lot of creative people get this tag. If you are always looking for the song, the image, the story, that search gets woven into everything you do. Work has sustained me through a lot of crap, but most especially through the last four years. Stay safe and keep provoking us! And thank you for this wonderful post.
Hey, Susan,
Thanks for the kind words! That’s my start in journalism as a critic showing. (Music, theater, dance, visual arts.) And my love for Tallis.
Always remember that the people who say you’re a workaholic may well be people who feel that they look lazy next to you. During my school years, I ran into a lot of this.
The “Get a life!” people are easily backed down if you yell back at them, “Get a passion!” :)
And yes, the last four years have taken all the energy and therapy that work could provide, couldn’t agree more.
As I write this, we have exactly 27 days, 10 hours, 41 minutes, and 16 seconds to go.
Light at the end of the old cliche. :)
Thanks, good holidays, keep working,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
When we shut down I kept doing my job from home, and then they kind of kicked us out of the office for good and told us we’d be working from home from now on. The flexibility has been beneficial, but I have to say that the lines between day job work and home life are becoming more and more blurry, and the work days are becoming longer bit by bit. I was a little resentful, too, because my writing nook became my work nook (insert sad face here.) It seems, though, that making that transition to working from home where I don’t have external eyes watching to make sure I’m working and getting things done, but have to motivate myself has benefitted me with developing that same skill in regards to writing. I seem to be working more diligently on my current story and holding myself accountable when I’m not. So, yeah, I guess I’m turning into a kind of work-a-holic, but writing has become enjoyable again and is part of that leisure in my own home, so it’s a win-win situation.
Wishing you a Happy Holidays and may our collective New Year be full of all those great things you mentioned, “a 2021 of recovery, of new health and certainty, of much needed civic sanity and much longed-for delivery from pestilence.” You said it perfectly!
Thanks, Lara,
And how great that you’re learning to make the home workspace accommodate both parts of you. This is an accomplishment in itself, for just the collision it can create (as you’ve described), and if the drive of one feeds the energy of the other, so much the better — you’re getting it right.
Win-win is just where you want it. Congratulations!
And the best news is that your workaholism is based in the writing becoming engaging again. That’s when to ride that run: wallow in it. The pleasure of work, as you could tell from my piece, is one of our greatest gifts. You’ve earned it and should allow yourself to enjoy it every minute you can.
Here’s to the right kind of addiction in 2021. :)
All the best,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Win-win is right, and much of publishing is now discussing whether all that expensive office space is needed anymore, now that it’s become clear that
Hey Porter–A fun read, and thought-provoking, too. Although I’m unfamiliar with Tallis (my wife would say I’m more the “recalls the words to every obscure Top 40 hit since 1960” type), you had me at “world without end”–works that continue with storytelling ebb and flow; arcs that overlap and build, taking a pebble’s ripple to a bitchin’ set of swells. Sort of a literary polyphonic continuum.
I feel like I sometimes get the side-eye for having worked within the same story-world for fifteen years. I think it can be seen as being devoid of “new ideas.” But I’m here to testify that it was a boon during the pandemic. Writing in a “world without end” offers an assuaging balm to difficult times; a sort of “this too shall pass” effect that–for me–could be found in the open doc of the WIP. Knowing it’s part of a larger whole, and that there is much of that ongoing story vein that’s yet to be mined, has been what’s kept me coming back, day in and out. I count it as a blessing.
Thanks for always bringing a sustaining dish to pass to the WU feast, Bro. You’ve never been one to just stop at the 7-11 for rolls, and the effort is much appreciated. Wishing you merry Christmas and a safe and productive new year.
Vaughn, bro, sorry I got holidayed in the middle of trying to get back to everybody, and thanks for this great comment.
I think sticking with your story world not only is important but makes good sense, you need to really live in it to develop it fully and you learn it as you go. If it’s helpful in the pandemic situation, all the better, makes sense to me. I’ve considered several alternate realities, myself, during all this. :)
The “world without end” business, of course, lies at the essence of the Christian theology and mythology in which Tallis was working (as was my ministerial father), eternal life being the key offering of that and many of the great faiths.
In the Catholic liturgy and some of the Protestant denominations, the “Gloria Patri” is sung — sometimes by the congregation itself — to a tune that sets off the phrase at the end in a really stentorian, almost martial declaration: “Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be: world without end. Amen. Amen.” Very stirring when you hear it done by people who can sing and with an accomplished organist or other instrumentals. The Charles Meineke musical setting is the one that capitalizes on this.
The Anglican church is best with this. Their organists are really good at galloping the pace (as opposed to the Deeply Southern meander with which it was sung in Daddy’s churches, lol) and throwing on all the bass at the “world without end” moment. Shakes a good cathedral’s pews. Holy surround sound. :)
And thanks for the kind words. Love the rolls stop at 7-11, LOL, I owe it all the the pre-dawn hour at which I write these pieces. Even though 7-11 is open, I can’t get myself out of the house at that hour, so you end up with Thomas Tallis. Necessity is, as they say.
Hope your holidays are going well and that 2021 will require you to escape less into that story world but work it well. After 15 years, that landscape owes you a thing or two. Here’s to synergy,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
What a gift of a post, Porter. Thank you for it. Stay well, my friend, and Happy Holidays to you.
Thanks so much, Therese, and best to you, too, for the holidays and a 2021 that’s totally unlike 2020! :)
Cheers,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
It’s a fine line to tread, between a good day’s work that keeps you fit and helps you sleep and leaves the world that bit better than you found it, on the one hand, and the little voice which says you’ve never done enough, on the other hand.
I happened across a comment I left in a discussion on one of my blog posts, which said “Perfectionism is, after all, merely another name for discontent.” That was two and a half years ago, but I haven’t changed my mind.
Hi, Deborah, and thanks for your comment and for reading my column.
I think it’s easy for us to conflate a devotion to work with perfectionism. That, however, is not what I’m referring to in my piece.
While your point is well taken, I think that one thing that making work central to one’s life can do is get past the overhang of perfectionism. Because you know that you’ll be doing more work — as a meaningful and important feature of your life — you don’t have to demand that each moment produce perfection, which is quite impossible to achieve. We get better as we work, never perfect.
I once asked a friend not to call a very good film “flawless” — no human effort, especially in the creative industries, is perfect. She got it immediately and it helped me explain why, as an arts critic, I’d never been able to call a work or a performance “flawless.”
We redeem our mistakes and shortcomings as we grow and enrich ourselves with the value of what we’re doing, our ongoing work.
Discontent can be a good motivator, actually, as long as it’s not allowed to define your sense of yourself as somehow deficient or failing. Imperfection is the reason to keep working. Discontent gets you out of bed. Which is why we always say it’s a human condition.
For some of us, the little voice saying that we haven’t done enough becomes an old friend. Yes, it might be right, but as we mature and live with ourselves, we also learn how to set the little voice aside, even mute it for a while, because in truth we know we’re doing good things at the pace they need to be done.
I hope it’s a good season for you and that you and your little voice are getting along comfortably.
Best,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson