I walked out to where me and other guy would be working and sat atop a mound of soil that I had created the week before. I was fuming and just sat there in the early morning August sun, silent. The guy was working and he sensed my agitation, introduced himself, and asked what was wrong. We talked for a few minutes, but I didn’t really have much to say. I had no plan, and no prospects, and I was not only being cheated, but also taken advantage of. I had nothing. Knowing this I carried on for a few more days, and earned back the time to pay for the sessions, and earn enough time for another session, but the elderly southern gentleman, while old, was no dummy and quite an astute conniver. He knew I had no prospects and he kept sticking me up and holding the training hostage. It was starting to feel like indentured servitude, and pretty soon I would owe him more than he owed me according to his relative method of accounting.

After another couple weeks of this routine and horrific training, I had enough. I walked out of the training and into the office of the elderly southern gentleman. I didn’t know what I would say, or do, because I was young, and Detroit was a small town. Word in the A/V business could travel fast. I collected myself the best I could, and told him that I would be discontinuing the training. He gave me a lot of trouble, told me that he had set aside a place for me, and all this and that. I told him, that I would have to respectfully decline. I also told him that by my estimate he owed $50 and that I wanted to square up. He told me that he didn’t have any money and that I should be paying him for the privilege. I asked if he needed to go to the office or an ATM and get cash. He told me I would take a check for a lesser amount, I told him that I wouldn’t. He told me that I was ungrateful. I insisted that I be paid for my time. He told me I did a bad job and deserved nothing.

He tried every attempt at breaking me down. The elderly southern gentleman with his white suits and black cain, looking like some kind of senior knock-off, Leon Redbone kept up his act, until finally he told me that I was making a big mistake by leaving his employ and that word of my not completing things would catch up with me. He pulled two twenties and two fives from his wallet and threw them on the floor in front of me. I was broke. Not missing a beat, I picked them up and shot out his door in a single motion.

At the time, with no prospects and no opportunities, and also being young, I had no idea what I was doing. He may have been right for all I knew, but it didn’t matter. I had to make the choice. I had to do what was right for me. In the end, I never did break into A/V in Detroit, and not long after that I took a job as an administrative assistant. Work wasn’t great, but I did get to work with computers, pay was good, and I wasn’t sweating in the hot sun. While I don’t know how things would have turned out if I had stayed, things certainly have been better for leaving, even if it did take a long time to reconcile that.

Do you have any stories like this? I’d like start a featuring stories like this, contact me with your ideas.

All throughout our lives we’re faced with situations. Most of these situations don’t require much, perhaps some research, advice from parents or colleagues who’ve had to make similar choices before. We evaluate what’s before us and we make a decision to move forward. These are the easiest situations to deal with. However, sometimes, thankfully not all that often, situations arise where there’s nobody to offer advice, and your only guide is your personal ethical and moral compass. These are situations where you really have to sit yourself down and evaluate what you’re faced with and how it may or may not affect your life down the road. These kinds of circumstances almost always test your integrity, because there’s usually something fundamental and core to your being that’s at question.

The tenuous relationship between you and your integrity is the feeling when you’re at the crossroads of something in your life that’s big or has the possibility of becoming something very large if you don’t act swiftly and decisively. In situations like this there’s almost always a component sacrifice or loss that comes with doing what you know is right, but is neither comfortable or very appealing. It’s the conflicted feeling that is the tenuous relationship between you and integrity.

I remember one time, early in my career, as I was working trying to break into the corporate video business in Detroit. The economy was in the toilet, and there was a lot of desperation. The desperation became most apparent whenever I showed up to interviews. I was fresh out of broadcasting school, I had a pretty good reel, and I was still there like all the other new upstarts groveling at the feet of studio and post house owners trying to get any kind of job, even a coffee boy, that might allow the opportunity to get a foot in the door. After nearly a year and a half of interviews and few prospects I met an elderly southern gentleman (I say gentleman sarcastically, because he was no gentleman at all, but we’ll get to that) who was willing to give me a chance, but there was a catch… Isn’t there always?

He would give me a chance to work in his studio and actually work on the gear, but he’d only do it in exchange for me landscaping his house. The closest I had ever gotten to landscaping had been planting a tree when I was in the Cub Scouts. I explained this to him with the hope that he would have mercy and cut me some slack, and just let me in. Ha! No such luck, the elderly southern gentleman was willing to teach me. So the next day, on a hot August morning, I showed up with a thermos of water and two bologna sandwiches. The deal was for every eight hours I worked I could earn $40 that would be put towards a special studio program that he had worked out with his son, who actually ran the studio. And the $40 for studio time actually came out to only two hours of studio learning with the “chance” — I have to put chance in big fat air quotes — that I could get an opportunity to participate in a shoot or work in the audio studio, for free of course, but the chance to practice my craft. So let’s review, eight hours of labor for $40 that could be put towards two hours of studio time that *might* lead to a chance to actually do A/V work for free as an intern. It was a horrible deal, but I was desperate and hopeful. Sometimes, hope is all you have especially when you’re desperate. I sweated it out for several weeks, working roughly four days a week that culminated in a six hour studio learning time session each Friday. The lessons were not good. The yahoo son of the elderly southern gentleman was a washed up rock and roller who landed on the wrong side of the coke spoon too many times, and his feathered hair, straight from a Journey cover group, being tossed about as he covered the most basic aspects of audio, was doing little for me.

Still hopeful and still desperate, the first week-earned session had ended. Time to start back up again on Monday accruing more learning time. When I got to the site on Monday I noticed two things. First off, there was a guy already there, working, and a lot of the work that I had done the week before had been undone. I went to the office and asked the bleery-eyed elderly southern gentleman what happend to the work I did all last week. As he wiped the sleep from his eyes he told me that I hadn’t’ done a good job and he had gone and redone it himself… There wasn’t much to the job, it was mostly spending the day bent over pulling weeds and rocks out of a small field of which I had accrued nearly 15 wheel barrows full by week’s end. This guy was probably 90 years old, seriously, no joke, so I just stood there agog imagining this old man doing that back-breaking work. He told me that he apprised the new upstart of the project and that moving forward I would have company. He then went on to tell me that he would dock me for all of the previous week’s time, and so effectively, I was working to pay back the session of the previous Friday. I became smoking hot, and started to argue with him. He held all the cards. I walked out.

To be continued on Wednesday, 09/30/09…

This post was one that was originally posted here, but kind of got lost in the mix, and I wanted to repost it for two reasons. First, this is a great example of using the Web to create and be creative. I was surfing Flickr, a free picture sharing site, and I found this great series by Indy Kethdy, he had them marked with a Creative Commons license, so I downloaded them, created a video, and then composed a soundtrack to the photostream. Then I posted the video on YouTube to share. This sort of the full-circle of open sharing, social media and creativity on the Web. My second reason is less profound, I know the site has some new readers, and I thought that they might enjoy checking out this video montage. Enjoy.

Indy Kethdy Video Montage with Matt Borghi Soundtrack

Surfing Flickr, as I so often do, I find images that inspire me. Last Friday night, though, I found the fantastic work of Indy Kethdy. I spent hours, and hours pouring over his pictures of Lake Michigan from around Wisconsin. I started to hear music in my ears, and imagined putting these images to sound. I was in luck, because Indy had set his pictures with a Creative Commons license that allowed me to make a video of his photos, put them to music, and then post it here for you to view. I highly recommend visiting Indy’s Flickr page – http://www.flickr.com/people/indykethdy/ and getting a taste of his excellent artistry first-hand. First, though, check out the video homage and the music that I created from the inspiration of his gorgeous still images:

A lot is being said about “free” these days, especially with the release of Chris Anderson’s book on the subject, but ever since I came online I’ve been interested in the economics of free, whether it was freeware, free music, or free information.

Story: I ran a series of free Mp3 downloads back in 2003 at mattborghi.com, and those downloads brought in more hits to my Web site than being featured on the nationally-syndicated space music program, Hearts of Space. To be fair, the program didn’t feature my music, exclusively, and no link was included to my site, but I thought that it would at least have generated some inquiries, and it did. However, I didn’t see nearly the response that I thought I would from that exposure compared to the interest generated by the free monthly download series.

It’s with that experience in mind that I released a variety of my long-form ambient music tracks to be freely available (some of which are from that monthly download series). Here’s the official announcement from my homepage at mattborghi.com:

Freely available Mp3s of long-form ambient works

I have freely released several hours worth of my long form works in mp3 form here, approximately a dozen tracks. Most of these tracks haven’t been available in quite a long time. Some go back as far as ten years and my early Mp3.com page, some were out-takes from records, and the 2003 series was a monthly download series that I did throughout 2003 during a particularly prolific period. I hope to add other long form works over started adding these tracks.

My reasons for doing this are two-fold. First, these tracks haven’t been available in a long time, and to me it makes more sense to put them out into the universe, where people can enjoy them, than let them take up space on my hard drive .

The second reason has to do with my how I measure the success of social media. Social media metrics and measurements are something that many folks talk about, and ponder but I think that good social media metrics aren’t in hit rankings or page views, but rather in how many people you are getting your ideas out to. The more people that download you free ambient music tracks, watch your videos, read your blog, etc… and comment on, think about, bring up in discussion, include in status updates or generally take an interest in your ideas is the best way to measure the success of social media.

As the perfect near dovetail to yesterday’s post on the evolution of communication on the Web, I stumbled upon this video when logging into Yahoo! Mail this morning.

Communication Evolution @ Yahoo! Video

I don’t love the music, but I thought the video was cute, and a nice addition to the discussion about the evolution of communication on the Web.