the working life

The useful O'Reilly Radar has a post on Payscale, which seems to me a perfect web 2.0 (augh!) application - they provide actual information in exchange for your personal anonymized data. At least it appears to be anonymized, I'd have to dig deeper to see if it really is.

From there, on to career paths and the peculiarly upper-class-American notion that you can do what you love and get paid for it. This irritates me. The rest of the world knows that if you're lucky enough to have a paying job that doesn't kill you, you're well ahead of the game. Certainly if you love what you do to earn a living, you'll never have to work, but it takes a fortunate alignment of the planets at birth to get into that happy groove. What becomes of the multitudes of unloveable jobs that have to be done, passion or no ? I like the idea that necessary work honestly done can be just as rewarding, though this may itself be a comfortable delusion. I am however certain that if you have to chase after happiness, you'll never catch it. It's more like a unicorn, but that's a different post..

This notion often gets tangled up with the idea that most people in our brave new world will change jobs many times. This is typically presented with a Panglossian chirpiness, by someone who's never had to change jobs: together with a distressing lack of curiosity about the reasons for, and consequences of, those changes. Actual data shows: "the adverse consequences of losing one’s job appear to have increased. In particular, a higher fraction of unemployed workers remain unemployed for very long periods, and the average reduction in earnings once they are reemployed appears to have grown." A typical earnings loss for the college-educated is about 21%. This is not quite so rosy a prospect as following your passion to a lucrative new job. "A dream took me away from here, but a dream can't bring me home again" (Tom Waits I think).

It's also worth noting the conflation of 'jobs' and 'careers' in these airy tales. Per Webster , a career is "a profession for which one trains and which is undertaken as a permanent calling". By definition it's not possible to have multiple careers, since it takes time to train and time to practice any one career. Becoming an engineer for example takes four or five years of study followed by professional certification, after which you have only the first clue about engineering. Another five or ten years of work in the field gets you to competency. Now imagine retraining for a new career, starting another five years of training on no salary. This time around, with a middle-aged mind and energy levels, plus dependents both familial and inanimate (try maintaining a house without regular infusions of money and see what happens). The interest rates for student loans are now higher, and there are fewer scholarships or grants available. Those fabulous stories of multiple-careerists are either about jobs, not careers: or the protagonist is independently wealthy: or their first career gave them wealth enough to pursue their dreams.

By way of concrete example, a friend who was laid off two years ago, is attempting to retrain as a physician's assistant. The coursework alone is $30k, and there are several pre-med courses to be completed before then, since a degree in computer science doesn't cover the life sciences. There are 60 slots per year in the local university program, for which a thousand or more applicants compete. She's working part-time at one of those unloveable jobs to pay for the studies; studying part-time to get the prerequisites; working full-time as a mom. These add up to rather more than a full life. This career change is voluntary, but the decision was made much easier by being unable to find a job in the first career, post-layoff.

S. African music

on a recent visit to South Africa I stocked up on some new music by old musicians. As life gallops on by at an ever-increasing pace, I find it hard to keep up with the scene: so just buy the names I know. It is a little depressing to find most of them simply repeating their effects. Although they are good effects, I ache, I burn, for newness.. ok enough whining, on to the details.

1. Vusi Mahlasela, Guiding Star
His first release, When You Come Back, was spellbinding. Torrents of magnificent musicality, raw emotion bound by polished execution. This is definitely one of my desert island discs (do I date myself ? very well, I date myself).
Silang Mabele (1997) was the next one I heard. Far more subdued, not the staggering brilliance of the first release, mellower but still inspired. It has a fine cover of the Bright Blue song Weeping.

Guiding Star continues the trend to easy listening, at least if you don't pay attention to the lyrics. I'm having a hard time getting to grips with this one - it's so smooth as to disappear. I'll have to move it to mp3 so I can use headphones and listen fully. All kinds of guest artists here, Dave Matthews most famously.

Johnny Clegg, One Life
Juluka and Savuka are on the soundtrack of my life. I can't dislike anything by le Zoulou blanc, still I find nothing here that compels. Good but only for aficionados.

David Kramer, Karoo Kitaar Blues and Huistoe
Karoo Kitaar is from a show recorded at the Baxter theatre in Cape Town, which raises all kinds of ghosts from my past. Leaving those wraiths to gibber and rattle their chains in the background, the strongest songs on here are all DK's. The Karoo Kitaarists are probably best when both seen and heard. Listening alone did not move me.

Huistoe was inspired by the Karoo music. For some reason the track Onnerwater sounds to me exactly like one of the Springsteen 'Seeger session' tunes, yet none of them are actually like Onnerwater. Guess I'm getting old and batty, or perhaps there's some Jungian imperative at work in the undercurrents of folk music. Huistoe grew on me, at first listen it seemed to be boeremusiek mit concertinas and only flashes of DK's verve, not very interesting. Upon reflection and repeated listening it gets considerably better.
Klipspringer is the 5-yr-old's favorite tune, much requested while driving - 'track number 9, please' says he, getting in to the car. Like many of DK's songs, it makes me want to howl like a lonely wolf, but that's what you get for leaving home.

Soweto String Quartet, Our World
Earlier work by SSQ was absolutely marvellous, remixes of classical music with African inspirations, and vice versa. On this one, they wander off into boeremusiek (Sarie Marais) and popular music, with unhappy results. 'Sarie Marais' may once have had a honest feeling behind it, but I can no longer hear past the Afrikaner Nationalist years; 'I want to know what love is' was meretricious from first conception. The CD is still worth a listen, but not as enjoyable as the earlier ones.

The Dagger

The Dagger
Jorge Luis Borges

to Margarita Bunge

A dagger rests in a drawer.
It was forged in Toledo at the end of the last

  century. Luis Melián Lafur gave it to my
  father, who brought it from Uruguay. Evaristo
  Carriego once held it in his hand.

Whoever lays eyes on it has to pick up the dagger

  and toy with it, as if he had always been on the 

  lookout for it. The hand is quick to grip the 

  waiting hilt, and the powerful obeying blade 

  slides in and out of the sheath with a click. 

This is not what the dagger wants. 

It is more than a structure of metal; men conceived it
  and shaped it with a single end in mind. It is, in 

  some eternal way, the dagger that last night
  knifed a man in Tacuarembó and the daggers

  that rained on Caesar. It wants to kill, it wants to

  shed sudden blood. 

In a drawer of my writing table, among draft
  pages and old letters, the dagger dreams over 

  and over its simple tiger's dream. On wielding
  it the hand comes alive because the metal comes

  alive, sensing itself, each time handled, in touch
  with the killer for whom it was forged. 

At times I am sorry for it. Such power and single-
  mindedness, so impassive or innocent in its pride, 

  and the years slip by, unheeding.

tr. Norman Thomas di Giovanni