What we see depends mainly on what we look for - John Lubbock

Some number of years ago (deep in the COVID era) I ran across a comedian named Ali Spagnola who had an interesting quote in her bio:

The term polymath¹² is thrown around a lot these days . . . and Ali hopes someone will throw it at her. ³

It stuck with me for some time - partly because of the apparent audacity of such a statement, but mostly because it’s an interesting concept. How do you describe years of collected knowledge across a wide variety of fields, without falling into the “jack of all trades, master of none” trope? I’ll take my best stab at it below, and we’ll see what happens.

Music

The love of music has been engrained in my soul since childhood. All manner and sorts of noises have been put up with by family and friends surrounding me - some of them much more pleasant than others. Early foundations of music include being a classical pianist, and accomplished enough singer and guitarist to have paid for many a bar tab. Tack on the world of synthesizers of all types, and it’s a veritable one man noise machine.

Initially spurred by need, I dove into the art of recording and live sound. In that sphere I learned that production and musicianship are symbiotic; a good engineer can become a much better one by understanding the emotion and intent of a song, and a great musician can push and break the limits of technology in order to make their audience engage even deeper into the story the music is telling.

Some fun examples:

• What Child Is This / Greensleeves - synths, drum programming, mix, production

• Lead Me To The Cross - arrangment, instruments, mix

• You Are The Song - recording, mixing, mastering

Arts

• Printing
• Photography
• Darkroom printing

Technology

• Deep love of Linux and open source
• Networking
• Rust
• dotNet
• CI/CD
• Homelabbing
• Amateur Radio

People

Process

• Business Analyst
• Training

Why does it matter?

• A generalist knows a little about a lot of things, and a spepcialist knows an extreme amount about a specific thing; knowing a lot about a lot of things brings a more diverse set of problem-solving skills and unique perspective to the world