Writing it Down

So I am half-way through writing down three of my four songs. It is arduous--writing a measure of music might take me an hour or so. The music notation software is cumbersome, and I am clumsy with the mouse and not a particularly adept musician for that matter. What the MIDI file plays back to me is not what I intended to write, so I have to do it over again and again.

Yet this is the most fun I've had in a while.

What I can play more or less fluently on the keyboard takes me much longer to get right on th page. Then, of course, I can always improve on it. I can make the piano chords richer and more complex, and change the rhythms up to make them less boring and predictable.

***

What does it mean to write our prose down? The software is less cumbersome. We still must obey conventions, and know how to write in sentences and paragraphs. Writing a sentence should not take an hour.

Yet the precision of the notation must still be there. The attention to detail.

***

My four songs:

1. This is pick-up line song. Let's get together. With a jaunty rhythm.

2. This one is a let's live our life together song. We've already fallen in love, but haven't made the commitment. A beautiful melody.

3. The third one is a reconnecting song. We've loved each other in the past and will continue to do so. Another pleasing melody.

4. The last one is a break-up song: our love has taken its course and is no longer. The melody is catchy despite the negativity.

Finding One's Voice

Ron Padgett has a facetious poem about the idea of the poet's "voice." He hears people talking about finding their voice and wonders if they have literally lost their voice. Where is it? etc... Funny poem.

Anyway, I've often disliked my speaking and singing voices, but my friend Bob Basil recently commented to me that he liked both: I had sent him a homemade recording of a song I wrote called "Cloudless Night." Anyway, this comment made me want to embrace my two voices rather than dismiss them. I can more confidently speak and sing now because I have an outside perspective. Of course, Bob might think I'm better than I really am in many respects because he is my friend, but that doesn't really matter. Isn't that one thing, one of the major things, a friend is for, to like one's uniqueness?

And actually the idea of not liking one's voice played back from outside one's own head is almost universal. Who likes their own voice? It is only by listening to it and tweaking it from outside that one can even embrace it unapologetically, as I am trying to do, partly by taking voice lessons.

One's writing "voice," in the metaphorical sense that Padgett was making fun of, is also a real thing to be cultivated. I think my writing sounds like me in its exact balance of earnestness and facetiousness. In one sense voice is exactly what writing doesn't ever have, but in the metaphorical sense it is exactly what writing needs. Voiceless writing is crap.

Baseball IQ

"I didn't know you knew so much about baseball." I don't, but I was at someone's house with people who talked about scoring "points." It wasn't hard to seem like I knew something about it. I view it as "territorial" knowledge. Growing up as male in the 1970s I simply know the minimum that anybody in my situation would have to know. Like someone living in a town would know where the major streets in the town are.

You would know that if the catcher drops the third strike, he must throw to first.

That if the home team is ahead toward the end of the game, they can skip the bottom of the ninth. If they are behind in the bottom of the ninth, the minute the score, the game is over.

I knew that RISP is runners in scoring position (2nd or 3rd base). I know what era and rbi stand for.

***

I underestimated my baseball IQ because I am do not follow baseball very much, or watch it much except for when the local team is in the world series. I am not a baseball expert or serious fanatic at all. Yet I know that baseball has umps, not refs, the meaning of some basic terminology. I know you score runs, not "points."

We probably underestimate or overestimate our knowledge of many things. A speaker we had yesterday said that I new more about American poetry than most people in English departments would know. That is true.

Confusion

As a child I was confused by deodorant ads on tv. They depicted people putting deodorant on the insides of their forearms, yet somehow I knew that deodorant (although I did not need it yet) was to be applied on the armpits, what the ads called, ambiguously, "underarms." Where were the "underarms," really? That was a plausible name for the forearms as well as for the pits themselves. Eventually I figured that out.

***

I was a Spanish professor already, and was translating a book by Lola Velasco. I translated the word "cometa" as "comet," when of course it means "kite." The difference is between "el cometa" and "la cometa." Just like "la frente" means the forehead and "el frente" is the front in a war, or "el corte" is a cut and "la corte" a court. I should have looked at the picture of kites that Lola drew in her book for me. (Kites not the bird but the flying diamond-shape toy.) Luckily I didn't publish anything from this translation.

***

A colleague, also a specialist in poetry, and a native speaker of English, asked me how to pronounce the word "prosody."

***

To be continued, perhaps...

Running

Anyway, there are about five things that can bother you running.

Your feet or legs can hurt.

You can be tired, out of breath.

... hot, thirsty or dehydrated.

... bored.

... unmotivated.

I just was in the gym and I did a five k around the track. It is going to be 95 today so I didn't want to run outside. I wasn't particularly winded, or bored, since I had music. I was hot, but not excessively so. My legs hurt at first but I stopped noticing that after a few times around. I was motivated enough to complete the run, setting a personal record of 30:57. The trick was to run as slowly as I could the first part, run comfortably the second mile, and then have enough energy left to speed up for the end. Basically, I wanted to average 11 minute miles, but I ended up running a steady pace of about 6mph most of the time, giving me 10 minute miles. I think I could easily improve my time to 30 minutes, and from there a few minutes less. I was only aiming for 35 minutes today and I far surpassed that. I think the trick is going to be running outside (once it is cooler).

I think this is really a metaphor for how I approach virtually everything in life. Analytically, obsessively. The list of five things that can bother you running allows me to see what my main obstacles are. For another goal or activity, it will be something different. I've discovered, for example, that my limit in the five k has nothing to do with aerobic endurance, for now. I could have run faster if I were not as hot. It has a little to do with my legs. It is not a limit in speed, per se, since I ran quite slowly. So what I have to do is come closer to my limit in endurance, running a 5k in which I am actually winded at the end. I also need to run a mile faster. My record is 9:20, which should be easy to beat since I just ran slightly over 3 miles in 31 minutes.

Here's how I think of it: I can walk 5k in 45 minutes, at a brisk pace. The world's record is 12 something. Best amateur times in my town are around 17 or 18. My 20-year old daughter can do it in 24, without being a serious runner at all. I suspect I'll end up at about that, and I will be quite happy. I have no interest in 10k or longer at the moment, though you never know.

Shaving brush (ii)

The shaving brush is designed to make shaving soap into lather, and also to prepare the face for shaving, by spreading the lather onto the face and moistening and exfoliating the skin. The same quality of the bristles that makes it a good instrument for forming lather also serves this second purpose. I'm not sure what this is metaphor for, maybe for the scholar's brain in which the same qualities serve both to do research and also write up the results. It seems like two processes but it is really one. You read with an eye to writing later, and write with the knowledge gained from reading.

Shaving Brush

Things like this are not hard to depict. You can see a shaving brush, a nail clipper, a folding knife, a computer accessory. (I drew a thumb too as a point of comparison.) Once again, the drawings are quite crude, and it is easy to see what's wrong. With a minimum of effort I could probably do drawings of these objects that are about twice as good.

All children (apart from those with specific disabilities or conditions than prevent them from doing one or more of these things) sing, draw, and use spoken language. Drawing and singing become more specialized activities for adults, who will tell you they can't carry a tune or draw a picture. (What they usually mean by not being able to draw is that they draw about like I do.) Adults continue to use language too. The written language is accessed through academic training, beginning with learning to read and write. Being a good writer is like being able to draw or sing adequately, not in a childlike way. We expect a competence in written language consonant with one's level of academic achievement.

People who are not good writers often think they are. I don't think people who draw as well as I do think they are competent, but people are deluded about their ability to write well. I think it is because they cannot see writing as writing. They think of mechanics (punctuation); avoiding zombie rules (no split infinitives); ideals of concision & clarity (often badly understood), but they don't think beyond those elements.

I am somewhat ashamed of how badly I draw, because I think that everyone should have "college level drawing." What I mean by this is not being a great artist, or even having the level of competence of an average art student, but simply being able to pass an exam in which you had to draw a good three-dimensional depiction of a shaving brush.

Hand

Following Thomas's suggestions, I have looked at my hand a bit. Now the first thing that is obvious is that, even though I can't draw worth beans, I can easily see what mistakes I've made. In other words, I have the ability to look analytically and see what I've done wrong. The flatter hand drawn underneath the one with the prominent thumb has a ring finger thicker than the middle finger, when my hand is not like that at all. The sleeve of my shirt and sport-coat is all wrong, etc...

I could obviously practice until I got to where the errors were not so blatant. I could use a pencil and erase and re-redraw. I could study books on drawing or take lessons. A lot of this is straightforward.

It seems to me, though, that my perception that the drawing is not how I want it to be is primary. Everything else, all other efforts to improve, depend on that. It is said you can't edit your own writing, and it is true that another set of eyes might see something I don't, or correct errors invisible to my own eyes. But suppose I were an expert draughtsman: then I would also be even better at seeing and correcting what I've done wrong. An editor who is a much worse writer than I am is not likely to help me much, because I've already seen obvious things and corrected them. My first "sketch" is also going to be better with more practice.

It seems, too, that you should be able to sketch out in words what you want to say even if you know you will change them later, and that your sketching will be useful to yourself.

Whetstone

In my everyday life there is nobody I can talk to who knows more (or even close) about Lorca, contemporary Spanish poetry, or anything else I am supposed to know about, to be a big expert on. When I am in Spain, though, I get to talk to people like José Antonio Llera, Andrés Soria, Carlos Piera, Julián Jiménez Heffernan, Margarita García Candeira, José Manuel Cuesta Abad, Ada Salas, and Jordi Doce. I get to do this in Spanish, too. Of course, I can talk Spanish with my colleagues and students too, but it is not quite the same.

I also got to talk a bit with Attridge and others, too, in Córdoba.

So Spain is my whetstone. Maybe one of my whetstones, because the blog is too; other conferences I might go to. My Thursday tertulia can act like that as well, though the conversation tends to be more social than intellectual there.

Without this one has "one thought less, each year," so to speak. The scholarly base is still there, always, but the sharpening of the mind is something else.

Cordoba & Arrogance

Bound for Córdoba in the fall to give a talk at a modernism conference. But chance, it is in English. It will be called "An Elegy for Lorca Studies." I almost said a "Requiem for Lorca Studies."

These cities first came into my consciousness as names of automobiles. The Seville is a Cadillac. The Granada a Ford, and the Cordoba a Chrysler, so each of the big three Detroit companies had an Andalusian city car, with the connotation of luxury and Southern exoticism or Latin charm. (There was also a suburb in my town called Rancho Cordova.)

***

Kenneth Koch has a one-page play about the death of Lorca in Seville. This is too funny because everyone knows Lorca met his death outside Granada. Americans can't seem to get anything right about Lorca. Whether this error is deliberate or not I have no clue. It's almost not funny enough to be joke, but too obviously wrong not to be.

***

I just decided that I will also be big-name expert on Lorca's theater, leveraging my position as one of the main Lorca poetry scholars. How can I decide this? That sounds pretty arrogant, but all it would take is for me to write about the theater as well. It's not as though theater is so esoteric that it would take me five years to train myself in it. There are good scholars doing work in this area, and I think I can do work that is of comparable quality.

***

There's a beer I order sometimes called Arrogant Bastard. There is a useful humility and a harmful humility. The same way, there is a useful confidence as well as a useless form of confidence which goes by the name of arrogance.

Useful humility: you know that you can make a mistake, that you don't know everything, and that other people have strengths that are not yours.

Useless humility: the kind that makes you unable to perform. Suppose you were trying to do some absurd bicycle trick flipping over five times. You have to think that you can nail it or you will kill yourself. Of course, you still might kill yourself. If you can't envision yourself doing something, that you won't be able to do it.

Useful confidence, then, is the secure knowledge that you have the tools to do what you want to do. It should almost be factual: I have this much time on my hands, this knowledge of the subject-matter, this particular ability to understand and analyze, etc...

I heard Julia's summer audition tape recently. I told her that she made it sound easy, like she was playing it how she wanted, without struggling to get to a higher level. She said people told her she played "like she didn't give a shit," meaning not a lack of effort or engagement, but a kind self-confidence. There were minor imperfections but in the context of a fluent flow of notes.

Useless arrogance is mistaking your own excellence for some deep-seated superiority. An ability to do something well is just that, and nothing more. It doesn't make you better than someone else, just better at doing that one thing, that you can do better.

***

On the other hand, I think everyone should find something to do as well as possible. Why do we place such a high value on people who can do something better than someone else? The race may not be to the swift in every case, but sometimes it is. Sports is entertaining not just because of the entertainment value of the action, but because people really like to experience the struggle for excellence, whether directly or vicariously.

Complexity

Ingredients I will use to make my eggplant pasta this evening: water, salt, pasta; eggplant, olive oil, flour, eggs, bread crumbs, cayenne pepper, black pepper, onions, garlic, parmesan, fresh basil.

I will boil the pasta in salted water; dip the eggplant in bread crumbs (flour & eggs first), sauté them in olive oil, make a tomato sauce with onions, garlic, fresh basil; mix the pasta, the eggplant, and a little of the tomato sauce with some cheese, and I am done. This is a relatively simple dish, that I think of as having two main ingredients, but if I break it down like this it looks complex. I have to decide how much of everything to use, how small to dice the onions, cooking times for every ingredient, amounts of seasonings. I might find a few more things in the pantry or fridge that will go into it.

It will require about 35 minutes (yes, I am fast in the kitchen). I know that I need to start with the things that take the longest; I know what can be done simultaneously. The the pasta can be cooked first and wait for the other ingredients. Onions will take their time to get as brown as I want them, but garlic cannot be burnt.

I know that I can make minor mistakes in timing and have things turn out still ok. I know my haste and lack of attention to detail might make a dish into a B+ or B- when it could have been and A-. I know rewards and risks of improvisation.

I know that I can eat this pasta with the rest of the pork tenderloin with chipotle blackberry glaze from Thursday. I'll have a salad of baby spinach with lemon and olive oil dressing. That's the third night I'm eating that tenderloin, but that's what I get for living alone.

***

There's an empirical side to the study of poetry, that I got from Pound, Zukofsky, and Perloff. Look at what the poem actually is saying on the literal level. Evaluate claims with precision. It seems too simplistic an approach but actually develops a level of complexity. There's a clarity of perception, like knowing what certain foods taste like and how long they need to cook.

Tennis vs. Baseball

Nadal has lost three times in 2013, and won maybe 55. Federer is about 34 and 10. Djokovic has only lost 8 times, and Murray's stats would look quite similarly impressive (9 losses against many more victories). Ferrer is 42 and 14. James Blake, number 100 in the world, who has just retired, has a career record of 61 and 42 in Grand Slams. He was an extremely good player at one point, and retires with a very respectable record, but way below the level of those who win repeated tournaments over the course of several years.

In part because of his extreme dominance on clay, Nadal has a career winning record against Murray, Federer, Roddick, and Novak, and probably against every other player he's played at least 3 times. He is 21 and 5 against Ferrer, an excellent, excellent player who's ranked number 4 in the world, and 16 and 3 against Berdych, who is #5. He has won 15 straight times against the Czech. If Federer is the greatest of all time, Nadal can say he has a winning record against the best player ever. So what does that make him? He has a 6/1 ratio of wins to loss in his career. Federer has won more than 900 professional tennis matches and lost only around 200!

In baseball, most teams in the major leagues are between .400 and .600 in winning percentage, so the typical mismatch is between a team that wins 9 out of 20 and one that wins 11. (The highest percentage as of today .606. Two teams are below .400.)

The difference is that the top tennis players are playing against the equivalent of minor league players, a lot of the time. The game is structured differently, so you don't get to even play another match if you lose the first round of a tournament. A .500 record means you lose and win about half the time in the first round. Or lose a lot in the first round and go into deeper rounds once in a while. What is truly amazing is a player at the top of his game who is virtually unbeatable, even by another stellar player. A pitcher never wins 20 or 30 games in a row.

Baseball is subject to numerous chance factors, so that a team that is objectively better will lose to worse teams on any given day. The season is long with many games, and every team plays the exact number of games. There ought to be a technical term for sports that are more subject to chance factors, like golf, soccer, or baseball, vs. sports in which the winner is much more often the better team or player, like football or tennis. When I see two pro tennis players who aren't in the top 10 against each other, I think either of them could win on any given day. Say the number 35 against the number 25 in the world. So in that context tennis seems much more "noisy." A top player who isn't having a horrible day can almost always put away even a superb player.

Physique

I was watching the FINA championships on tv when I was in Barcelona. They were taking place there so I should have tried to go to some events in person. I noticed the swimmers and divers had different physiques. None had any discernible body fat, but the swimmers had larger muscles than divers, who are built for agility in the air. Every kind of athlete has the typical physique of that athlete. Sprinters have large upper bodies but marathon runners are slight. Decathletes are athletic in a more generic way. They have to do shot put, jump, and run various distances. Offensive lineman weigh 300 pounds. Tennis players do not look like body builders. In fact, athletes in general do not have the engorged, hypertrophied muscles of those who build up their bodies for show. They are ripped, but without those grotesque-looking, bulging muscles.

So what does an "athletic physique" look like? Generally, low body fat, no large stomachs (except maybe for some weightlifters) and muscles that are functional for that particular sport. Muscles will be large when they need to be, but they have to be strong and efficient for the particular event. Guys who spend a lot of time in the gym won't be necessarily impressed by Ronaldo's physique, or Nadal's. There are plenty of average Joes in my gym with bigger biceps, but who don't earn millions playing a sport either.*

I'm just a 53-year old guy trying to get back into shape, look slightly ripped-er** than I am. I don't need to look like an elite athlete, (nor is there any danger of that!) but I think I'd rather look like that than like a body builder with humongous but essentially functionless muscles.

__

*I've written this post with masculine bias, obviously, though the same principles apply to women, who also do body-building, swimming, diving, track, etc... I was noticing Stosur's marvelous upper arms in her loss to the young Victoria Duval the other day at the US Open.

**Yes, I now you can't make a comparative out of participle. Why not? What's the rule? Why can you say "shapelier" but not "differenter." ??

Fuel

What is your fuel? Caffeine? Good food? Fountain pen ink? Perfume? Sex? Music? Massage? Praise from others you admire as scholars? The acceptance of articles? Intellectual dialogue? Reading primary texts or foundational works in your field? What happens when you don't get this fuel regularly?

Pecs

In the free-weight room the other day, I noticed that I had the smallest pectoral muscles of anyone in there. Yet I can do 60 pushups! Something doesn't add up here.

Of course, men (mostly men) who are in that room in the first place are a self-selecting group. Walking down the street I am slightly more muscular than average, but in the weight room I am scrawny.

Of course, I am also only 5' 8" and 160 lbs. Probably everyone else lifting weights were between five-eleven and six-four, and 190-230, I would guess. I am strong relative to my weight. I am also 30 years older than most of them, so I feel good just being there, even if I am the proverbial 98-lb weakling.

So I guess the metaphor here is about comparing yourself to other people. You could feel one way walking down the street, among non-academic civilians. You are smarter than them. Another way in your own department, a self-selected group of people all working in the same discipline, and another way in the profession, where the smartest guy or gal in one particular department might be mediocre on the national scene.

cause / will / strength / means

Hamlet wonders why he has not taken action yet, since he has all the necessary elements in place:

"Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means
To do it."

He is a very analytical person, who loves to break things down like this, and he lists these elements in a logical order.

Cause: you need an ultimate reason for what you are doing, a deep motivation. That is the first one he mentions.

Will: Hamlet himself does not seem to have this quality, despite his claim here. That is the missing link in his chain, perhaps. Will is the quality of persistent effort in any endeavor, or the commitment to take action. In his sonnets the bard often plays with the word will, punning on his own name.

Strength. I could not bench-press 250 lbs, no matter how much will-power I had. Strength is the actual capability needed to take action.

Means. I take means to be the pragmatic set of opportunities and techniques needed in order to carry out an action.

Of course, taking revenge for the murder of one's father is not the same as carrying out a research program. Where is your weakest link in this chain?

Ping Pong and Frisbee

When my brother was a little kid, we would throw the frisbee back and forth in our cul-de-sac. I was seven years older, so I was basically teaching him how to throw a frisbee. Later, when he was a teenager, he won frisbee contests and could roundly defeat college students, much older than he was, at frisbee golf.

I used to take my daughter to the gym to play ping pong. Later, got a table. I played easier on her when she was little. When she went to a music camp this summer, she could easily beat almost every other high school kid at ping pong. She lost one game to a kid, but then turned around and beat him, but was otherwise undefeated. Now I can barely score a point off of her.

I have no particular talent for either frisbee or table tennis, but I was good enough to provide enough to provide the proper amount of resistance and / or practice to make a kid much better than I will ever be.

Small Ball

"Small ball" or "inside baseball" (metaphorically) refers to a strategy of putting forward claims that are too insignificant or too specialized, or demonstrating points in a way that is too plodding or mechanical, or arguing with over-fine interpretations of the evidence. It is the result of a few factors: being so immersed in a field, or example, that one loses perspective, the "big picture." Small ball can be very convincing to other specialists who also have no perspective, but is likely to bore those in other fields. We should, in fact, have fine, detailed knowledge at the granular level, but the danger is in losing sight of what anyone else cares about. Sometimes debates in other fields, not my own, seem trivial, because I am not acculturated into the lore of the field.

Sometimes, the perspective is so limited that more important matters are forgotten. I am very guilty of that myself. For example, I should have probably spent more time in Apocryphal Lorca explaining how Lorca's death reverberated in leftwing circles in the 1930s. To me it's such an obvious point that I forgot to give it its proper magnitude and was later zapped by a reviewer. Quite rightly.

***

It is interesting that "inside baseball" refers both to a strategy of playing the game, an offense based on squeeze plays, stolen bases, bunts, etc... rather than power hitting and slugging, and also to a way of talking about baseball, one that emphasizes the finer points of strategy that the casual fan does not care about. I only knew of the second meaning, but when I looked it up I saw that it was synonymous with "small ball." Granted, small ball can be a thing of beauty on the diamond, with its scrappy, opportunistic quality.

Tour de France

Imagine a footrace between several people. That would be the simplest model of a race. The tour is incredibly more complex than that. There are no only individuals, but teams. Some riders are not there to win themselves, but to be supportive of others on their teams. Quaintly, supportive riders are called "domestiques."

Secondly, it is cumulative, so that the winner is not the first across the finish line, but the rider with the lowest overall time at the end.

Most riders, most of the time, are in a huge pack called the "peloton," riding very close together. It is a very gregarious event. The leader of the race, wearing the yellow jersey, is often to be found in the middle of the peloton. There is no particular advantage to being at the front of the pack, since only a few second separate the front from the back.

Riders stage escapes or attacks by trying to separate themselves from the peloton, usually in small groups. The maillot jaune and other top riders can tolerate an attack if it doesn't include serious rivals. The leader himself can attack, and if he is successful put some distance between himself and key rivals, since not all the rivals will be part of the escaping group. After an attack the peloton as a collective entity can try to catch up with the escaped riders. There is a cost in an escape: if unsuccessful, it is a loss of valuable energy. There are also huge gains to be made if a rider escapes and moves up in the overall standings. Most days are not decisive, but some are, with a dramatic escape that changes the standings. The mountains, first the Pyrenees and then the Alps, are the most decisive, because they tend to spread out the riders more and allow from more drama than the flatter parts of the race.

Riders can always win glory in individual stages, but most are out either to win the whole thing, be a domestic servant, or vie for one of the secondary prizes like "king of the mountain."

It's hard to get too enthusiastic because even Armstrong, who passed every drug test ever, is now under suspicion of doping.

Most of the time, then, you want to be in the peloton, more or less following the status quo. You want to have some individual distinction, but you can also be part of a team. Daring escapes are cause for excitement, but are risky and not always successful.

Stealth

Franklin has asked me the following question:

I've always wondered about the notion of a "stealth attack" on an article that you've used on several occasions. You've sometimes used phrases like "...before it can put up resistance" or "before the project knows what's hit it." (I'm paraphrasing.) These are metaphors, of course - the -article- isn't doing anything, even passively. But the author is. I wonder if you could say something about what kinds of resistance you have in mind, and what the "tactics" of such attacks might be.

Articles and larger project loom large in our minds. They can be scary and intimidating, resulting in procrastination of very slow, tentative starts. The stealth or sneak attack is a way of getting around this intimidation by conceiving of the task as a resisting force, ascribing a metaphorical agency to it that, of course, it doesn't really have. Suppose a chapter is going to put up resistance to me writing it. If it knows I am about to write it, it will marshal resistance. But if I don't tell myself before hand that I am going to work on it, then I can just surprise myself and do it before "it" (me) is aware of what is happening.

On a less metaphorical level, the sneak attack simply means writing an inordinate amount in a short period of time in order to make rapid but substantial progress on it. Most of your writing won't be done that way, but it is a helpful change of pace in certain circumstances. Aside from the work produced, it has the benefit of letting yourself know what you are capable of when given a block of time and an opportunity.

Metaphors like this help in the writing process because they shape behavior. I favor agonistic metaphors because for me they are motivating, though I wouldn't encourage anyone to use a metaphor just because I use it. Develop your own by all means.