CPA, Part 2

Before his stroke, my mother’s father was regarded as multitalented—he painted, he played the fiddle, he built things in his woodshop. When we would visit my grandparents in Missouri every summer, he would let me sit next to him in his woodshop while he worked. He would make whatever he was making (I don’t remember, I was 6) while I would bang nails into scraps of wood with no skill but great enthusiasm.

He wasn’t thought of as special because he could do those things—a lot of people could paint and so on. When he was growing up in the 20s, these were comparatively widespread forms of self-expression. Somewhere in my lost Adrienne Rich book, she makes a point about America’s continued movement towards focused specialization and away from broader skills. Thus we miss out on the undemanding pleasure of being able to do several things, not professionally, but well enough for everyday life… (imagine that quote right here, dangnabbit)

So grandpa Herb wasn’t special because he had some talent in these areas. Many people did. Rather, he was unusual because he could do some of them at the same time.

After he had his stroke, my grandfolks moved out to CA so he could be cared for by the family. Sometimes my grandma would babysit me, and I’d hang out, boredly poking through their things. (Such a rude kid I was). Grandpa’s self-portrait in the living room always fascinated me. It showed a much younger man with a head full of red hair, holding a fiddle on his porch. The family legend was that he painted it from a photo with his right hand, while simultaneously working on a math problem with his right. (I think of this as the ultimate artistic version of patting your head while rubbing your stomach). I wish I had the opportunity to know that version of my grandfather when I was old enough to clearly remember him.

Today, Smart People Who Know Things are becoming concerned about our ability to manage simultaneous interactions—and yet, aren’t most of them some version of typing and/or reading a screen? It’s not even a left brain/right brain problem, and it’s certainly no picture painting/math problem solving exercise.
I’ll admit; I am not so great about multitasking in this maner. (For example, one of my most recent IM sessions really suffered from my simultaneous participation in a company teleconference. Sorry R! But my boss kept mentioning my name—typos were inevitable.) But those of us who are cybernomads, or those who are naturally gifted like my grandpa, will show us all that we are not close to touching the limits of these multiple interactions.