I love her a lot.

More photos here.

For thou didst form my inward parts,
thou didst knit me together in my mother’s womb.
my frame was not hidden from thee,
when I was being made in secret, intricately wrought…
Thy eyes beheld my unformed substance;
in thy book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.

With thanks to Sarah Tipson.

Inside the package was a jewel case and a note that began:

Hi Chris!

Since your reminiscence was in Brian’s memorial, representing the younger generation, I thought I’d send you a copy of the service. You probably will recognize most of the musicians, since your dad performed with them.

The “Brian” is Brian Howard, who died one year ago on Tuesday. The reminiscence is something I wrote here the day after, which Brian’s wife Lynne asked if they could read at his memorial service.

In the jewel case are two DVDs which hold a recording of Brian’s service. I’ll be honest: I haven’t watched them. (Or listened? I’m not even sure if it’s an audio or video recording.) I just don’t think I’m quite ready to do it yet. Somehow, at 31 years old, I’ve never been to a funeral. Not once, not yet. Not because I’ve avoided them, but because I’ve somehow known only a very few people who have died, and those few have had funerals far away at times when I was unable to travel.

And so, as special as it is to have been part of Brian’s service, I can’t yet bring myself to see it. Instead, I’m going to leave it on my desk. One of these days I’ll pop it in and listen to the music they played to honor him. Just not yet.

But Brian is on my mind today, and ever since the day this package arrived in the mail. Ever since NPR included him in a list of remarkable lives lost in 2010. Right now, I’m finding the memory of Brian’s calm, warm spirit extremely…timely. I mean, I’m a firmly non-superstitious person, but that doesn’t mean I can’t reflect on synchronicity.

For me, the synchronicity of this moment is in the bubbling excitement I feel as the little company I founded begins to find its legs. Sometimes I get so excited I have trouble sleeping. I wake up euphoric at the friends I get to work with and the stuff we get to make. And then, behind the euphoria, a little kernel of fear, telling me that these things go in cycles, that there will be a slog, that something hard is coming, that there will be endless surprises, and not all of them will be good.

And then, behind that, there’s Brian.

Calm, self-deprecating Brian. Goofy Brian. Brian, who was one of the original four people who who made a computer that changed the world, and you’d never, ever know it until someone else told you.

Brian, who did not seem to consider his work at Apple anything more (or less) special than…. well, than any other honest, hard-working job.

For the last couple of months, a quiet, kind Brian has been hovering in the back of my consciousness. He quietly listens, as he did in real life when I was a kid, to my slightly manic scheming and my eager, excited ideas. He doesn’t say much back. He’s just calm, and he listens, and maybe he even smiles a bit at the corners of his eyes.

A year before he died, Brian wrote:

Personally, I am not worried about my life ending. Really, it will be the people around me that have to deal with it, going on living with a me-shaped hole in their lives. For me it will just be over, so no concern of mine. …But I’ve had a good life, long enough, in a beautiful place, doing interesting things, surrounded by great friends and family. For me, that’s enough. And it’s a lot.”

— Ruminations on chemo, etc., February 9, 2009

After the last time we saw Brian and his wife Lynne, on a visit to Tennessee, Lynne sent me a picture she had snapped on the trail where we hiked.

I remember this moment very clearly. I was sitting on the trail alone, watching the waterfall. Brian came over and sat next to me. We sat there in complete silence, and stared at the water. I couldn’t see him, but I could feel him over my shoulder. I wanted to say something, but there really wasn’t anything to say. So we just sat. I am grateful to have this picture, but I don’t need it. I was paying attention very very hard during those few minutes, so I remember them pretty well.

I’m excited about this year. I’m hopeful, and I’m stoked. But if ever I get a little too excited, too far down that road of what might happen, what could happen, what I hope will happen, what I fear will happen… there are waterfalls all around me, and it’s awfully good to just sit and hear the water for a while.

For the record, the project went like this: collect a bunch of noise-makers. (Xylophone, brick, dry leaves, old car horn, and, of course, cow bell.) Have my parents make noise. Walk away from the noise until I can’t hear it anymore. Measure the distance at which the sound becomes inaudible. Do this twice for each sound source: once facing toward the sound, once facing away. Graph the results. Discovery: ears are not omnidirectional.

I always thought that was a pretty damn great science fair project for 2nd grade. Apparently the judges did too, because someone overheard them saying my parents had done it for me and therefore docked me points.

Not that I’m still bitter.

Definitely not still bitter.

The End.

Toolbox: Flip camera, Final Cut Express, ScreenFlow, Soundflower, WireTap Studio, and QLab.

Music: Hey Pocky A-Way, The Meters. (Amazon, iTunes)

I dig that.

Anyway, here’s the page for our conversation:

The competitive advantage of hiring artists, A conversation with Chris Ashworth

Despite the specificity of the title, we hit a bunch of topics in that hour of chatting. Listen in and hear me:

• railing against sick days
• pleading with businesses to question the rules of their workplace
• ranting about pricing your work
• wondering whether your art can be better instead of cheaper
• hollering “F permission”

and

• making my case for how Star Trek, positronic brains, human evolution and racism all relate to hiring.

1. Beware the justice of Nature.
2. Understand that there can be no successful human economy apart from Nature or in defiance of Nature.
3. Understand that no amount of education can overcome the innate limits of human intelligence and responsibility. We are not smart enough or conscious enough or alert enough to work responsibly on a gigantic scale.
4. In making things always bigger and more centralized, we make them both more vulnerable in themselves and more dangerous to everything else. Learn, therefore, to prefer small-scale elegance and generosity to large-scale greed, crudity, and glamour.
5. Make a home. Help to make a community. Be loyal to what you have made.
6. Put the interest of the community first.
7. Love your neighbors–not the neighbors you pick out, but the ones you have.
8. Love this miraculous world that we did not make, that is a gift to us.
9. As far as you are able make your lives dependent upon your local place, neighborhood, and household–which thrive by care and generosity–and independent of the industrial economy, which thrives by damage.
10. Find work, if you can, that does no damage. Enjoy your work. Work well.

Discovered via Scott Walters.

And yes, if you’re viewing this in anything approaching a decent browser, those are real, non-standard fonts. Hallelujah!

EDITED on March 28th to add: And if by “poking and prodding” you mean, “redo everything except the font choices”, then: done and done.

Or: “So THAT just happened.”

Or: “In a few hours the circle closes and I am going to yell about it from my little rooftop because although it ain’t really all that huge — wow it sure feels huge to me.”

Warning: personal story ahead. And yeah, it’s kind of long. Skip it if you want. I don’t care. I’ll yell this to empty streets and feel damn fine about it.

Everyone gone? Cool. Alright empty streets! Just you and me now!

[Deep breath in.] Aaaaaannnd…..

August, 2004 — Swallowing the seed

In August 2004, I join my Actor’s Theatre Apprentice buddies John Catron, Jenna Close, and Bradley Wayne Smith as they take their newly-formed theatre company to the Edinburough Fringe.

We pass customs!

We roam the streets!

We hawk our wares! (Seen here: John Catron as the Smallest Full Grown Man Alive!)

We even put on a show!

I serve as light op, sound op, stage manager, and house manager. From inside a coat closet. A very, very small coat closet.

Audio runs from iTunes, on that laptop balanced precariously on a stool there in the middle. To the left: light board and audio mixer! To the right: script and wall switches! Not pictured: the furious concentration needed to run this (uncomplicated) show!

October 14 2004 — “I’m wondering…”

Later that year, John writes me an email. Says they’re doing a new show in January. Says a CD player won’t cut it. Asks if I know of a Mac-based application for running sound effects. I think to myself, “sure, I’ll Google one for you”.

Huh. Doesn’t seem to be a lot out there for Mac. Wasn’t expecting that.

I write an email to my buddies Jesse Kriss and Jen Wang:

Editor’s note: you should check out Cricket. It’s cool, and it does stuff QLab doesn’t.

Jesse writes back:

And, in perhaps the most loaded one-line email afterthought I’ve ever received:

And so it begins.

And when I say “it begins”, I mean “it begins from scratch”. To wit:

• We’d never used CoreAudio before.
• We’d never used XCode before.
• We’d never used Objective-C before.
• We’d never written a Mac application before.
• We’d never written a full application of any kind before.

Remember above how I said they needed something in January? And how it is currently late October?

October 17, 2004 — Who cares?! We’re young, we’re ignorant, and sketching interfaces is fun!

Jesse lobs the first sketch at me (click for larger version):

October 18, 2004 — Hello rabbit hole! Mind if we poke our nose in?

In an email entitled “i heart obj-c”, Jesse writes:

So I’m doing my reading and playing around a bit. Obj-C is pretty damned cool. And the Apple frameworks are pretty nice, too.

October 19, 2004 — Hey this thing makes noise!

I write:

I actually managed to get a little bit of other work done today (although I haven’t even STARTED the ten page paper technically due tomorrow! Wheee!!), but I couldn’t resist putting in a little time on this as well. I am now able to read, write, and play the following file types:

AIFC
AIFF
MPEG Layer 3
NeXT/Sun
Sound Designer II
WAVE
AC3
AAC ADTS

I’ve also been thinking about design choices and I hope to send along some sketches of possible design patterns and object models we could use in the next couple of days.

This is all just to say…ummm…”Cool. We’re making progress.”

Cheers,
Christopher

November 24, 2004

First test version sent to John! Sweet!

John tries it. And…it doesn’t work! Suck!

A few hours later, we figure out the problem. (Hi ZeroLink! A note from future me: you suck, and Apple later kills you because you suck. Just FYI.)

And finally: Off and running!

November-December, 2004

Bug report, fix, add, bug report, fix, add, scramble.

3AM iChat sessions with Jesse.

Homework be damned.

January 14, 2005

First show. IT LIVES! And it looks like this!

Winter, 2005

Exhaustion.

Oh, yeah, and school. Probably should work on that.

Spring, 2005

Man, school sucks.

I want something fun to work on. Hey, that sound cue project was pretty fun. Maybe I’ll dust that code off and take another look.

Summer, 2005

Write write write rip out write write delete write rewrite write rewrite sleep write sketch write.

June 14th, 2005

Hey Jesse! Look at this cool widget I just made!

December 29, 2005

First public beta release. Hey, theatre-sound@listserv.aol.com! Um, anyone here want to take a look at this thing I’ve been fiddling with?

Hi all,

My name’s Chris; I’m a new member of the list.

I’ve been working on a new sound design/playback application for Mac OS X, and I am looking for folks who can help me improve it.

[...snip...]

Theatre making is damn well hard enough, in my opinion, so I set out to build a new tool: QLab. After over a year of work, the first beta versions are ready for public testing. Here’s the address:

http://figure53.com

QLab is free, and will remain so. [Editor's note: yup, we've still got a really nice free version.] My background in theatre makes me hungry to improve it, and my background in computers gives me the tools to do so, but I look to you–those with a strong background in sound design–to help me know how it should evolve to serve you best.

Remember, this is beta software; I need your help to push it and poke it and learn how to make it better.

I hope to hear back from any of you who can spare a moment to give me some feedback.

best to all,
and (early) happy new year,
Christopher

Winter 2006

Wow! People are trying it out! And emailing me! This is so much fun!

Later Winter 2006

Wow! People are using it! People are using it!

Spring 2006

Wow…people are…really using it?

Ohshitohshitohshitohshit.

May 10 2006

Okay, okay, calm down. There are just a few people playing around with it for some high school plays and some community theater productions. It’s cool, it’s cool.

Huh, what’s this email in my inbox?

My name is [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] referred me to your software recently. After lengthy discussions and a good bit of testing I decided I could try using QLab instead of our tried and true Instant Replay Systems. While it might have been better to try it out on a smaller, less significant show; timing worked out that my rig was ready for operation just in time for a huge show, produced by one of our most important clients.

Although I was somewhat nervous to try the new technology on such a high profile event, the potential upside overshadowed my concerns. My ambition was quickly rewarded.

[...] QLab has changed everything. [...]

Thank you for such a valuable product. I would be glad to help in anyway you need to further develop this tool. Feel free to quote me on any of this and if you need any specific quotes or anything I’d be happy to help. I have also included a couple of pictures from the [REDACTED] Show.

Also, can I get a copy of the pro version?

Ohshitohshitohshitohshit.

September 16 2006

Okay, fine. Let’s do this thing.

Version 1.0.0. Base version still free. Pro features available for a small fee. Let’s see what happens.

And man, this is fun.

And it now looks, more or less, like this:

(Click for larger version)

And then, the blur

Things start to pick up steam. More and more folks start using it. More and more folks tell their friends.

February 11 2008

Last release of version 1. I duck into my mental bunker, and begin work on version 2.

April 7 2008

I officially quit my day job. I start working for Figure 53 full time.

More blur

High schools. Community theaters. Regional theaters. Then Broadway. Then the West End. Shows winning Tony awards.

January 30, 2009

Version 2.

My wife will tell you: I was literally shaking when I pressed the “Send” button on that email. Shay. King.

And as a present to myself, I bought a Wii. Thought I’d finally take a day off, play some video games for the first time in, well, years.

Silly Christopher. You really thought you could tear yourself away from your computer on release day? Really? Silly, silly man.

Ze goggles, zey do nothing!

More colleges. More national theaters of foreign countries. More shows winning Tony awards. Then shows that are too big for me to be allowed to mention them. (Hint: do you watch TV? You’ve probably recently heard QLab.) (Edited later to add: The cat’s out of the bag.)

And using the momentum produced by version 2, Figure 53 launches into a new era: I get to invite my dear friend and code ninja Sean Dougall on board.

Closely followed by, yes, you guessed it, the guy who was there at the beginning: Jesse Kriss.

IS THERE A POINT OR ARE YOU JUST GOING TO BRAG AT ME?!?!?

Wow, empty streets, didn’t know you could vocalize.

ANSWER THE QUESTION, IGNOMINIOUS ROOFTOP YELLER!

Okay, fine, here’s the point.

Yes, I’m proud of this stuff, and yes the experience has repeatedly sent shocks of adrenaline through my system, and, god, it’s incredible to serve professionals of such deep intelligence and skill.

But right now all that stuff is just the context for my point. Which is a very personal one, and which is this:

A lot of milestones have come and gone. Except one. I’ve never been part of a show that actually used the damn thing.

Until tonight. Which, dear empty streets, is why I’m up here embarrassing myself with all this carrying on. Taking out the baby pictures. Talking at you until your eyes glaze over. Because tonight at Single Carrot Theatre the circle closes, and I’ll participate in a show run on QLab, and this has been five years in the making, and frankly I’m feeling a little emotional about it.

…

So, um…thanks.

….that’s pretty much it.

Thanks for indulging me, empty streets.

…which way down from this roof again?

Oh, and, Baltimore: maybe come see the show? It’d sure be an honor to have you there. Click below for tickets: