Mark and I played in a band together in Providence (that’s how we met).  He plays bass, and he really is one of the best bass players I’ve ever known.  A lot of dudes who play the bass are really just guitar players who dabble on the bass, usually as a way to get into other people’s bands; Mark really lives and breathes the bass.  He’s just awesome.

Not long after moving to Oakland, I joined a band myself, as a bass player.  (I’m a guitarist, but I dabble on the bass, usually as a way to get into other people’s bands.)  In order to pass as a real bass player, I figured I needed some respectable equipment, so I called Mark for advice.  And I have thought a lot since then about what he told me.

Playing the electric bass in a band, Mark said, is all about headroom.   In other words, what matters in bass amplification isn’t volume so much as potential volume.  In order to be properly amplified, the bassist has to be loud, but with the constant potential—which may never be taken advantage of at all—to be louder.  So when looking for an amplifier setup, you have to find something that will let you be as loud as you need to be at, say, 6.  If you have to turn up to 10 to be heard among the other instruments—even if that seems loud enough— it’s not.

I got a loud enough setup (an Ampeg SVT-350 head with a cheap Behringer cabinet) and lo and behold, you could really hear the headroom in action. It’s all about those little trebly peaks, like in the brushy transitions between notes and such; when you can hear those well, the bass jumps right out of the mix.

(If you’re still reading, thanks for indulging my lengthy setup.  I’m ready to talk about Web design now.)

So White Whale is busy lately—working almost to capacity—and I have found myself thinking about headroom in different terms.  It’s sort of a cliche that Web developers work much more than 40 hours per week— along with bloggers, programmers, and just about everyone who works with computers for a living.  We can generally take our work home with us, which means that if we feel compelled to work hard at our jobs, the only thing standing between us and a 90-hour workweek is our hobbies and our social lives.  If we don’t have anything personally enriching to do, we work.

That’s true of us at White Whale as much as anywhere else. (I’m typing this on my front porch at 8pm.)  But what I’m realizing is that in order for WW to stay engaged, creative and productive, it is absolutely essential for us to maintain a level of headroom in our workload.  We have to have the *potential* to work more, in order to do our work well.

With this in mind, we have a brand new rule:

Nobody at WW is allowed to work nights on a project unless (a) it’s really, really important; (b) it’s super fun; or (c) we literally have nothing else to do.

If we have a big deadline tomorrow, OK, maybe somebody will put in some late hours.  And if my fiancee’s out of town, or I’m in a motel room on a business trip, fine.  And sometimes nothing can stop Donald from geeking out over the single most cross-browser and standards-compliant way to render PNG transparency  But if anyone at WW is working more than, say, 45 hours a week or so on a regular basis, then we need to make changes, either shifting some work to someone else or looking to hire new people.

Maintaining headroom in our work process will enable all of us to achieve the trebly peaks of creativity and discovery that we need to keep our minds engaged, our work fresh, and our lives interesting.

Really? There isn’t even enough imagination left to make up a story to entertain a half-asleep five year old? At what point did we stop pretending that sticks were really swords made in the explicit interest of vanquishing evil? That the grass was lava and if your balance slipped from the edge of the sidewalk you’d be burned alive? That fist-sized rocks were merely feasts in disguise?  Sure, they are childish activities, but when we stopped inventing explanations for why the stars shine, or what the tooth fairy does with all of those teeth and why she/he is willing to leave something valuable in return for them (they of course grind each tooth up with a mortar and pestle, thus rendering it fairy dust, duh), the world through our eyes lost some of its magic.  Instead, our fantastical wonderings were replaced with worries; the plaguing questions that we never utter aloud but rain on our thoughts throughout the day, questions about whether our hair looks good today, or if we are wearing the right clothes, what’s going to happen in the television show ____, or if we are cool enough, or interesting enough, or rich enough, etc. Not only was the magic ripped from our gums, but the subsequent worries only compounded with each passing year; what college am i going to go to? who is going to hire me? how am i going to pay this car payment? does my spouse still love me, etc?

There is an inherent irony in this: when I was little, I wanted nothing more than to be a grown-up; I couldn’t grow up fast enough.  I couldn’t wait to be able to see over the counters, to put my feet on the ground when sitting on the couch, to have a girlfriend, to drive, etc.  These sorts of excitements enthralled me at their very thought on nearly a daily basis for years and years, but now I find myself craving the wonder and excitement—and most importantly the imagination—from childhood. Now, don’t get me wrong, I very much enjoy the freedoms that adulthood has granted me, but what if we could integrate the best of both worlds? Would it be weird to see an adult swashbuckling the air with a stick? Tightrope walking the curb? Hell yes, people would think that you’ve lost your marbles (which was never much of a deterrent for me, but I’m not your average bear either).

So these poor, imaginationless parents, frantic with worry about inventing a few characters to verbally dramatize; I just felt so sorry for them, that in chasing prescribed dreams they’ve simply forgotten—or become too tired—to just think differently for like twenty minutes a day, that their source of inspiration comes solely from reality, or even worse: their nightly programming sessions. Let’s just pick up a brush and some cheap watercolors; let’s create some totally crazy arbitrary story; who cares if no one ever told you how to paint or invent stories, you’ll figure it out along the way, and best of all you’ll figure it out in your own way(s), and guess what? You can’t be wrong! When can you ever say that in adulthood? It’s just a matter of starting to think imaginatively again, and no ‘your sister didn’t get all of the artistic genes in the family’, everyone is totally creative, or at least has the aptitude—you just have to tap back into the creative pathways and let them branch back out; to stop stifling creative thought before it even has a chance to bloom for the sake of facts that you’ve been forced to memorize.  Its like saying you can’t run thirteen miles: of course you can, but probably not easily unless you’ve worked up to that point by running a little here and there.  I mean, in all likelihood none of these aforementioned parents are going to bust out some J.K. Rowling in their first try, but think about how their general approach to life could change if they simply instituted a twenty minute creative sparking session every day…

This message brought to you by my May Day inner-spirit.