Are They Working or Playing?

“The Electric Ballroom…” By: Sailor Coruscant

A lecture at Geekdom, in San Antonio, Texas, opened by explaining the evolution of electric dance music but ended on a motivational high note.

On Sept. 19, 2012, Jason Torres, a 2010 graduate from the University of Texas at Austin, started off the lecture by explaining his passion — electric dance music, or EDM for short.

“There is so much music we have access to — it’s overwhelming,” Torres said. Audience members were briefed on the history of dance music with audio to back it up.

Torres went into detail about how EDM started in Chicago with house music in the 80s. Then he went on to explain the 90s boom of techno, showering listeners with more electronic sounds and less performer; and how in the 2000s dubstep came out of the U.K.

Nowadays he explained how EDM can be a “over the top kind of experience, visually,” because it is now accompanied by light shows and projection mapping that will “melt your mind.”

“Detail, ‘From a Great Height.’ – A luminous projection-mapped collaboration between @Mary_Franck & @nicoles” By: Aaron Muszalski
This is a version of projection mapping.

After the rave of EDM, Jesse Brede, who runs the Austin label Gravitas Recording, took the mic to share a presentation about going after your own passion.

Brede told listeners to ask themselves, and in this case yourself: What is your passion? What motivates you? And who do you respect the most? He said this might help to figure out what you want to in your life.

He said to set intentions and be who you want to be.

“Do something today to demonstrate your commitment to your intention,” he said. “By setting an intention, you make it clear to yourself and others just what you plan to do.”

Brede also talked about Malcolm Gladwell’s take on the 10,000-Hour Rule, or in other words, the idea that greatness requires a lot time. Brede went on to say that time is people’s only currency in life and posed the question: how do you want to spend this limited resource?

Brede said that honing your craft takes time, but working — making money — doesn’t have to be separate from doing something you enjoy. He encouraged audience members to break into their creative fields and said, “Take that first step into what you want.” He said, you never know who’s going to do what, so be sure to meet new people and network too.

“All work and no play…” By: Per Bolmstedt
This should read without the “no”!!

Brede’s passion is music, and he followed that. He is now part of a 40 plus creative collective with his successful job, Gravitas Recording.

Brede ended the lecture (more like inspiring-pep-talk-that-made-you-want-to-dance) with a quote that is worth quoting again. So here’s leaving you with an idea we should all try to follow from Francoise René Auguste Chateaubriand,

“A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.”