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If a Xylophone Falls in the Forest …

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A friend sent this video. I find it fascinating that people will go to such lengths to create something unique. I admit I’m impressed by the patience and craftsmanship on display here. But the question that kept coming back to me while I watched was “why?” Think of skill required and the time invested. The music has been performed more beautifully by others – this is a glorified player piano in the woods, admittedly inspired and visually delightful, but there has to be another reason.

And there is. You’ll see it at the end.

So all this careful planning and detailed effort was really about creating a trap to capture your attention. And the ultimate goal was to get you to feel an irresistible urge to own a cellphone that looks like a big wooden kidney bean. The marketing strategy was to amaze people so they would start sharing the video online, and it worked! At least I passed it along to you, and you may share it with someone else, so I guess we fell for it completely. But I’m unashamed. Really, whether the purpose is creating great art or simply moving the product, I admire the work that went into turning this wild idea into something real.

Here’s another video showing some of the behind-the-scenes activity.

Are you an idea person, or the one who brings that idea to life?
Or is it possible to be both?

56 thoughts on “If a Xylophone Falls in the Forest …”

  1. Morning all. Love the video… I’d seen it before, but you can never have too many Rube Goldberg contraptions for me! It’s nice to see the behind-the-scenes as well, since when I first saw this one, my cynical side thought maybe it was a fake.

    if the world is split into two kinds of people, idea folks and do-ers, I long ago recognized that I sit squarely in the middle of the do-er camp. In fact, as the years go by, I have less and less patience when I am roped into the idea camp. I love (& understand the need) ideas, but I just want someone to sit around hashing the ideas out, so I can charge in when it’s time for ACTION!

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  2. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    Wow, who knew such a thing was possible! Or necessary? I wonder what the denizens of that forest thought of this contraption.

    Meanwhile, I’ve always been an idea person and when I was younger that is all I was. As I have become older I’ve had the ideas and then I bring them to life. However, my ideas and the methods are always very pragmatic. No Xylophones in the forest. Just how do you make this business work or how do you finance the addition. My middle name is practical.

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  4. Sometimes both, sometimes the one who runs with someone else’s idea. Depends on the situation. I do like the challenge of “figure out how to make this happen”…one of the oddest theater requests I ever got was, “can you tie-dye the floor?” (Huh? No, no – just paint it that way – like these t-shirts…oh good, a picture to work from.)

    P.S. Missed you, Steve, at book club yesterday. Also PlainJane – was looking forward to meeting you.

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    1. Thanks, Anna. Sorry I missed it. Still struggling with this boil on my back. Antibiotics have me pretty much wiped out.

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  5. Good morning to all,

    With all the technology for creating video images, I would think that this video would have been made by actors and clever editing, not by actually making that device and installing it in the forest. It seems that they did actually build it and install it. I guess they could have “faked” the film on building it and installing it. I think that they did actually build and install the device. It is hard to believe that any company would do something like that just to promote their product. It seems there is no limit to the things that might be done to promote a product these days. Perhaps that commercial is an attempt to top some of the very creative commercials that are sometimes created in Japan.

    I try to be both an idea person and one who carries out ideas. I’m not completely successful at either of these two things. I keep trying. There are times when I wonder why I should keep trying. Mostly I like to pick up on good ideas that other people have developed, like Trail Baboon, and help keep them going.

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    1. You should feel it was lucky it was only six minutes. I, on the other hand, wasted much more because I actually googled a couple of sites to see if anyone has discovered if the initial video was a fake and then, after I watched the second video, I ended up also watching the “Mean Kitty Song” video that was offered up at the end!

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  7. I am not terribly creative with new ideas, but I am really good at making things work and improving what is already there. Thanks for the video, Dale.

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  8. Having struggled with both the challenge of original creativity and the discipline needed to execute a project, I have great respect for both. When circumstances have forced me to work alone, I have had to do both. That’s not my preference, as I love collaborative projects. When I edited a magazine I was often the originator of ideas that I would pass along to others to develop. And that was cool. What counted was the appeal of the final product, and I didn’t care who got credit for the various parts.

    Fun film, Dale!

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  9. Love these two videos. Hadn’t seen either before. Half way through the first one, I was skeptical as to whether this contraption was actually producing the sound. The second one pretty much convinced me that it did. I love it when people come up with such zany ideas and actually carry them out. Thanks for posting, Dale.

    To answer Dale’s question, I think it’s very possible to be in both camps. Like Jacque, I tend to be a very practical person. Sometimes that kills an idea before it has a chance to come to fruition. If I start with the premise that I don’t have the prerequisite skill to carry an idea out instead of exploring how to overcome that obstacle, nothing happens. I think creative people working together inspire each other to find ways to overcome all kinds of challenges.

    It took me a very long time to learn that work doesn’t have to be drudgery, that I actually do my best work when I’m having fun. I think that’s true for everyone. The lucky ones are the folks who have figured out to do what they love for a living.

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  10. there used to be a commercial on tv by PitneyBowes. Mr. Pitney and Mr. Bowes – one was the idea person and the other made it happen. my best friend and i were that in our working relationship – she was the idea person and i made it happen. i’m not good at visualizing or creating an idea, but give me a task and i’ll do my best to get it done. not proud of that – i’d love to be more creative and less practical, but there it is. i like hearing creative people talk about their ideas and i try very hard not to hear my Mom saying “well, that will never work!”
    happy day to you All – it’s a gorgeous one up here in Blackhoof!
    and Dale, thanks as always for the blog and the community.

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    1. Pitney Bowes is a company that does NOT know its Pitney from its Bowes. May you never have a problem with that company.
      After years of a mess on the product and the payment, we just went out and bought stamps and fought for another year to get the bill settled. At which point they sent us a monthly bill for $.00 and telling us how far past due it was and the percentage interest they were charging on $.00 resulting in a new bill of $.00. One day a collection agent called, at which point he looked at the bill for the first time. I assume the bill is still being sent.

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    2. Clyde – we fly in to Hartford and then head up I91 to s. Deerfield which will be our base. i’ll go to Shelburne Falls two days for an Italian cheesemaking class and Steve will bus and walk all over – to Amherst to Emily Dickenson museum and to a beautiful park nearby with his free time. then the third day i’ll drive him to Concord for Walden, Emerson, etc. he’s as excited as Steve ever gets 🙂
      so, we’ll be in NW Massachusetts and then amble our way over east and then southwest to fly home out of Hartford again.
      we also plan to eat lobster rolls – we hope as good as the ones our friend from Maine fed us once. yum.
      but today, i’m thinking of taking Lassi to T (Feb 25 kids??? uff da)

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      1. Wow, way to go or to be going. I am very jealous, but only in a way that makes me very glad for you. I was so often there in the fall. Lovely. You are near so many things, Old Sturbridge, the Robert Frost Farm, to name two. Tell Steven, if he has not been there, not to be disappointed that Walden will look pretty much like a lake near Blackhoof. So much to see there, tour historic homes, Old Manse, Alcott House, North Bridge, Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Yep, I’m jealous, but only a good way. Really.
        Hartford Springfield Airport is a nice airport, not in the city, on the north side up close to the state line, so close to Springfield, too.
        Again, wow. Have the best time.

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      3. B-A i’ll tell Steve! his minor was art. Landscape artists especially. thanks!
        and Clyde – thanks for the good wishes
        we’ve been planning a trip to Massachusetts for about 35 years, i think. and i think the lakes in Blackhoof are not as crowded and built up as Walden is. but just so he can say he was there…..

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      5. The Wayside is also in Concord. It’s less frequently visited than Orchard House, but it is the house where the Alcotts lived during the “Little Women” years. Orchard House came later.

        The Wayside was also home to Nathaniel Hawthorne and Margaret Sidney (who wrote the Five Little Peppers series).

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  11. What an appropriate theme for the day I drop in to report that we have laid down all the red colourblocks and half of the black lines for the Mondrian shipping container paint job! (Looks rather Oriental for the moment.)

    As with most projects of this sort, it’s taking longer than anticipated – figuring out a design (you’d think lines and colour blocks would be easy, but it was the usual crisis of decision-making), and then how to paint horizontal lines on a corrugated surface were the two major stumbling blocks.
    Looks great though – hub is excited about how it looks despite not being a huge fan of the style, and he even added a touch of kinetic art: laying down some of the vertical lines on the corrugations means they hide/reveal depending on where you stand. I don’t know how to post pictures…

    I guess this means I am both.

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  12. I think anyone can have a good idea and we should all be interested in puting good ideas to work. Some people may be unusually talented at both of these things, while others are less so, but we can all play a role in creating and implimenting good ideas.

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  13. I’m an idea generator and an idea maker if I’ve got the skills to do it. Interestingly, I’ve been told that from a Marketing/Advertising standpoint, this is actually a detriment. I was considering going to one of our local Advertising specialty schools a few years ago. I met with the founder/president of this school and he asked me what my particular skill was. I said that I could write, take photos, do voiceovers, could produce commercials, and had an eye for overall graphic design of print ads. Therefore, I wanted to take as many classes/major in as many of the areas his school offered as possible. He told me that I wouldn’t be allowed to do that, that Ad agencies want only one skill per person. When I suggested that there were certainly individuals that are ‘one-person companies’ doing Ad work and that would be my preference, he became highly indignant, said that wasn’t how ‘the business’ worked and that he wouldn’t support it. I also pointed out that by taking as many classes from him as I could, it would be advantageous to him because I’d have to pay for them all. He said that wasn’t the way it was done and I’d have to choose one field of study or he wouldn’t be able to help me. Can you believe that???

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    1. My son deals with that in software production, each to his own niche. But people do jump niches; they can only be in one niche at a time. My son ended up a producer because he can sort of do almost all of the things.

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    2. The notion that a person should do one task only, doing it over and over endlessly, seems to have arisen with the industrial revolution, which made a big deal of efficiency. And I suppose a person who only does one job all the time can become efficient (on paper) at that task. But something that has struck me in recent years is that virtually everyone I know who is happy in their work has a job with some essential variety to it. If we measured efficiency over a long period of time and include considerations of overall quality of output, we’d see how important it is to offer people some variety in their work.

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      1. Each is not doing one task. Each is responsible for one aspect of a large, complex task. These are very creative folks–designers, artists, programmers, writers, etc.

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      2. At Hormel Foods I was given the chance to work with a group of older workers who packaged bacon. They had mastered this work which was not easy. I was not ready to settle into that job because it required learning to do things just right in a hurry. If you had been doing this job for a long time, it probably wasn’t too hard. They were willing to help me learn the job and the bosses more or less seemed to leave these older workers alone and did not bother them. These workers had found a way to hang in there at Hormel at a not so good job there was better than most work at that plant. There were several different jobs involved in bacon packaging and you moved around from one job to another several times during a shift.

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  14. I can be either, but find it paralyzing to be both.

    I like coming up with new ideas, but find that if I have to be the one to execute my own idea, I just keep tweaking and tweaking at it-so it is best if I just come up with the idea, and then you hand me something else to think about.

    On the flip side, I also like the technical aspect of “how are we going to do THAT!?!” For many years, it was my job to take somebody’s pretty picture and make it “real”-it may be time for me to go back to that, but I wonder if I can at this point.

    And finally, I can’t believe I missed Muppet day! Hard to pick a favorite, but I do love Fozi Bear, who wants so much to make a life doing something he is hopelessly bad at.

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    1. Fozi, I failed to say on the real day, was my second choice, and for the same reason. You gotta love those who know they aren’t really good at what they love to do, but they’ll do it anyway . . . out of love. Fozi’s jokes seem lame at first, and then you just grin at the irrepressible spirit that drives him to keep serving them up.

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      1. Now you have put me in mind of Cmdr. Data, the android so beautifully played by Brent Spiner on Star Trek: The Next Generation, who wanted so much to be human, and he felt (I think correctly), that humor was key to this. He knew ALL the jokes, but just could not deliver.

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  15. Here is an idea person–Art West died at 97, inventor, and at that age I guess not an eater of Doritos. His family will throw Doritos into the grave over his urn. Love kookie funerals like that.

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  16. I’m a do-er most of the time. Back when I was office manager/”internal consultant” for a small group who would help “fix” sick businesses, we would have a Meta once a month, where we worked on ourselves – and new directions for our business. The other 3 or 4 were always coming up with these wonderful ideas, and it got to be a joke that before the day was out, I had already planned some minute detail about how something would get done – straight to implementation.

    Once in a while I’ll have to do both, however. I’ll get a seed of an idea, and it won’t let go. As I look back, I realize several of my major moves have started that way, and this month my mom’s, come to think of it. It’s good to see that you can make something big come to pass. Husband doesn’t know it yet, but the next one is winterizing the attic porch. 🙂

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  17. Coincidence of the day: i checked out five biographies/autobiographies that are stories of a boy growing up. I wanted to see various perspectives on the task. Four of the five, and I think the fifth but cannot tell, are the story of a boy growing up in an isolated environment, isolated from other children primarily, spending their time mostly with adults, most of that time with a difficult demanding adult who unloads emotional residuals on that boy. That is the story of my childhood that I am fictionalizing. Three would clearly answer Dale’s question they way I did, lone wolf who ideates and completes. I think the other two would be the same but I do not know for sure. But I was not trying to find biographies like that, just life stories of a boy growing up to manhood.

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    1. I grew up with my brother and didn’t spend very much time with him. Thus, I kind of grew up by myself and and probably I have some of the lone wolf characteristics that you describe, Clyde. I do like working with other people sometimes. While I do fairly well working on my own and tended to do that a lot, I think I am a little happier working with others.

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  18. The jobs I applied for when I was in the conventional workforce tended to have the words “detail-oriented” in the list of qualities desired. That’s a pretty good clue that it’s a low-pay dead-end job, but I could usually get a job like that and handle it reasonably well once I got it. I found that that sort of job usually comes with a certain amount of lip service given to the notion that you’re going to have an opportunity to put forth creative ideas and make a larger contribution – this is the annual Goals and Objectives discussion – but typically that’s not what your supervisor really wants. If it was, they wouldn’t be asking for someone who’s detail-oriented.

    In the “making of” video, I could probably be the person with the ice scraper. I have ice removal experience.

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  19. I like doing better than thinking. But I’m pretty good at coming up with ideas once I’m immersed in a system (be it working in an old, dysfunctional kitchen in a home or some work situation, for example). I can’t really know how to improve something until I’ve used it enough to know what is wrong with it. I don’t think I would be very good at coming up with ideas totally from scratch. I tweak recipes, sometimes drastically, but I very rarely make up a recipe out of my own head. Same with other stuff. I have ideas to change things and like implementing those ideas but ask me to come up with an idea on my own and I just have a blank mind.

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  20. I think I am an idea person who continues to have ideas during implementation. I would be the person who halfway through would say,”Is everyone keeping an eye out for rogue squirrels who could steal the ball?”

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  21. I’m an idea person by nature and a do-er by necessity. I have lots of ideas for creative projects and sometimes they’re actually realistic and I can achieve them! I’m not naturally pragmatic though, and “too big” or “unrealistic” or “then what will you do with it” don’t enter into it for me. I just hatch an idea and start out. I finish what I can and when it becomes too big, complex or unwieldy, I just set it aside with good intentions of coming back to it. There are lots of projects of this type in my house.

    I’m a willing worker on other people’s projects too. I don’t mind having an assigned task that I know how to do. I’m able to work as a team member on a project that is a collaboration of ideas (Rock Bend). It could be that our success is not due to any single member, but that our committee is good at it together and none of us would be as good alone as we are in this collaborative force of artistic nature!

    Great story and conversations today!

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    1. Krista, I think you’re right, finding the right collaborators is important. It’s a very good idea to have people whose skills and natural abilities complement each other working on the same project. I tend to be a “big picture” person with a lot of ideas about what the finished project should be. I’ve found that my friend Mary, who is extremely detail oriented (a former nun and fraud investigator with DeLuxe), makes an ideal partner for me. She attends to all the details that bore me silly but that she loves, while my vision of the overall goal keeps our project from becoming bogged down in too much detail. We both get to contribute what we’re good at and enjoy; it’s a win win situation for both of us.

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  22. Actually, I most often end up in the role of fixer. After the thinkers think, and the doers do, and it doesn’t work, they call me to clean up the mess and figure out what went wrong. Usually the thinkers failed to run their ideas past the doers first.

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    1. I am the fixer in my family of thinkers. What really unnerves them is when I am called in to fix and then I redo, resize, and rethink theii ideas . It drives them crazy.

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