sp170122  Practice makes perfect: Practice also makes it permanent  

The expression “practice makes perfect” comes to mind as he begins this day’s work on his Memoir Project. Perfect studios is the idea he formed in the early 1970s based on a teaching hospital where teaching, research, practice and service are concomitant.

As I sit down today to work on my memoir project, my 1977 Journal open in front of me, I’m ready to start dictating using this capital Dragon software. I put on my headset and open the program and realize this is only practice. The expression “practice makes perfect” flashes into my mind. Perfect studios is a matter of practice. Perfect studios, the idea I got in the early 1970s from the teaching hospital, is about practice.

Practice and production are the “P” in the TRPS principal underline the perfect studios. “T” is for teaching; “R” is for research; “P” is for practice and production – which go hand-in-hand with each other; and “S” stands for service. 

The culmination of artistic practice—whether it’s in the visual arts, music or architecture—is service. We are all servants to humanity and Earth’s human life sustainability.

If an artist is to be a valuable part of the community, his or her value comes only by virtue of their commitment to TRPS. Practice, then, includes buying and sustaining productivity software. I am about to copy out a statement from August 11, 1977, for my memoir project using this Dragon software.

This serves me as an example of how to be an artist of value to the community, because this practice gives me the ability to answer or respond to the needs of my community, starting with my family.

By the end of the day I have practiced several kinds of software applications in connection with my computer and its peripherals—including the Internet. Because I am working on my memoir project, this has a strange effect on me because the traditional memoir is a book. Therefore, why include the Internet?

My mother wrote her memoirs by hand in three blank books given to her by my sister, Gail. Beginning in 1995, Gail and my older sister Wilma and our younger sister Jennifer labored to put her longhand text into type, and then into machine-readable text. Eventually I published it as an on-demand paperback.

My memoir project, however, is not destined to be a book. What it will be, if not a book, remains to be discovered. I think if I practice every day with the apps and equipment I have, and utilize the remains of my lifework in this practice, I will be fulfilling the basic TRPS formula. Then, in a process known in industry as concurrent engineering, the form of my memoir project may become clear.