Louis was looking at the piano in the room. He raised his hand as to touch it, but he did not made contact. The thin cover of dust could be disturbed. And then somebody would notice.
"Do you want to play?"
Louis quickly turned around, letting his hand fall.
Albert was standing at the door, a small, real smile playing on his face. But when he met Louis eyes, his eyebrows moved a bit closer together. He then walked closer and moved the hand over the piano keys, removing the dust in its wake, yet not pressing any keys to make a sound. "What is your favourite song?"
Louis remembered the song he heard one morning in the theatre. A jolly and happy song, flowing yet rich. This was the only time he had ever heard it, and yet it still became his favourite song, becoming his mental companion.
"Or any you like?" Albert asked, looking at Louis.
Louis shook his head. "I don't know what is called." And he had no idea how to describe it. "Is there any you like?"
Albert seemed to think for a moment. Then he took the chair that was tucked in, slid it to the right position and sat down. He closed his eyes, as he put the hands on the keyboard. The melody that came out of it was slow, almost melancholy. Like a lake in the middle of the night. But also... Louis was sure he had heard it before - Sonata quasi una fantasia or these days more commonly known as 'Moonlight Sonata' Though something was nagging at him. Something was different, but he could not point to what.
After about five minutes Albert stopped, letting his hands rest on it. "I guess the piano needs some tuning." His eyes were opened now, as he looked at Louis.
"It sounds sad." Louis noted. More than the renditions Louis listened to before.
"The later parts are less so." Albert said, as then stood up to the side and waived Louis closer. "Come try it."
The dust on it still tried to warn him to stay away. But he wanted to and if Albert said it was alright, then maybe it was. He slowly made his way there and sat on the chair. He placed the hands on the keys in front of him, not pressing them down.
Albert came behind him, placing his hands on Louis, each of his finger on the corresponding Louis finger and moved them to a different location.
Albert never initiated contact with people. Louis for a moment did not know what to do, forcibly relaxing even more and letting Albert do what he wanted.
Albert's hands moved, and Louis' with him, bringing a different song from the piano. Louis was trying to figure out how they are moving. Which keys did what. How the hands were moving.
At the same time Louis was pointy ignoring the sentiment of the 'Good save The Queen' song they were playing. They swore to fight against it, why play it.
"Relax. Try to feel the music." Albert said, as he finished the piece.
Louis pouted. It is not like Albert could see him from where he was. "I don't like this song." Even if it was not whole reason. About a third of it.
He could more feel it than heard it, but Albert was shaking, like he was keeping the laughter in. "Then I hope the next pick will help you relax."
Louis made himself close his eyes, even though that make him become more aware of Albert. He made himself relax.
"Like that."
The song started, the slow tones of the 'Amazing grace'. It only took seconds for music to become the most dominant experience. It washed over him. He could feel it coming through his fingers and letting him spread through his body.
When the song finished, Louis sagged down. "Do you think I would ever be able to play like that?"
"Sure, with some exercise." Albert said.
Albert pulled their left hand from the keyboard, letting his one fall away.
Only now did Louis noticed, that he was basically using Albert as the chair rest. He tried to straighten up without Albert noticing, but Albert did not react to it.
Instead, he started playing the known lullaby. Louis did not let himself be swept this time, and the simplicity of the song helped. And the repetition. Albert let him through the song, until Louis was pretty sure he remembered it. Thumb, thumb, pinkie, pinkie, move pinkie, pinkie, move pinkie back, ring, ring, middle, middle, forefinger, forefinger and thumb.
Albert removed his hand, in the middle of the song and Louis, not knowing what to do, continued to the end. It was not as good as with Albert, the song did not flow as well. But it was recognisable and there.
Encouraged by this, he tried playing by himself this time. And managed to come to the end of it and enjoy it. And again. And again.
At one point Albert joined with the right hand, adding simple tones with the right hand that made the song even better.
That was not fair. Louis tried to imitate, but he probably missed some key, as it did not sound good. Louis paused as he glared at that part of the keyboard.
Albert placed his right hand on the correct keys, indicated with the light press that did not make a sound and then let it drop.
This time it sounded much better. Louis concentrated on the song, as he played it again and again. It was becoming easier, and the song flowed better.
It took longer for Albert to join again, but this time whatever he played with his right hand, Louis was not sure he could successfully try to copy.
Albert laughed this time. "Don't worry Louis, you are doing great."
"How much did you practice to become that good?" Louis simply wanted to know how long it will take him.
And yet, Albert tensed. If he would not be sitting that close to him, he probably would not even notice. "A lot." Albert's voice still sounded happy and carefree.
Then why did Louis felt like he asked something he should not?
Albert stood up. "Maybe we can talk to Lord Rockwell in finding you the piano tutor."
"Sure." Louis said. He tried to reach to Albert, but he stopped. It did not escape his notice, that he was acting the same towards Albert right now that he did toward piano today.
But why? Albert is the person that saved his life, their accomplice, their... Louis looked down. Was it because he still could not say that word? Not even in his head, let alone out loud?
"Then let me see to this right now." Albert said, as he left the room.
Louis was left in the room, pondering what happened.
In the following days, Albert looked and acted normal. At least when he was with then. Because no matter how many normal and acceptable reasons Albert had, he could not see it as anything but avoidance.
"Brother Albert seems to be quite busy recently." William noted one evening. "Louis, any ideas as to why?"
Is what happened in the piano room the reason? "I am not sure."
William was looking troubled.
Louis quickly stood up. "Let me see if I can go and figure something out." And then walked out of the room, ignoring his brother's question that he threw after him.
He will not be responsible for troubling his brother. Even if it was unintentionally, if he caused the shift in Albert, then he needs to be the one to fix it.
He entered the room without knocking.
Albert wide eyes looking like he did not expect anybody to enter. But then the attention was moved to the red dripping on Albert's wrist and the knife in his other hand.
"What..." No that was not the time for questions. Instead, he walked to Albert, kneeled on the side of the bed and took Albert's hand in his.
"Be careful." Albert said with the small voice.
The wound was shallow, and it will close by itself soon. He looked at Albert and was met with right back.
"The knife." Albert said, as if that would clarify anything.
Still, Louis looked aside at the Albert's other hand, which was still holing a knife, as far away from Louis as it could, without being higher than him.
Louis removed his hold and instead moved slowly to take the knife from Albert. Who let him. He then stood up and made his way to the water pitcher. He left the knife there and instead moistened the towel. "What were you doing!?" Before turning and making his way back.
Albert had covered him wound with his hand. His nose was a bit wrinkled. "You startled me."
"That is not an explanation." Louis said, as he came back. He gently removed Albert's other hand and started to wipe the blood from Albert's hand.
"You are right. I am sorry."
Still, he did not offer any more explanation to that, neither was he looking away, when Louis glanced at him. Louis therefore waited there until the blood stopped.
The he stood up to get the bandages from the drawer. As he turned back, he saw Albert picking up the towel and standing up. "We are not done yet!"
He must have been sterner than he imagined, as Albert paused. Then after looking at Louis for a couple of seconds, he sat down again, the towel still in his hands. The wrinkles on his nose became even more pronounced.
Louis sighed. "You can come up and say it." No answer followed. Louis clarified: "Whatever I did wrong, so I can fix it."
"You did nothing wrong." Albert said, fixing Louis with his eyes. No pause for thinking needed.
Louis fixed his with his eyes back. They were looking at each other like that.
"The towel and knife and not in the right place." Albert eventually said, as his eyes lost some of the intensity.
Can this wait until he is bandaged properly? Still, it was not bad wound, and he still needed to figure out why Albert was is a weird mood the last couple of days.
It is not like he did not know the supposed place for every single thing in Albert's room. They were always on the same place. He walked back, putting the bandages next to Albert, then taking the towel. He made his way to the knife, wiped it clean and then deposited the towel to the place dedicated for the already used towels.
When he came back, he noticed that at least the wrinkles on Albert's nose were gone. Instead, Albert's eyes narrowed, studying him instead.
Well, whatever. One thing at the time. Even though it probably did not need it, he started to roll the bandages around Albert's wrist.
"I am a horrible person." Albert said.
Louis did not look up as he wanted to make sure that the bandages were placed correctly. "You are not." Because he was not. Compared to where he grew up, he was a very decent and good person.
"Years before I met you two, I knew a... person. I was enjoying the time reading books together." Albert started talking with the soft voice. "Until I overheard his talk with his mother. She implored him to keep in a good relationship with me, because it will be useful for his future."
Louis paused and looked up now. Albert was facing him but was looking at something that was clearly not here. He was not clear how this story was connected to the entire situation. Is that how Albert saw them? He looked back down and continued. "What did you do?"
"The next time he wanted to spend time together, I excused myself with other activities. He followed me to the practice of tennis. But with piano, our levels were too incomparable. I ended up spending more and more time on the later."
"My question reminded me of that time?" Louis tried to make sure to keep his voice level, as he finished bandaging the arm. Then then looking at Albert. He did not like the implications of the story for him and brother. It was only Albert's incongruent actions with it, that stilled Louis and made him collect more data.
"I wonder if that is how he felt at the time?" Albert wondered.
Louis was trying to think the situation through. He guessed that it was because it was unbelievable to him, that he did not consider it before and took him that long to notice. "If you worry about something like that, maybe you need to get a good night sleep."
He let the bravo colour his words. Inside he was secretly happy. Albert always looked controlled. Even with Albert's request and the crime they committed together, Louis and his brother still occasionally worried about Albert. Who would have thought he was holding the same insecurities as them?
He pulled on Albert's outer night grown and Albert undressed it, staying in his night clothes. He slumped after that. "If you say so, Louis."
Louis hanged Albert's grown to the appropriate place, and then put his own next to it.
"Louis?"
"I am not trusting you to not try to do something stupid again tonight." He lightly tapped the bandages on Albert's arm and then raised himself to the bed as well, putting his slippers ordered next to Albert's.
"Nothing would happen if you did not startle me." Albert said. Then added in a quieter voice. "Not enough courage for it."
Louis noted that comment but decided to not address it at this point.
They ended up lying down, with Louis hand over Albert's chest. "I don't think mutual help is a bad thing. Neither does brother." Louis said. "Plus, we are accomplices. It is a completely different situation."
He could see Albert wanted to say something, but after opening the mouth, he closed it again.
Louis looked down. "I know I will have a piano tutor starting next week, but I have a lot of catch up to. I am hoping you will be able to help as well?" He closed his eyes. Maybe then it would be easier to say it. "... Brother ...Albert."
There was a small flex in Albert's chest that he could feel under his hand.
"It would be a pleasure." Albert said after a couple of seconds.
If Louis noticed a certain emotion is Albert's voice, he is not about to point it out.
Albert, you are aware that you don't need to bring your problem everywhere? Why are you so hard to write mentally happy if you are not going around committing crimes!?
I got an idea for a fluff piece based on reading the chapter how piano used to be indication of social status and how that changed through the Victorian era (aka becoming more accessible to middle class as well) and a scene in the Édith Piaf's biographical novel, where one of the composers was showing her how to play the piano and she was on fire.
And then my mind went: 'Wait, wasn't Albert using the piano to escape that guy he was enjoying reading books in his childhood?' (he did). And any chance of this staying a simple fluff piece went down the drain. Why Albert? Why? (Or why to my mind, if we are going in that direction...)
This was written for this month IndieWeb Carnival on the topic of Good Enough. If you have opinions about it, I invite you to write something and submit it as well.
There is one thing, that I am observing time and time again. All systems look good from the outside, but as soon as one steps inside and takes a better look at them, they are a bundled mess of human good will, messy human relationships and duck tape that should not have worked at all.
Leaving aside the environmental problems of the aviation, the aviation itself, the ability for the people to fly the sky, to be able to be on the other side of the world in less than a day is an amazing achievement. Uncountable planes are in the air at any time, and yet the incidents involving them are really rare. That system works amazing.
And then the students studying the mechanical engineering tell you how the standards for planes are a lot less strict than for other mechanical systems, how they fix planes with the duck tape and planes fixed that way actually go and fly. Or how some planes need to be pushed to be able to fly by people, like they would be an old car on the street.
And yet the system works.
Science is seen as the system, that will bring us closer to the truth. It is what the enlightenment had brought us. We can learn all the new things about the world and ourselves, and we can enrich our own lives with that understanding.
And then you learn about how the grants for science are working, and how people can influence what other people can research or not, about the need to measure these independent people and not having any good measurements for them, leading to very wrong incentives.
And yet the system works.
Another point, our political system. Compared to the political system even 100 years ago, we have made an amazing steps forward. At least in the WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich and Democratic) countries, we no longer limit people from voting and serving in the office based on the gender, or socio-economical status or nationalities of the parents and other silly criteria.
Sure, corruption and buying of the political actors and probably also occasional blackmailing or killing still happen. The different outlooks are not all represented, society is still based on the 'standard' and some people in this area are not people that are willing to talk and listen.
And yet the system works.
The opening call for this month IndieWeb carnival took a pretty strong stance against the good enough. I am not going to say, I don't agree with some of the points - I started my current job by joining at the time 14-people startup which is currently a 100.000+ people enterprise. I know how incentives are very problematic in the business world. I have seen the effects myself.
Even there, I would still have multiple examples of when the good enough was good enough. When the good enough was problematic. And when not being satisfied with the good enough lead to even more problems.
But I am not going to go this route. Instead I want to celebrate: Sometimes good enough is simply good enough.
I have recently started to work though the 'Velike ženske. Velike zgodbe. Velike ljubezni.' collection of books. It is a collection of biographical novels with women as the main protagonist. I have finished Ada Lovelace, Marie Curie, Queen Elizabeth II and Édith Piaf. Would I have preferred, that the stories would not concentrate that much on their love life? Absolutely. But I will brave this for the ability to have over dozen of well written books about the women through history.
But what was interesting is how ungrandiose the changes they did were.
Ada Lovelace did not go to become a first programmer. She watched Babbage's presentation, where we wanted more money and that is how she eventually offering to translate one of the articles about it to English. It was in that articles and her notes that the programming was defined.
And then decided to study the electricity in the frogs and do the electrical experiments with Andrew Crosse (and the whole infiltration they had, but lets ignore that).
Marie Curie was patient and precise enough to use the measurement device. And then she and Pierre did the hard work of distilling the radon, which included the moving and boiling tones of soil. I think it was 12 tones of it at the start?
And then drove around with the radio machinery to help the people during the first world war.
Nobody could describe Édith Piaf as good enough. She seemed to have very high standard when it came to music only. But when either her or Yvesa don't get the audience to react the way she expected, she gives it time. It is good enough for now.
Yesterday, I have attended a discussion table about the queer zines in Slovenia, which was mostly historical overview. What was interesting in relevant for this conversation is the spectrum of the different levels of these magazines and zines. Revolver had been sold in the newsstands, but then I also heard the story there of how a late teenage photographer could become an important part of it, simply because the did not have any other photographer with a lot of enthusiasm. Narobe might have had a team of over 140 people at one time, but 2 of the earliest issues of Gejm were mostly done by one person.
Then you also have groups, that decide to call their magazines zines to not be constrained by the format and therefore can be good enough easier - from the zines about bisexuality, https://kvartir.org/transzine/, nonbinarity or coming out.
Fine, queer community is a specific subculture - like any other subculture from Trekkies, to tech to cosplay and probably many others. I have zines from other places. For example, the Christmas edition for the Yuumori fandom I am a part of. One is planned on the topic of fashion with scarlet as the binding colour.
Do you think may of them would be possible, if we would require perfection and would not be satisfied with the good enough?
Lets take a step away from the zines. In their article about the visit to Ljubljana, Alex described Ljubljana also as so pretty, yet simple, almost humble as much as a city can be
, and .
I am assuming the other places also have that, but it is one of the best parts of living in Ljubljana.
Last week, I went to the same place as always, but since I was walking instead of with the bike, I took a different path through the park. There, on the the wall of the building, it was a nice graffiti with the topic of books and reading, that I never saw before. (No picture to add. I did not have a phone with me and even if I did, my phone does not have a camera)
This week at work we have visitors from Germany. We had the different teams introductions (which I skipped) but our team also decided to write our introductions to the Confluence. One teammate wrote an interesting comment there...
And I found out that we were having international quiz thing in Wednesday in The Place, the former Emonska klet.
I even talked to them afterwards, and one of the motivations is, that finding things in Ljubljana is luck. We don't start the conversations with strangers on the street and knowledge about interesting things in Ljubljana still mostly spreads through word of mouth. Hard for the people from abroad to get a foot in, which is why this event was created.
And they were right. Because whatever the people do is good enough. Being good enough gives it a special kind of charm, which makes me discover new and new things in the place that I live. It makes thing interesting. It is not the intended effect, but it is the collateral luck.
This also have the other side. Good enough is the reason we can rest and we can keep sane. Good enough is something that can lower our stress levels. Good enough is how we can live and not survive.
If you are not convinced that rest is important, I ask you to just go and scroll a bit through Tracy's posts under the rest tag. But I will assume that you agree that rest is important. And that space is important.
Because good enough give us space. I think I found out about minimalism more than a decade ago. When I was going to the university, I though I am going to be an entrepreneur with my own company. And one of the advice that I read a lot in these circles at the time was to lower the amount of money needed to live comfortably. Basically, don't have too many wants.
That was the time, when I had the blogs like Zen Habits, Becoming Minimalist and Cal Newport and many other blogs with similar topics in my RSS feed.
This provided the constant reminders to make sure to spend the time and money on the things that actually provide value to my life. In Slovenia we say something like Delaš, da kupuješ stvari, ki ti niso všeč da se postaviš pred ljudi ki jih ne maraš
.
Once this framing becomes normal, the buying of the car is not an automatic decision anymore - it is still a pretty automatic decision for most people here. One starts questioning a lot of things, from smartphones, social media, travelling, who to spend time with, being online, what hobbies to take, how much to work and many more.
The being online is the one where I want to improve my good enough standards. I don't have a job, where I could avoid the internet. Which limits my days of when I can be without the internet to the days when I am not at work. I still need to find a way to increase that number.
The situation changed and I no longer want to be an entrepreneur. But the thinking for that time sicked. I know what brings me joy - a walk in the nature, an interesting conversation with other people (especially friends), the physical book I can lose myself into, a visit to the cinema or a theatre, standing on the stage, writing, joking around or nerding out, dancing, a good desert, a time for myself.
Most if not all of these things would be ruined, if I wanted better than good enough from them. Perfectionism or the need for constant improvement don't generally have much place there.
I think this is generally a good rule of thumb for all the things that we are doing in life. If something is bringing you stress, then maybe lover the standards of good enough. The garden can have some weeds, the longer breaks can be taken during work, the clothes can be washed less regularly, the quality of the poems and stories written for fun does not have to be high, the emails don't need to be perfectly written or written at all.
Process itself can be enjoyable as is it. Also, no matter how bad does one think of their work, you have no idea if it is making somebody laugh or give them a new perspective or making somebody feel seen.
Maybe it can even gives the hope of one day finding the [知音 - a person that understand your song.
Also, who gets to decide what is good enough? Let me quote from the call for submissions:
A good example of this are programmers who claim to be environmentally friendly, yet use Javascript or worse, Python as their main language. These languages are 70 times less energy efficient than their alternatives, like C.
I am a programmer, I consider myself an environmentally friendly and while at work I mostly use JavaScript, I do consider Python still my main language. And I do not consider it a contradiction.
I show my value of being environmentally friendly by not having a car - my main transportation method is a non-electric bicycle, by never taking a plane, by eating a pescatarian diet, by trying to eat as locally as possible, by pushing forward project at work to eliminate some parts of our products and therefore some virtual server, by annoying people at work that I don't want to replace my computer simply out of IT convenience, my making sure my website minimises the use of JavaScript and having the smallest hosting local plan possible, to try and not replace the things that are still workable, to repair instead of replace them, to try and buy less things, to watch videos on the internet in the as low possible quality as possible, to grow my own garden (no matter how small).
If you think that my using Python for personal projects means that I am not environmentally friendly, then maybe are standards are not comparable. How big would my projects have to be, that the environmental efficiency would be worth it compared to manufacturing of one car?
Why is that standard the one that is the 'best'? Why do I need to do it in a way that some random person says I need to do it? Is it really a problem to have different good enough standards?
Lets switch to a more technical domain to have a more grounded example. I am thinking a lot about how I am seeing the programming projects done at my work, what I see done at AO3 and how I do things at my own personal projects. The standards for these are way too different - because of the scale, the contract obligations, the people involved in this and values.
I don't want to have the same good enough standard for self-driving cars as other people.
Let me take an example. Some of my coworkers would feel afraid, if the code would not have tests or instana or pile of other things that help with the tracking of the project. This is barely considered good enough. But not for me. My good enough of not having any of that additional complexity would not be good enough for then. AO3 owns their own servers and they even had the naming competition at one point. On the other hand, I can not imagine my work going full 'lets own the hardware'. Documentation for AO3 is amazing compared to either my work one or one I have for my personal projects.
Devastatia had also written an explanatory post when some people asked about the server cost. It is a same thing in the different context. For some people Neocities is good enough. For some people the Micro.blog is good enough. And for some people it is not. And that is fine. We should celebrate different good options.
Can I be better at that? Sure, I could still do a lot of things to be better, but I also think that good enough might actually be a good concept to use here.
Lets go back and say somebody wants to start being more environmentally friendly today. How motivated would they feel if we judged for having a car, and using Python and JavaScript and not being a vegan and all travelling and on and on and on? Would it not be better to celebrate any improvement?
And it is not like the good enough standards stay all the time. I have recently bought a couple of locally made clothes. Even a year later, I am still happy when I wear them. Do you think I want to go and buy the same things that I did before? Even ignoring the hate I have for clothes buying, I don't. That standard had improved.
The same is with any other thing. Once one is used to using a bike, public transport and a train, getting a car looks complicated and way too expensive. One a person is used to eating the vegetarian diet, it is work making them go back to meat. If a person is used to enjoying the quiet with the birds singing and looking at the apple tree in the bloom, as I am right now, it is hard to convince us that they need more.
The other side is the same. It is hard to convince the car riders to take the public transport. It is hard to convince a lot of programmers that one does not need that many tests. It is hard to convince a lot of marketing people, that we don't need all this analytics. It is hard to convince the politicians to stop insulting people in their face. The last one might be regional problem, I don't know. :)
So good enough is simply that. What standard do I personally think it is alright right now. If this means to use only C, that is fine. If it does not, that is fine as well.
It is a way to lower the stress and gives us the ability to enjoy the life. To have the space to take it all in. To stay with it. And to enjoy the deep breath.
That is why good enough is simply good enough.
この記事(via Marr)は本を好きならどう支え事が出来る。
それか私はもうしてる。10番の本を読むのは基本的だ。1番にも時々がする。確かに一冊が好きなら、もう一冊も好きかもしれない。図書館があるなら、あそこを本を手に入れるけど、そこがいないなら、買います。
多分8番のは本当に大切のに。数え切れない時には誰かがいきよく話したのなら、私も読みたかった。まあ本だけじゃないけど。映画とかにも同じだ。何度も、良いファン・フィクションを読んだなら、知らない側の小説も調べたぐらいんだ。
四番と五番はそう見ている。
他にも良いイデアだと思いんだけど、私は試した事がない、六番以外にも考えた事がない。でもそれは楽だと思いなら試してみるのか。