Unqualified Success

As I celebrate ten years of publication of The Syncopated Times, I think I now may safely confess something that many of you have known all along: I haven’t the faintest idea of what I’m doing. Ten years ago I approached this job more as triage than as a calling. Never having published a periodical, nor having studied journalism, nor even having attended college, I jumped in way over my head and dog-paddled toward learning to lay out my first issue.

If there was any skill I had going into this venture, it was my preternatural ability to ignore all advice, good and bad. All those times I have tried taking advice things invariably came out worse. I understand English perfectly well, but I can’t speak Directions. Rather than learning at a normal rate, I evolve through embarrassment. Hence, I could not tie my shoes until the third grade—where I had it done for me, in class, by a girl for whom I harbored a crush. Mortified, I learned immediately thereafter.

By the same token, I didn’t drive a car until I was 25. I had just started a business (for which I was also less than qualified) and it was unseemly for an aspiring Titan of Commerce to be without the independent means to get from one place to another. (Also, I had not yet begun to date and that particular omission was adversely affecting my personality—which wasn’t wonderful to begin with.) I was for years determined not to drive, believing I could somehow navigate and prosper as a pedestrian. But I learned under duress, and had more fun than I expected. (I eventually married a woman who insists on doing all the driving, so I’m about back where I started.)

Returning to the turmoil leading up to my February 2016 debut issue, I managed to run the gauntlet of helpful hints with minimal damage. If I had hesitated, you might be holding a slick magazine in your hands, Ragtime might have been kicked to the curb, and this column might be called “Senior Moments” as suggested by at least two people. Calling it anything but “Senior Moments” was imperative for me. My befuddlement is hardly typical, nor is it gentle. I’m not misplacing my reading glasses on my forehead but raging and squalling against the humiliating absurdity of being at odds with my fellow creatures in a world gone mad. This is “Static from my Attic” because it could not possibly be anything else.

I sometimes say that I taught myself to lay out The Syncopated Times in two weeks in January 2016. The truth is that I am still learning from my many mistakes. I have been doing things wrong for ten years and baffling and infuriating my printers for the duration. It was some time last year when I discovered that I could set all non-color images to “grayscale” within my (non-standard, open source) layout program so that they would not separate into four colors. I now make sure that all my text is 100 percent “K” black rather than “warm black” or “cool black” or (horrors) “registration black.”

The local printer I worked with until December 2020 was just as confused as I was. They couldn’t give me a clear answer as to why my layouts were going flooey and begged me to use InDesign, which I didn’t want to learn—or pay for. We just sort of resented each other until they moved their printing operation offsite. If they had said, “Set all your black and white illustrations to ‘grayscale,’ put all your color images in CMYK, and make sure your text is pure black” it might have solved our problems. (I blame it on their youth. They’d only been in business since 1864.)

My current printer is excellent and has responded to my ineptitude with patience. I’ve learned plenty in the past five years and have finally achieved a simulacrum of professionalism. Layout is a task I approach each month with dread, wondering how I’m going to make everything fit. (Spoiler alert: I don’t. I here apologize to those contributors whose hard work has yet to see the light of day.)

I further admit to being distracted from my work obligations by the leitmotif of murmurs from the madding crowd. Last year when our tallest mountain, Denali, was having its name changed back to Mt. McKinley, I suggested that it should be hollowed out and renamed “Denial” so we all could live there. (I have since discovered that the rent in that neighborhood is prohibitively expensive. I can just about afford a studio apartment in the Slough of Despond.)

The positive news for The Syncopated Times is that the Syncopated Media, Inc. 501(c)(3) nonprofit is keeping us safely afloat. I am beyond grateful to the generous donors who have helped keep us going, even as so many other worthy causes clamor for support. (As for myself, I have pitched in to our local public broadcasting stations and a few independent news outlets, all of which are needed now more than ever.) Barring Finland and Canada getting mad at us and telling us to pulp our own damn trees for paper, The Syncopated Times should be okay for a while.

When I was five years old and even dumber than I am now, I was made to face the flag and recite a Pledge of Allegiance to it I couldn’t begin to understand. Now that I understand it I’m not so sanguine. I won’t recant it, but let me lay another pledge on top of it, one that is more heartfelt:

I pledge allegiance to jazz and all those who play it and listen to it and love it; one community bound by harmony and syncopation, kind and respectful to one another and to the memory of all the greats in whose footsteps we swing.