Good morning and welcome to the First Unitarian Society. My name is Kelly Crocker and I'm one of the ministers here. Today I'm joined by my colleague, the Reverend Kelly Asperg-Jackson, the worship team of Linda Warren, Drew Collins, Daniel Gregorius, Daniel Carnes, and Stephen Gregorius. They just combined the guy stand up so they see that you're actually two people. Daniel and Stephen. You may not know that there's the two of them behind that booth every week making it all happen. And a very special welcome to our guest musicians, Chelsea Bowles, Margie Marion, and Phillip DellaQuest. Thank you for being with us. At First Unitarian Society, we question boldly, listen humbly, grow spiritually, act courageously, and love unapologetically. If you're visiting us today, welcome. We're so very glad that you are with us. If you'd like more information about First Unitarian Society, please stop by the welcome table that is located in the commons through those doors to your right next to the elevator. We also hope that you'll be able to stay and join us for coffee hour immediately following our service, also held in the commons. And for those of you joining us virtually, we welcome you as well. We are so very glad that you are with us this morning. We hope you'll take a moment to watch the announcement slides shown immediately after today's service to learn more about our upcoming programs and activities. And now I invite us into a moment of silence as we center ourselves and bring ourselves into this time joining together once again in community. The curtain comes up on a large room with large windows and medium sized chairs. It is a Sunday morning in summer, a hot summer and dry enough for the people to remark upon and offer gratitude for each small dose of rain. Those rain appreciating people have gathered in those medium sized chairs. Well, some of them have. A few still linger outside of the room listening, one or two toil in the kitchen getting things ready for after the proceedings have ended to the benefit of all the rest. Some will arrive late, of course, their presence no less important. And some others still are in places seemingly separate, even at times entirely different this afternoon or later this week or in the chill of winter, three years from now. But they are no less apart of the people. That cast of characters is too large to list out completely. But it does include at least one person who is here for the first time. At least one elder who has been here an uncountable number of times before. And even though they are not too terribly impressed with the still relatively new still relatively young preacher, they continue to attend, not me. You're not an elder yet, Kelly. They continue to attend loyally nevertheless. At least one child who is already working on the question they will ask during the message for all ages. At least one person who is carrying a grief or a pain or a secret they aren't ready to share yet. Perhaps they will feel a little more ready by the end of the hour. All these people have gathered for a worship service. They adhere to a particularly skeptical mode of religion which requires that this question must be asked periodically. What are we supposed to be worshiping anyway? And the ritual response comes. The word worship in its origins means to ascribe worth to something. We do not all have to have exactly the same thing or things in mind every time we gather in order to explore what may be worthy together. This exchange and the sharing of coffee are among their traditions most frequently observed sacraments. This service has a stage and many vibrant characters and scenery in the form of real orchids and fake ferns. It has a score, even a script, but if it is a play it is a strange one. One that asks its players, all of us, not to pretend to be people and things we are not, but to practice being what we already are worthy. Ready now? The show is starting. Don't be worried if you can't remember your lines. They will be provided on the screen in front of you. Come, let us worship together. And we invite you now to rise in all the ways we do, joining together in our words of affirmation. Deep calls unto deep. Joy calls unto joy. Light calls unto light. Let the kindling of this flame rekindle in us the inner light of love, of peace, of hope. And as one flame lights another, nor grows the less, we pledge ourselves to be bearers of the light wherever we are. Good morning. Let's sing together our opening hymn number 1010 in the Teal hymnal. We give thanks. Just sing that one more time. I would like to invite anyone who would like to take part in telling a story with me today to come on down.  How do you like that? Come on, come on. It's good to see you. Good morning. I'm so glad you're here. So I want to tell a story today, but I need your help to tell it. Would you be willing to help me a little bit? Yeah. Thank you so much. So this is a story that comes from the Buddhist tradition. It's actually a story that there are different versions of that I've heard from different parts of the world, different religions, different cultures. And it's always a little bit different, but it has the same basic concept. And I chose this one. I chose this version of it because this is the one that has monkeys in it. And I thought that would be fun. So here's the help that I need. I need you to pretend to be monkeys for a little bit. Can we do that? Can we can we get a little monkey impression going on? Like, like, what's a monkey like? Yeah, classic, right? All right, little, little, little, yeah. If you're good at pantomiming, having a tail, that might help. But so OK, so here's the situation. Once upon a time, there were a whole bunch of monkeys who all lived in the jungle. And there was one monkey who came with a very serious problem that he had to report to the other monkeys to get their help with. I'm that monkey. OK, so here's the deal, monkeys. All right. I was over by the well. You know, well is like a hole in the ground where there's water in it, right? I was over by the well in the middle of the night, and I saw that the moon had fallen out of the sky and into the well. Because I looked down and there was the moon, clear as it could be, right at the bottom of the well. So what are we going to do about that? It seems like that's a problem right at the moons down in the bottom of the well instead of up in the sky where it's supposed to be. What do you think? You think that moons are really huge. You know, that's a good point. But somehow it fit in the well because I saw the whole thing down there in the bottom of the well. It's just a reflect, like, so you're telling me, you're telling me that all the way down at the bottom of the well, that's not the whole moon down there, it's just the reflection of the moon, like a mirror, right? Like the water, the water made a reflection of the moon in the sky. Yes. Oh boy. Well, that's good news in one sense because it means that we don't have actual problem. It means the moon's still up in the sky. But it's bad news in another sense in that the entire premise of the story is now thrown completely out of whack. But that's what happens sometimes when you have very clever monkeys. Sometimes they outsmart the premise of the story. Because I was going to do a whole thing about how we're going to have to form a chain and reach down all the way into the bottom of the well and try to pull the moon out and then we'd all fall into the well and that would be very unfortunate. But see, here we are because we understand, at least one of us understands the way that light reflects off of water. You've saved all of us from a terrible fate of falling into the well. Thank you so much. What we can accomplish when we work together. And now we will sing our children to their activities. And you can turn the day from... I invite you now into this time of giving and receiving where we give freely and generously to this offering, which sustains and strengthens the work of our community. You'll see on your screen that you can donate directly from our website, fussmedicine.org. You'll see the text to give information there as well. And we thank you for your generosity and your faith in this life we create together. Thank you so much for that beautiful music. Religious professionals, we whose work it is to craft and lead worship on a frequent basis, largely rankle at any discussion of the theater in the same breath as our own trade. As a class, we take great pride in being distinct from actors and take great pains to emphasize that our services decidedly are not performances. This is for at least two main reasons. The first harkens back to Plato's ancient argument for why, in an ideal society, theater should be banned entirely. This is the premise that the fundamental act of acting is deceit, pretending to be something one is not. A worship service, on the other hand, is all about authenticity, being more true to our own deep selves than we might otherwise be, not less. And the second reason is the idea that in a performance there is a passive audience, and it is extremely important to always make a strong distinction between that mode of experience and the active participation of a congregation in a worship service. But this morning, I want specifically to put aside that resistance to the comparison. Because there are real parallels, indeed a close historical relationship, between the theater and the house of worship. Because the particular space that the stage creates offers the potential for deep spiritual and existential insights, and it would be a shame for us to ignore them. And because both of those reasons for pretending to a perfect separation between these two disciplines hinge on a facile understanding of what theater is and how it actually functions in practice. Let's begin there with that first reason to hold the dramatic world at a distance, because it is about people pretending to be things they are not. There's a play by George Kaufman and Moss Hart in which two men get into an argument. They're both about the same age, old enough to have grandchildren. Mr. Kirby spends his days working hard, trying to make as much money as he can, and he's made quite a bit of it over the years. Mr. Vanderhoof used to be about the same way, but now he's retired and doesn't see the point in it anymore. What's all that money supposed to be for? Mr. Kirby thinks that attitude is foolish and dangerous and downright un-American. So they argue about it a while. Mr. Vanderhoof talks about the things he likes to do now that he has the time for them. Read, talk, notice the seasons passing by, maybe visit the zoo. And Kirby remarks that we can't all very well live that way with everybody going to zoos whenever they feel like it. And then, because people in plays often have important secrets that are revealed at just the right moment, it comes to be known that Mr. Kirby had a dream once before he began spending all of his days making money. He wanted to be a saxophone player. He still has a saxophone at home in his closet, a reminder of what might have been, of the life he might have lived instead of the one he was living now. Now, real people, the sort you don't find as characters in plays, also often have important secrets. So it may be that wherever you are at this very moment, there is a saxophone not too far away tucked back in a closet. There is some dream you put aside, some life you might have lived instead of the one you are living now. The universe is full of varied possibilities, and we only get to be one version of ourselves at a time. Both that play, You Can't Take It With You, is the title. And any worship service might help a person who experiences it to get a little clarity for a moment, to ask ourselves anew, this day, am I living the life that I ought to be instead of just rolling along with the life that I happen to lead? To remind ourselves that it is never too late to open up that closet, reach way into the back, and take out the saxophone again. Hopefully this illustrates that the pretending which is essential to acting is not simply the moral equivalent of a lie. Lies hide the truth. An actor can, by taking on a character who is not them, reciting lines they did not create for themselves in the moment, and following a choreography set down in advance, illustrate something profoundly true that otherwise might have remained hidden. When I was an undergraduate, I went to see a student production at the school theater, and I was so affected by it that I had to go back for the closing performance the next day. I went around campus until I found one of the printed sheets of paper they'd used to advertise it, and I stole it. It's still framed, it hangs in my dining room right now. It was a play about school shootings, centered around a fictional teenage assailant and the psychiatrist meeting with him in prison. Sobering now to think that that was a relatively fresh, contemporary topic over 20 years ago. I found the performance deep, challenging, convicting, and at times very funny. Part of it was a play within a play, a satire of societal narratives and expectations surrounding the unthinkably terrible reality of these school shootings. It lampooned simplistic explanations for why such things happen, with a fable set at a high school populated by caricatures of nerds and jocks, outcasts, and popular kids. At one point, there was even a buffoonish stand-in for news media seemingly obsessed by the salacious details of the crime. And then a woman, playing a reporter, trying to cover the story, stood up from the audience and interrupted the action on the stage. She had done her best, she said, to tell the facts of the case as it happened, to transcribe the names, the sequence of events, and the body count. But no one really cares about any of that, she pointed out. The who, the what, the where, the when, they're all accessories. The why is the only thing that matters and was the only thing that she could not give. Of course, that woman was not actually a reporter and she wasn't a member of the audience either. She was one of the actors in the play. But her part required her to play an audience member for much of the show. And her pivotal scene helped to illustrate how being in the audience of a play is not a simple, passive thing. The show was challenging us to look at ourselves, our assumptions, our expectations, the problems too thorny for us to easily contemplate. At first, it did it in stroke so broad it was easy to laugh and think, that might be a reflection of someone, but if not a reflection of me. But then the reporter stands up and challenges the play, calls it out for being unfair to her. Really though, she is challenging the audience. Look more closely into that mirror. Your face is there as well. Now William Shakespeare's Hamlet is a play about betrayal and hatred and despair. In particular, how the cycle of wrongdoing and the quest for vengeance against the perpetrator can create a vicious consuming cycle where all the possibilities of life become narrowed down into one tragic singularity. At one point in the story, the titular character, the Prince of Denmark, talks with two affable fools, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, about fate. They pronounce that though they are not quite so lucky as they could be, as servants of the royal family, they are fairly pleased with the hand that has been dealt to them. And then comes the following exchange, Hamlet. What have you, my good friends, deserved the hands of fortune that she sends you to prison hither? Guildenstern. Prison, my lord? Hamlet, Denmark's a prison. Rosencrantz. Then the world is one. Hamlet, a goodly one in which there are many confines, wards, and dungeons, Denmark being one of the worst. Rosencrantz. We think not so, my lord. Hamlet, why then, tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. To me, it is a prison. Rosencrantz. Why then, your ambition makes it one, tis too narrow for your mind. Now, here is a spoiler alert for one of the most famous plays in the English language. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern do not survive, Hamlet. And the well-known certainty of their doom forms the basis for the title and the structure of Tom Stoppard's play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, are dead. The show is a series of scenes and episodes that fit in between the events of the original play. The hapless, foolish, minor characters are now turned protagonists and play silly games and have halfway deep conversations with each other. All the while, the inevitability of their fate looms. They are just as trapped in their own story as Hamlet was in Denmark. But that doesn't mean that there isn't laughter. Life is what happens between the grand events of birth and death, after all. A play may also provide a straightforward means for expressing something theologically deep, particularly the sorts of theology that might not play well in many more overtly spiritual contexts. Tony Kushner's great work, Angels in America, unfolds amidst the AIDS pandemic and its apocalyptic impact on the community of gay men in the United States towards the end of the 20th century. One of the main characters while living with the disease begins to experience a series of what are either hallucinations or divine visitations, or both. An angel brings a message that God has called for humanity to stop, to hold still at once so that things may be set right again. Very literally sick and tired and fed up. This is his response. We can't just stop. We're not rocks. Progress, migration, motion is modernity. It's animate. It's what living things do. We desire. Even if we desire stillness, it's still desire for. Even if we go faster than we should, we can't wait and wait for what? God? God? He isn't coming back. And even if he did, if he ever did come back, if he ever dared show his face or his glyph or whatever in the garden again, if after all this destruction, after all the terrible days of this terrible century, he returned to see how much suffering his abandonment had created, if all he has to offer is death, you should sue the bastard. That's my only contribution to all this theology.   He ought to pay. I want more life. I can't help myself. I do. I've lived through such terrible times, and there are people who live through much, much worse. But you see them living anyway. When they're more spirit than body, more sores than skin. When they're burned and in agony, when flies lay eggs in the eyes of their children, they live. Death usually has to take life away. I don't know if that's just the animal. I don't know if it's not braver to die, but I recognize the habit, the addiction to being alive. We live past hope. If I can find hope anywhere, that's it. That's the best I can do. It's so much, not enough, so inadequate, but bless me anyway. I want more life. We could go on here indefinitely, but I will leave you with a little bit more of the Bard of Avon. A bit before the end of Shakespeare's play, The Tempest, we are given these words. Our revels now are ended. These are actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air. And like the baseless fabric of this vision, the cloud capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, gay, all which it inherit shall dissolve.  We are such stuff as dreams are made on.  At the close of his final work, The Tempest, William Shakespeare reminded his audience that all actors must eventually depart the stage. And that even things that seem built to last, towers, palaces, temples, must one day fade into memory. What remains after we have gone is the impression that our living has left upon the world. Every human life is a work of art, and just like a play, or a painting, or a building, what we take from the piece is determined mostly by what we bring to it. In the brushstrokes of a person's life, in the lines and the curves, we can find failure and success, anger and kindness, pain and strength once their performance is finished. So it falls to each of us, simultaneously the fellow players and their audience, to find our meaning in the artistry of each life lived. Every person's existence has something to teach and to tell to every person who knew them. Some of the details are disorderly and some painful, but there is beauty in the piece, something from a life to remind you how better to live your own. We gather each week, carrying with us the joys, the losses, the celebrations, the sorrows of our days. We share them here, knowing they are held in love and support. We light a candle for the family and for the life of Paul Fleer, who passed away in January of last year. Paul and his family have been a part of FUS since the 1960s, and we send our love to his wife, Beatrice, their children, their families, to all who miss him. And we light a candle to mourn the violence in our world, here in our own nation and around the globe. We know there are never enough candles to symbolize the pain, hold the anger, and cradle the tears. May this light fuel our passion for change and our hunger for justice. If you'll join me now in a spirit of prayer with these words from Douglas Taylor, spirit of grace and tender mercies, we gather on the edge of another week and for some of us on the edge of our strength. We come lifted up by events of this week or weighed down by them, and we arrive in some paradoxical mix thereof. We are here in our gathering of hope and reflection. At times, we come weary and worn down, and for some, that is how we arrive today. At other times, we come with questions, with a longing, or with something to offer. For those who come today shattered, broken, lonely, lost. Let us offer our prayer of resilience. Again this week, we test the tender places in our hearts and in our lives to see what healing may occur. Gratitude is often a source of healing, and so we give thanks for the landscapes of grace in our lives, for music and for good companions, for moments of beauty and peace, and for the ones who inspire us with integrity and compassion. We give thanks for all that lifts us up and for lessons that lead us on. For the times when we are brought low, show us the hidden wells of love we can tap into, help us rise up once more, just once more, and once more again will surely be enough. Remind us we do not strive in vain, that we are part of a chorus, that resilience is in our bones, that peace will prevail on earth, and that healing and grace come like soft rain. Be thou an ever-present strength upon our journeys, and teach us that in falling down, we do rise again. This we ask in the name of all that is holy. May it be so. Amen. Our closing hymn, number 112, have ended, but our connection to each other in this community remains. Together may we walk the path of justice, speak words of love, live the selfless deed, trod gently upon the earth, and fill the world with compassion. Until we meet again, blessed be, go in peace, and please be seated for the postlude. One, two, three, four.


I'm lucky enough to get to chat with some of the best producers in music on a regular basis. If you put a bunch of us in a room together, you'll get an earful of stories of the woes of the creative process and how it breaks down in the recording studio. Inevitably, there will be stories of the big studio budget that couldn't outdo the demos recorded at home. The next story will be how a band constantly compared studio recordings to their demos, leading to the downfall of their record since they weren't open to developing their demo ideas to their full potential in the recording studio. The funny thing is, they both may be right or completely wrong in their assessment. Whether or not they were right is obviously subjective, but they may have made a different decision if their objectivity wasn't tainted or too attached to their demos. In this video, I'm going to talk about how producers can maintain their objectivity and stay focused on making sure records come out as good as they can since that's their job. Hi, I'm Jesse Kahn and this is Muse Formation. One of the most difficult balances to strike is doing enough drafts of your demos so that you get a full picture so you can make a great song while not drafting them to the point that you're so attached to the demo sound that you can't hear the song any other way. You must give thorough consideration to your demos but not at the sacrifice of your objectivity. You need some of that objectivity to spare when recording the songs your audience will actually hear. This same idea goes for band rehearsal. While everyone wants to be well rehearsed when going into the studio, there's a point where you're so used to the way a song sounds in rehearsal that any tweaks for the better sound unnatural. This leaves little possibility of objectivity when production decisions are made in the studio crippling the development of a song. To make the struggle worse, oftentimes the first version of a song that someone hears and wants to listen to again and again is usually the one they like best. Test yourself on this. The next time you hear more than one version of a song from a musician you love, see if you consistently enjoy the first version you hear of the song more. As someone who's pulled their friends on this for years, the resounding answer is the first version you listen to continuously is hard to get over. This means all of your teammates who work on your music and listen to your demos numerous times are on team demo whenever making a choice as to whether part of the demo is better since they heard it that way first. However, there's an exception that shouldn't be overlooked. About 25% of the time, the demo can be beaten, even for those who loved it. But this is so hard to measure that it's almost irrelevant. On projects with a decent budget, you'll regularly see bands who have lost perspective take their record to a mixer or a different producer at the end to help make better decisions. Today in pop music, we see countless producers on a pop song. Since suits commonly think a song hasn't reached its potential after a producer hands in their work. So they employ another producer to further explore what can be done to this song that's good, but not quite great yet. The fresh perspective that they have can clearly see the dilemmas that have left the musician in paralysis. This objectivity goes for every mastering engineer or mixing engineer's job, which is mostly about objectivity and that they need to be fresh years that put some final touches on what perspective you may have lost in the recording process. But how do we avoid the loss of objectivity when we're doing demos or working with scratch tracks since that's part of the process? Since we're trying to avoid getting too used to the way a demo sounds, what can we do to avoid this plague? While you must make the music you want to hear, you need to exercise restraint in your consumption of this music. The more you listen to a specific recording of your song, the more objectivity you lose. Conversely, abstaining from listening to your demos won't allow you to gain perspective on what you've recorded. What's so tragic about this is listening to the same mix repeatedly can impair you from making a good decision, yet you'll feel confident that this is what your heart feels is right for the song. Unfortunately, many musicians decide to go with a demo element when evaluating a song, only to return to listening to that song a year later to discover that there was more room for improvement that they had been blind to due to a loss of objectivity. Demos are one of the most useful tools at our disposal, but to make them effective, you must exercise restrained listening with concentrated note taking. Even if the note taking is as informal as cranking down the windows on your car to listen as you would any other song, this is some of the most important time you can spend as long as it's rationed. Excessive listens with a half-minded attention only further cements the way a demo sounds, hindering your objectivity to further development. Scratch tracks can poison objectivity as well. If you've been hearing a scratch vocal while you work on a song for three weeks, inferior vocal inflections can skew your objectivity away from those that further the emotional resonance of a song as you become used to how the scratch track sounds. The nuances of the performance become so ingrained that any alterations that stray from the demo version seem wrong. To alleviate this at the start of a project, I'll have the singer sing a scratch vocal a handful of times to start each day before we start to work on the song. I'll then change the take that we hear throughout the day so we hear different ways that they could do it. This way the performance is always different so I can hear the best of their inflections as we record the song. This technique can help preserve objectivity immensely as well as help keep a clear picture of what a vocal should be doing when it comes time to track it for the version that the listeners are actually going to hear. When producing records, I severely ration my influence from demos to maintain a higher level of objectivity than musicians. In the best case scenario, I won't have heard any demos for weeks before we start pre-production or the recording process. The band sends me demos, I try to take it in as fast as I can so I never get used to it. This usually means listening to each song one to five times while taking notes. After this initial listen along with one session of re-evaluation, I never listen to the demo until we're done recording the song. While the self-produced home studio trend continues to grow, this objectivity is usually what makes a producer worth their paycheck on a project. While I've talked a lot about the demo being detrimental to your objectivity, it also could be the greatest savior at the end of recording a song. If I've done a good job of forgetting the demo, putting it out again once we think the recording of a song is completed can be a life-saving safety net to make sure we've exceeded everything good about the demo. I can't count how many times I've revisited a demo after tracking a song to find two or three cool elements to bring back that had so much resonance to a song. But let's talk about how you effectively listen to maintain objectivity. In order to maintain my objectivity as a producer, I abstain from writing songs with the band from day one. After I initially hear what they've written, I may send the band back to the drawing board and say, the verse works, but scrap the rest of the song. But I won't be there when they rewrite it. If I have to be in the room as they try out 400 different variations of how the song could go, I have then lost the same amount of objectivity as them, which defeats my purpose as a producer. To do my job effectively, I can't sit through the infinite possibilities of songwriting, since I need to maintain an objective perspective and a quality control role. I must still have objectivity after a song is as fleshed out as a band can make it on their own so I need to minimize micromanagement throughout the process. While this doesn't sound very effective, it keeps me with an objective mind to evaluate what they write. This is much more valuable to me and many other producers than any time saved. To maintain this objectivity, I outsourced to the tedious tracking of guitars and synthesizers to my co-producer. I leave the room while they get the tone to return with fresh ears once it's dialed in, whether this is a synth patch or a guitar sound, when it comes time to track guitars for six to eight hours of tedious tuning and punches, I have to leave since my perspective gets lost if I sit through that. If an extensive development of harmonies is needed to make a song work, I'll also leave the room for that so I don't get tainted by the options and tedium of tracking them. This allows me to not be biased in my judgment of a performance by the effort expended to record it. If you spent four hours recording it, you don't really want to redo it. I also don't know how long it would take to redo it if it doesn't feel right and I don't have to have that pressure bearing down on me. If I don't have to punch the guitars for three hours to fix them, then I can make my decisions solely based on making the song great, not my annoyance with the process. I should say I'm not the only producer employs this method either. Famous producers like Rick Rubin and Howard Benson are famous for this technique. But what about maintaining objectivity and mixing? The other common culprit of demoitis is how the interaction of levels in demos and rough mixes influence those afflicted when they judge a mix of a song. With tracking songs, the vocals and drums are often turned up excessively loud to help performers get a good performance. Once a song is mixed though, these levels are placed in a more realistic balance. So those who have been hearing a tracking mix feel a loss of excitement when they're mixed at a reasonable level. I've had a few practices helpful to prevent demoitis when I start to mix a song. Don't set any levels of an instrument excessively loud compared to the others in a rough mix. During tracking, it can be helpful to have drums turned up loud to perform tight to the groove. Take these mixes down when making rough mixes. Otherwise, it could be hard to get used to more reasonable balances when mixing a song later. Make different mixes each day. One of the benefits of mixing on consoles compared to DAWS was they would allow the mixes to not be the same each day. The variances of different fader levels didn't allow your mind to get used to exact balances, which allowed you to hear different perspectives on the levels of a song to judge against later. As well, you need to make a change or stop dwelling on the demo. Unless you're adding or subtracting from the demo, don't give superfluous listens without making new versions. Come back to them with fresh ears. Many of my producer friends find that as years go on, they get better and better at trusting their gut to discern what's good and bad as opposed to being biased to the familiar. This also tends to come with those who learn to judge every choice emotionally instead of what concepts that stem from the head. Do your best to keep building your creative muscles so that you can maintain your own perspective and follow these best practices I just outlined. Thanks so much. That's it. Am I missing anything? Is there any way you would have done this? I need to know your questions and what no one else is telling you since I want to answer them. So leave them in the comments. I hope you liked this video and if you did, please like and subscribe and get notified for my future videos since I'm gonna be breaking down the concepts in this video along with tons of others on promoting your music and how to make music you're more happy with. As well, I have a Facebook group that's linked below that has only helpful information. No one tried to sell you anything, playlists or con artists, only helpful information for musicians looking to be better themselves. If you want to learn more about me, make a record with me or check out any of my books, podcasts or anything else I do, head to jessecanon.com or at jessecanon.com on any of the socials. Thanks for watching. One last thing, if you liked this video, there's two playlists here with tons more videos that you'll probably enjoy. One's about how you promote your music and the other's about how you make songs you're happy with. Otherwise, you can hit the subscribe button here to see the rest of my videos. Thanks so much for watching.


All right, the markets continue to grind higher on this first trading session of October. Jeff Kravitz from U.S. Bank is here. Jeff, we're still sort of in this transition period as we wait for some of the bigger earnings reports next week, but how do you view the markets right now? Right now, we're very constructive on the markets. We have a good story. We've got earnings which continue to improve. We've got a global synchronized recovery. We've got low inflation, low unemployment, and growth is starting to pick up. So it's a good story, and we believe that's going to continue for the rest of the year. So we're at $25.19 in the S&P 500. Where do you see the benchmark heading by the end of the year? Our year-end target is $25.50, so we're not far away from there. We do believe that markets will end the year higher. That being said, we're not immune to some of the risks that are out there, some of those geopolitical risks in Washington. Your valuation is high, but you've got the earnings to support it. So we really do believe that markets can trend higher despite a possible near-term sell-off. Why didn't we have it down September? That's usually the worst month of the year for stocks. And does that correction that you just mentioned, does that come in October? Yeah, that's a good point that you bring up. There's that seasonal factor. September and October are traditionally very bad months for the stock market, or can be. There's a lot of liquidity out there looking for a home. And stocks are really the favorite destination, especially here in the US, just because companies are doing quite well, the consumer's strong. And investors are looking to put money to work, and they like the US despite the valuations. And will you also like international stocks just on a valuation basis? We do like international stocks. On a relative valuation basis, you look at Europe. And Europe is definitely attractive. Those companies are doing quite well. I saw a manufacturing PMI in Europe is picking up. So that is a place that we put money. Also, you've had the US dollar, which has been a tailwind. I mean, you've got the euro up about 12% this year, so that's really helped. Isn't that a risk, though, the rising euro for European stocks? It is a risk. The higher the euro goes up, the more pressure it puts on exports. And to this date, it really hasn't impacted that to any great extent. But it is a near rest that we're concerned about. So to sum up, when you see reports that September was the lowest volatility we've seen on record for a September, even though it was supposed to be this really worrisome month, how does that make you feel? Because anytime we see low volatility, you have people start sounding the alarm. You know, that could be a caution flag. I think there is a lot of complacency out there, despite the positive story. And it might just take a catalyst, some geopolitical event to kind of knock investors off their pedestal and say, hey, I'm gonna pull back a bit. But I think fundamentally they're looking for a strong finish to the year. All right, well watch how it plays out. Jeff Kravitz, thanks so much for joining us. Great, thank you.


And also President Mahmoud Buhari has assured Nigerians that the final battle against a terrorist is approaching, its conclusion and victory is within sight. In his Salah message, the President who sends his best wishes to Muslim fatefuls, maintains that the fight against insurgency has been a long and hard one. He said with the designation of Bandit groups as terrorists, the challenges of Banditry and Kidnapping are being tackled. The President also expressed a light over what he described as impressive reports of the special operations to curb crude oil theft and illegal oil bunkering in the south-south zone of the country. Earlier, we were joined by the Imam of the Outliers School Mosque, Dr Abdul Fattah Olajobi. It's meant to respect the rights of our neighbours. As you see in Islam, the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said that he is not a believer. Who doesn't honour his neighbours? And your neighbours are not just the people that live with you or that are also Muslims. There can be no Muslims. People that live 40 houses to your right, 40 houses to your left, 40 houses to your front, to your back. These are all your neighbours. And you must respect your rights. Because there are no Muslims. It doesn't make you treat them anyhow. And elections are coming. We need to behave with all civility. We need to practise goodness. Even if the election comes. I would enjoy us to all get our voters card so that we will not just be complaining after somebody wins governorship or presidential elections. And then you complain about how badly the person is doing. And then you didn't go out to vote. You have the power to choose. We need to do all this so that our nation can be great again. It's not supposed to be so difficult because we've fasted for 30 days. And neuroscience has shown that whatever you do for about 21 days or 60, you do it daily for about 21 days. Your brain gets used to it. And you form a habit. During Ramadan, the person or something tells us that when people look for your trouble, we tell them, and they saw him, I am fasting. Don't look, don't, when they look for your trouble, you avoid them. You avoid them. So after Ramadan, we're supposed to avoid people's trouble too. People are coming with trouble. You avoid them. Try to engage them reasonably. If you must use the law, use the law. Don't go through violence. These are some of the things we learn in Ramadan. And we should practise after Ramadan.


Hi guys, welcome back again. Remember it's Meks giving you all these updates. Meks creation TV. By the first time come across this channel. Don't forget to hesitate.  Remember we are looking at the road to 10,000 subscribers and definitely this is going to just be what you call your effort or it's going to be your support. Don't forget to share and don't forget to recommend to other people. Yes, when you look at most of these Gulf countries, the Gulf countries you look at are so funny and they have the old structures. And some of the structures that you definitely have to look at is what you call the labor laws. And when we get to the labor laws definitely it will come back to us, the employees that are coming to this country. We definitely in this kind of situation or in this scenario we are going to look at what you call the rules and regulations or what you call the cater rules and regulations.  The mind has to rush you back and it's going to rush you to what you call there, what you call the labor laws because what governs the rules and regulations here it's what you call the labor laws and you must be very aware of some of the very important things or some of the small important articles that will protect you in the labor law as an employee and those that will protect you as what you call the employee and what kind of overwrites does your employer have and what kind does you as an employee have. Yes, when you look at the cater rules and regulations definitely we shall look at what you call the labor laws and when we look at the labor laws the very important first aspect that definitely we have to look at as you the person who is coming to cater for the first time we are looking at what you call the employment contract when you come into the country in this colony coming to this country for you you are coming for the most important motive for work and when you talk about work or when you are talking about work in that kind of scenario we are looking at what you call the employment contract to remember the employment contract it is going to be a mutual agreement between the employee and the employer it is going to outline and outline and this most of the very important rules and regulations that you are supposed to follow this can be either what you call an internal or it can be an external but normally is an internal but in the country in the company but which reflects what gravity entirely describes what you call the labor laws that are supposed to follow in this girl country and what's something that definitely you need to understand or you need to remember when we come to these countries it's not our right, it's an opportunity and I keep on telling you for you to make sure you live within what or an opportunity is to follow the law don't go against the law don't go against what the law says follow the law for you to enjoy your opportunity but most of us we've thought that it becomes to any case that it's our right and we've ended up falling in trouble in that case which may not be right or which may not be good in that kind of format and definitely gives it in any other so most of the times I keep on telling people that you definitely need to understand that these are some of the things that definitely we need to understand the rules and regulations but when you look at what we call the contract most of us we come here because of work and what is the contract what is specified or what is really described in that contract we look at the payment we look at the direction we take contract we look at the nature of the work the address your sponsor the length of the contract the place of the work the hours work the annual leave that will be combined or that will be consisting in what you call the Qatar rules the regulation which must be listed or which will be listed in what you call the employment contract and when you will sign that employment contract then that means you've agreed to the terms the rules and the Qatar regulations in that context hope I've right to have something for you thank you so much by this always makes giving you all these updates thank you so much see you again in the next video


and welcome to the 4 o'clock to 4.30 p.m. session of the 2020 Open Simulator Community Conference. In this session, we are happy to introduce a session called Connecting During COVID, Unlocking a High School Prom in OpenZim. Our speakers today are Randall Deich and Tanya Martin. Randall, aka Longison Deich, is a results-driven program manager and an instructional designer with success in developing effective learning experiences. As co-founder and chief networking officer of Regenerate Tech, Randall partners with industry professionals to develop learning pathways for underserved students. Tanya, aka Gridjumper, is an online gamer, former computer science teacher, and professional development professional. She is on the Regenerate Tech board working to promote authentic experiences for students in the community. Now please check out the website located at conference.opensimulator.org for speaker bios, details of the sessions, and the full schedule of events. The session is being live-streamed and recorded, so if you have questions or comments during the session, you may send tweets too at OpenSimCC with the hashtag OSCC20. Welcome, everyone. Let's begin the session. Well, thank you for that introduction and the opportunity to share an incredible story about Connecting During COVID. And I want to thank Gridjumper for joining me here today. Yeah, I'm just having difficulty advancing the slides, which was working the other day. It happens. I want to, you know, start off by saying this story begins last March and March 13th was the last day our students saw each other. March 12th, everything was fine. As a matter of fact, that Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, we were all planning to continue to go to school. And March 13th was the stay-home orders. And I think as of today, it's been 267 days since we've physically connected. And the great news is that the OpenSim experience that we had with our students kind of turned their attitudes around. This is, let's start this. This is a happy ending. Let me just say this is a happy ending of, like I mentioned, a COVID story that everybody likes. And this is the student feedback at the end on they're actually telling me that after months of being apart, it was this experience where they actually connected. It was for the first time they got to see each other and ignore the problems and that was happening around them. This was a community that was heavily hit with unemployment. Food drives are miles long around the corner, you know, at the food bank. And this was more than a problem for them. This truly was an escape. So we can go on to the next. We kind of just start ready. Yeah, this is what Trayvon shared with us. This is text message, how he felt. You know, when I see this, he's sending this to me after midnight in the morning.  That's how he feels. So when Randy talked to me, of course, the point of this, that of this slide is that this community, it's just a testament to how they come together and how generous they are because I mentioned it to one person. And I said, gee, there's a friend of mine who's got these high school kids and they don't have a prom and they don't have graduation. And gee, I wish they could have a prom somewhere in world. And he said, well, why don't you try Abapon? So the next night I'm playing with my warrior sisters on World of Workraft who I met in Second Life.  And two individuals who do a lot of the social planning for VWB PE and ISTE, they said, I'll help. So then I got in contact with Joyce Betancourt on Abacon and she said, we'll help. And then there was Franz and the Abacon grid folks and they all said, we'll help. And it's just a testament to the generosity of these people who did not, who just did this all for nothing. Well, for something, but they gave their time. They went shopping on Kitely and bought things. They went on Second Life. They purchased things and made things and created things in order to give these children a prom.  And that was just so cool to do this for these children. So we met in World and we had multiple meetings. We started in March, as Randy said, you know, like March 15, 16, something like that. And the prom was the 12th. So we started, we met probably, you know, weekly with the group from Abacon. And then the main builder, Helena Barber Seton, makes this platform up in the sky, which subsequently some of the students found as they were looking around. But she made a platform and the production started. Here she's working on a scavenger hunt game, on some clothing. The Abacon crew was leaving items for us to add to the prom if we needed. And we would just pop in here and there. I would pop here. Helena Barber Seton is working on her game. You know, so we started off with the Save the Date. And this was something that we sent out, not just to students, our teachers, and also the folks in my community partners that I work with, with Regenerate Tech on volunteers and also sponsors. And, you know, this was the first prom where it was free for the students. And, you know, there was no overhead for the students. But we asked for sponsors, and I'll jump ahead a little bit, because we wanted everyone to have a prom meal. So we recruited, we had sponsors that paid for Uber Eats for everybody received a warm meal that evening as well. Get the next. Our students, we wanted to make sure everybody was able to connect. And we couldn't use the school board laptops for download and install privileges. So we had active participants with their personal laptops who used the Firestorm Browser. But we streamed on Discord. And so students were able to connect with their friend on Discord and participate, you know, a passive participation. They didn't have their own avatar, but they were still able to interact with folks that were in world. And our chaperones and supporters, they ended up enjoying the same experience as our students. They were part of the orientation. They dressed up and danced and had fun along with them. And it was great because we've had folks from the technical schools there as volunteers. We've had our administrators. We're also volunteering and district volunteers. So for them, this was their first experience into an open sim environment. And hopefully, you know, the follow up for this year of a little bit easier and a little bit more involvement in coordinating our work together. And what was prepared for the students was an incredible orientation session where by walking through this maze, you've actually had, you know, directions. And as an educator, I loved it because every section had a performance assessment. So it wasn't just read and move along.  You had to do something. And it was great to see the how quickly that from everybody was at a point of zero that not only learned in the orientation session, but I believe the next slide might even show we had two of our students and they're the robots. They changed their skins on us that our students started taking over the orientation as well because we couldn't schedule, but didn't work out with the original schedules. So they'd log on on their own and they would walk students through the orientation, their peers, they would take them to the dressing rooms and help them with their clothing and completely took over. It was a great model for building capacity and ownership with the kids. So the students decided that they wanted a medieval kind of theme and I'm not sure where the castle came from, maybe Kitely, but Helena had it. And we added the logos and things so that the students were gathering photographs and they were gathering items. And one of the things that they gave us was the logo for the school. So of course, we put the logo in the school colors all over. This was the main location for the event. We also did not want to have like, okay, we're here now what moments. So we kind of went a little heavy on, let's do this, let's do this. And there was a little bit of trying to help the students, but we just kind of ran out of time when having them create some of the content. But we had a hanging garden with a with an arcade, which we bought the machines on Kitely. Oops, I keep doing this with the right. Okay, there we go. We had a photo shop. I'm not sure that this was used, but you know, we just wanted to make sure that we had plenty of stuff.  And this was the big hit. We had a photo garden. Over 100 photographs, actual real life pictures of the students were uploaded into these. And that was something that we thought the students could do, but I think Randy ended up doing them because we were just kind of running out of time. But the students did select the photographs to go up and the night of that probably was one of the highlights. And then ultimately we had, of course, all the clothing, which we did have dressing rooms, which to my knowledge, they really weren't used that much. They just got changed right then and there. And in the night of they were changing and a real plus, I think son created some jewelry for us. And they had the logo again, the panther of their of the school that they attend. So as Randy said, it was a free event. They didn't have to pay for shoes, for clothes, for corsages, for their hairdos. Everything was there for them. Kind of an equalizing moment because, you know, like you could pick whatever you wanted and no one was out doing anybody else. You want to go back? Yeah, what they were doing is and they shared also pictures that they took their screenshots. That's actually Andrew or senior standing next to his avatar standing next to his real life picture. That's there. So they spend the evening looking for themselves and taking photographs. It was memorable. And this is where we started. We started, you know, and we had our agenda. And if you remember, you know, not only this was the opportunity, we had our valedictorian speak. Our salutatorian was there. Our student government sponsors spoke. The senior class president spoke. These were things that were easily, you know, they said they planned for and March 13, it was all wiped away. So we brought back everything. And at that time, this was also something that they've requested was the moment of silence for George Floyd as well. You know, they helped organize the agenda for us. And there was a dance, I think was incredibly popular because of the incredible song list that Shamara put together. I think the song list was actually still talked about today by the kids who participated and their music.  And during the course of the event, you know, a way to explore the island with a scavenger hunt and, you know, clues were given. So that's that was a way of giving in the orientation to the island. They all explored and they had a leader board with the winners and our sponsors provided the prizes for our students. And not just the scavenger hunt got prizes, but they also voted for the best dressed. And it seemed to be a more of a political experience or who was the best, who provided the best argument because they all had access to the same clothes or who accessorized the mess. What it turned out to be. And one of the things that, you know, we realized as we move forward, there's definitely areas to improve on. And I think with a longer timeline, knowing now that we're in December and we're interested in prom, we can actually have students starting to work on some of the things and have them terraform themselves and maybe build and build and be part of the experience, not just, you know, not just consume it. Speaking of consume, I love the Uber Eats on that last slide. So in closing, do you have a particular slide that you'd like to wrap up on? The student feedback. I like everybody, you know, that's our, I think our last slide that's there. Everyone's talking about the social emotional wellness right now with students being remote learning. And everyone's, you know, remote learning has a bad taste in the mouth right now because they're being zoomed to death or teamed to death, not realizing a solution is right there in front of them. And if they just listen to the students and they'll realize that we can take care of these needs now. And like Tonya and Grinch upper mentioned, the volunteers, this is incredible what they've done and memorable as well. So it couldn't happen without them. Great. Anything you want to share? I'm just looking forward to the next chapter to see because I know there's one student who's working on Blender and is actually creating content. And as they, you know, we had limited content. We also had limited kind of, I mean, we made sure that we had, you know, skin tones and some hairstyles that were appropriate for the population, but it was limited, you know, and I think that these students say, gee, I can create that. I can, I can make hair that looks like mine. So I'm looking forward to see what these kids can come up with. Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity to present. Wonderful. And thank you both for a fantastic session. As a reminder to our audience, you can see what's coming up on the conference schedule at conference.opensimilar.org. Following this session, the next session will begin at 4.30 p.m. in this keynote region and it's entitled, Cross College, Cross Pollen, When Professional and Virtual Worlds Collide. Now also, we encourage you to visit the OSCC20 poster expo in the OSCC expo three region to find accompanying information on presentations and to explore the hypergrid tour resources in OSCC expo two region, along with the sponsor and the crowd funder booths located throughout all of the OSCC regions. Thank you again to our speakers and to you, the audience.