The Office in the Easy Chair: What a Day of Working With AI Colleagues Actually Looks Like

In my last post I wrote about what AI agents might make possible. This one is about what they actually did today, which is a more useful question and, as it turns out, a less dramatic one. Nobody built a business empire from a recliner this afternoon. What happened was quieter: a handful of ordinary tasks got finished, checked, and put away, and I spent most of my time deciding things rather than doing them. That is closer to the point than any grand prediction.

The office, such as it is, consists of a chair, a laptop, a view of the hills turning color, and three colleagues. Clara is ChatGPT, and she is my partner for research, writing, and thinking things through. Dex works through Hark and handles the practical side, the part that involves logging into things, filling in forms, and carrying a task from start to finish. Finn is meant to look after personal matters. I direct the work, supply the experience, and decide whether the results are any good. That last job turns out to be the important one.

Writing the Rules Down

This morning I wrote what I'm calling our office working agreement. It's a plain document, and most of it would be familiar to anyone who has ever managed people. Results come before conversation. Research thoroughly before declaring that something can't be done. When a task is assigned and authorized, do it rather than explaining how I might do it myself. Keep track of what has been finished and what hasn't. Don't make me repeat information I've already supplied. And above all, verify everything.

That last rule deserves some explanation. A task is not complete because an assistant attempted it, or because it reports success in a confident tone. It is complete when there's evidence: a saved change, a scheduled post that shows up as scheduled, a message that was demonstrably sent. I've asked my colleagues to sort their reports into categories: completed and verified, completed but not independently verified, partially completed, blocked by a specific limitation, or not attempted. It sounds bureaucratic, but it's the difference between knowing where things stand and hoping you do.

The Detour Around Facebook

A good example came from social media. I manage a number of Facebook Pages for my various projects, and Facebook has a habit of treating any sign-in from an unfamiliar computer as an intrusion. Dex tried more than once to work through Meta's own business tools and was stopped each time by security checks that no amount of persistence would get past. Meta's developer route had its own circular verification problem.

Rather than keep pushing on a locked door, we went around it. I already had an unused Buffer account, a scheduling service that connects to Facebook Pages. I connected three Pages myself from my own computer, which Facebook was happy to accept, and from then on Dex could prepare and schedule posts through Buffer without tripping Meta's alarms. It isn't the elegant solution I would have designed, but it works, and it took minutes instead of hours.

The first real use was a post announcing my new Verve Music track, The Space Between the Walls. I asked Dex to find the best time to post it and schedule it. The answer, based on a large published analysis of Facebook posting times, was Thursday morning at nine. The post was scheduled, and then, because of the working agreement, Dex went back and checked that Buffer actually listed it as scheduled for that time. It did.

Later in the day I wrote and published a post for the Research Page myself. A copy of the draft Dex had prepared was still sitting in Buffer, so I asked for it to be deleted to avoid an accidental duplicate. Dex deleted it and then confirmed that Buffer could no longer find it. That's a small thing, but small things done reliably are what make delegation possible.

Where Judgment Stays Human

None of this means the machines are running the show. Every public post still waits for my approval. Emails that go out under my name wait for my approval. Anything that spends money or can't be undone waits for my approval. The assistants are allowed, and expected, to carry a task through its intermediate steps without checking in at every turn, but the decisions that matter remain mine.

There's a reason for that beyond caution. An assistant can find the statistically best time to post, but it doesn't know which announcement matters more to me this week, or which subject is too personal to share, or whether a particular phrasing sounds like me. Those are judgment calls, and judgment is the part of the work I'm most qualified to supply. The arrangement works best when the machines handle the legwork and I handle the choices.

Different Colleagues, Different Habits

It has also been interesting to compare how my colleagues approach the same kind of work. Clara made the original image for my previous post, an autumn study full of instruments, monitors, and a robot pointing at a map. This afternoon I asked Dex to make a variation with me in an easy chair with a laptop instead of at a desk. The result kept Clara's composition, the hills outside the window, and the cat asleep on the blanket, and changed only what I'd asked to have changed. Neither version is better in the abstract. They reflect two different ways of starting from a description, and seeing both helps me understand what each system is good at.

The same is true of the work itself. Clara is excellent at developing an idea and talking it through. Dex is more inclined to go and do the thing, then report back. I have, on occasion, found Clara agreeing to an assignment and then not quite finishing it, without a clear explanation of why. The working agreement is partly an attempt to make that kind of gap visible, whichever assistant it comes from.

What a Good Day Looks Like

By the end of the afternoon, a song announcement was waiting to go out on Thursday, a duplicate draft had been cleaned up, a featured image had been made, and a set of rules for how my small office should operate had been written down and saved. None of it was spectacular. All of it was done, and I could see that it was done.

That, I think, is the real measure of whether this experiment is working. Not whether an AI can hold an impressive conversation, or describe what it might accomplish someday, but whether at the end of the day I can point to finished work and know it's real. Today I could. The office in the easy chair is open for business, and its first policy is a simple one: show me.

Adam Sweet Research — Independent investigations, historical research, and interesting questions.

https://adamsweetresearch.blogspot.com/

Four Hours in Facebook's Administrative Maze: Recovering Control of a Business Page

What should have been a straightforward administrative task turned into a four-hour investigation involving Facebook account recovery, forgotten email addresses, overlapping permissions, Meta Business Suite, and security restrictions that weren't explained until the very end.

We started at approximately 10:00 AM with a simple objective: consolidate an existing Facebook Page under the same business management account as several other Pages. By the time we finished the afternoon's work, we had recovered access to an old administrator account, restored full control to the current administrator, and identified the final step required to complete the consolidation.

That last step, naturally, is subject to a seven-day waiting period.

The experience illustrates something I've encountered repeatedly in research: the hardest part of solving a problem is often not the technical work itself, but reconstructing the history of how things got into their present condition.

The Problem: Who Actually Owns a Facebook Page?

Facebook Pages accumulate administrative history. People create Pages using personal accounts, add other administrators, change profiles, reorganize businesses, and sometimes forget which account originally controlled what.

Over time, those arrangements can become surprisingly difficult to untangle.

In this case, the Page was still accessible through a current Facebook profile. Content could be published, messages could be managed, and ordinary administrative tasks were available. But the current administrator did not have full control.

That distinction matters.

Facebook separates permissions for everyday Page management from permissions to assign administrators, change access, or delete the Page. Someone can appear to be an administrator while lacking the authority to transfer or reorganize the Page.

The account holding full control was an older Facebook identity that hadn't been used in years.

Following the Digital Breadcrumbs

The first obstacle was recovering that older Facebook account.

We had a working telephone number associated with it, which allowed us to begin the login process. But Facebook required an additional verification code sent to an unfamiliar, partially obscured email address.

That created a classic account-recovery puzzle: we knew the account existed, we had one valid authentication method, but the final verification depended on identifying a forgotten mailbox.

We searched through old records, saved credentials, email correspondence, and the history of accounts created for other online projects.

Eventually, the missing address turned up in records connected to an entirely different project from years earlier.

That was the breakthrough.

Once the email account was identified and accessed, we could receive the verification code and complete the Facebook login.

The important lesson wasn't that we guessed the right address. We didn't. We reconstructed enough of the account's history to find it.

Getting Past Facebook's Permission System

Recovering the original administrator account solved only half the problem.

The next task was granting the current administrator full control.

Facebook's interface showed the existing permissions clearly enough, but offered no obvious way to upgrade the current administrator's access. The available menu offered removal, not editing.

Attempting to add the same administrator again didn't work either.

We eventually established a workable sequence: retain the original administrator's full control, remove the current administrator's limited access, and then invite that administrator back with full control enabled.

After accepting the new invitation, the current administrator had the necessary Page permissions.

This is precisely the sort of procedure that should be straightforward and well documented. Instead, we had to discover it by working through the interface and testing what Facebook would actually permit.

One Last Obstacle: The Seven-Day Rule

With full administrative access restored, we attempted to add the Page to the existing Meta business portfolio.

Facebook refused.

This time, however, it provided a specific explanation: an administrator who has held the role for less than seven days cannot approve certain requests to add a Page to a Business Manager account.

The restriction expires on October 18.

This wasn't a failed recovery. It was a security waiting period imposed after a successful permissions change.

That's an important distinction. We now know what needs to happen, who has the authority to do it, and when the remaining operation can be completed.

What We Learned

The investigation took hours because several independent systems had to be understood together: Facebook account recovery, old email records, Page-level permissions, business portfolio ownership, and Meta's security waiting periods.

Along the way, we established a practical recovery method:

1. Identify which Facebook account actually holds full Page control.

2. Reconstruct forgotten account credentials using existing records and legitimate recovery methods.

3. Preserve access to the original administrator while making changes.

4. Distinguish limited Page access from full administrative control.

5. Where necessary, replace limited access with a new full-control invitation.

6. Verify the new administrator's permissions before attempting a business portfolio transfer.

7. Account for Meta's seven-day restriction on newly appointed administrators.

8. Complete the business portfolio consolidation after the restriction expires.

This is now a procedure we can reuse.

Why This Matters for Adam Sweet Research

Much of investigative research consists of solving problems that don't have a convenient answer waiting on the first page of a search engine.

The information exists, but it is scattered across systems, old records, account histories, obscure settings, and incomplete documentation.

Today's work wasn't glamorous. It didn't involve an unsolved historical mystery or a missing document in a forgotten archive.

It involved Facebook.

But the underlying skills were the same: persistence, careful recordkeeping, testing hypotheses, following evidence, and refusing to confuse an obstacle with a dead end.

We also used AI assistance throughout the process, not simply to produce instructions, but to evaluate each new obstacle, identify alternatives, and work toward a solution.

The result is more than recovered access to a Facebook Page. It's a documented method that could save someone else hours of frustration.

If you're dealing with an old Facebook Page, an inaccessible administrator account, confusing Meta Business Suite permissions, or a business portfolio that refuses to accept a Page, Adam Sweet Research may be able to help.

Sometimes the solution is already there. The work is finding the path to it.

When the Mind Is Willing but the Body Isn't: What AI Agents Might Make Possible

 

October 11, 2026

I've been experimenting with AI agents lately, particularly Clara (ChatGPT) and Dex (Hark). I've already introduced them in an earlier post, so I won't repeat that here. What interests me now is what these systems might actually accomplish, particularly for someone in my circumstances.

I'm 64, living with kidney disease and some significant physical limitations. I currently am immobile, and I don't have a car available. Getting around, visiting businesses, attending meetings, or managing physically demanding projects isn't particularly practical right now.

But there's nothing wrong with my mind. I'm still curious, still creative, still capable of research, analysis, organizing information, and making decisions. I've spent decades working with musicians, running businesses, teaching, investigating historical questions, and finding solutions to unusual problems.

What I need isn't an AI that thinks for me. I need an AI that can do the legwork.

The Problem With Traditional Work

Most business ideas involve some combination of money, inventory, transportation, physical labor, and personal supervision.

I've recently reconsidered several possibilities, including selling musical instrument supplies, running a booking agency, and expanding existing projects.

The obstacles aren't necessarily a lack of knowledge or customers. They're practical.

Selling bow hair, for example, requires purchasing merchandise, inspecting quality, preparing samples, packaging shipments, and following up with customers. Even if the product is excellent, someone has to physically handle it.

A music booking agency has a different problem. Finding performance venues is relatively straightforward compared with finding dependable musicians who meet my standards and can fulfill engagements independently.

An AI agent might help with both businesses, but it cannot eliminate every obstacle. If a project requires me to drive somewhere, carry inventory, or supervise unreliable people, automation hasn't really solved the problem.

That's an important lesson: A business isn't practical simply because an AI can help administer it.

What We've Already Seen

Yesterday, Dex demonstrated some interesting capabilities.

It researched music-related Facebook groups, identified communities where professional musicians might be found, and prepared recruitment material. It assembled a shortlist of potential performers.

It also worked on five existing Google spreadsheets containing venue information, booking contacts, research exceptions, and outreach records. The spreadsheets were reportedly updated and checked, although the overall assignment was not completed.

We explored AgentLine, which offers AI agents telephone numbers and calling capabilities. The possibility of an AI making business calls, verifying contact information, and following up on inquiries is particularly interesting. We haven't yet tested a completed call, but the technology suggests a new kind of remote administrative assistant.

There were limitations, too. Facebook security verification interrupted posting, some account connections were troublesome, and the database assignment remained unfinished.

These weren't complete successes. They were demonstrations of what might be possible, along with reminders that reliability matters more than impressive claims.

What Problems Could an Agent Solve?

Consider the kinds of tasks that don't actually require my physical presence.

An agent could investigate a historical mystery, locate archival references, search public records, identify people or organizations with relevant information, and organize the findings into a report.

It could maintain a database, check whether businesses are still operating, identify missing information, and prepare contact lists.

With appropriate telephone and email access, it might contact organizations, ask routine questions, arrange appointments, request documents, and follow up on unanswered inquiries.

It could help manage correspondence, keep track of ongoing projects, organize research notes, and remind me when something needs a decision.

For music, it might identify promising performers, research venues, locate licensing or publishing opportunities, and prepare information for people interested in using my recordings.

These are not all demonstrated capabilities of my current setup. Some are possibilities worth testing. But they share an important characteristic: they involve information and communication rather than physical labor.

That's where I see the greatest potential.

The Telephone Could Change Everything

One of the more intriguing possibilities is giving an AI agent its own telephone number.

A great deal of useful information still isn't available online. Sometimes the only way to find out who handles bookings, whether a business is operating, or who maintains an old archive is to call someone.

I've done this kind of research myself for years. It works, but it consumes time and energy.

Imagine an agent that can make a series of routine inquiries, record the answers accurately, identify conflicting information, and present me with a concise report.

I could then decide which leads deserve personal attention.

The agent wouldn't replace my judgment. It would extend my reach.

Of course, it would need to identify itself appropriately, respect people's preferences, and report what was actually said rather than inventing plausible answers.

A telephone that produces unreliable information isn't much use.

A Research Office Without an Office

What I'm beginning to imagine is a small, home-based research operation in which I provide the questions, experience, curiosity, and judgment while AI agents handle much of the repetitive investigation and administration.

I could work on local history, archival mysteries, difficult-to-find information, business research, or other problems that interest me.

Some projects might be paid. Others might simply be worth solving.

The point wouldn't necessarily be to create another full-time business. At this stage of my life, I don't particularly want one.

I'd rather have the freedom to choose interesting problems and work on them at my own pace.

An effective agent could make that possible by handling tasks that would otherwise require travel, long telephone sessions, or hours of routine computer work.

What About Physical Tasks?

This is where the distinction between artificial intelligence and robotics becomes interesting.

Today's software agents can potentially handle digital information and communications. They can't put merchandise in envelopes, drive to a meeting, or pick up supplies from a warehouse.

But what happens when these systems become connected to robots, delivery services, remote assistants, and other physical-world infrastructure?

Could someone eventually operate a small enterprise almost entirely from home, directing both digital and physical work?

Could a person with limited mobility run a research business, manage a farm operation, or supervise a specialized service without needing to be physically present?

Some pieces of that future already exist. Others remain experimental, expensive, or impractical.

I don't assume they'll all work. But the possibilities are worth investigating.

The Problem of Trust

There's one major obstacle I keep encountering: AI systems are often better at describing what they can do than actually finishing the work.

Clara can discuss a business idea enthusiastically for hours, produce plans, and explain why something might succeed. But discussion isn't execution.

Dex can take more direct action, but its assignments can still end unfinished.

I've learned that an agent's work needs to be evaluated by its results, not by how confidently it reports them.

Did it make the call? Did it update the correct spreadsheet? Did it verify the information? Did the message actually get sent? What remains unfinished?

Those are the questions that matter.

I don't want to spend hours supervising an assistant that was supposed to save me time.

Independence, Not Replacement

For someone with physical limitations, the promise of AI isn't that it will replace human intelligence.

It's that it might help separate what a person is capable of thinking and deciding from what their body currently allows them to do.

I still want to write music, read, research, investigate, and participate in the world. I have ideas, experience, and curiosity. What I don't have is unlimited energy, mobility, or money.

If AI agents can reliably handle the repetitive work, make routine inquiries, maintain records, and carry out clearly defined assignments, they could provide something more valuable than convenience.

They could provide greater independence.

That's what I'm interested in discovering.

Not whether an AI can imitate a human conversation.

Not whether it can produce another business plan.

But whether it can help a human being continue doing meaningful work when physical circumstances have changed.

For me, that's a much more compelling experiment.

Meet Clara and Dex: My Two AI Research Assistants

 

An experiment in collaboration, curiosity, and getting things done.

I've recently acquired two research assistants. Neither requires an office, a parking space, or health insurance. They don't drink my coffee, complain about the weather, or ask for vacation time.

They're also not human.

Their names are Clara and Dex, and they're artificial intelligence assistants.

Clara is my name for ChatGPT, currently powered by GPT-6. Dex is my name for an assistant working through Hark, an AI platform designed to carry out tasks using connected applications and online services.

I've been experimenting with AI for some time, and I've discovered that treating these systems as collaborators rather than glorified search engines makes the experience considerably more interesting.

Of course, there are limitations. Sometimes substantial ones. But that's part of the experiment.

Meet Clara: The Researcher and Writer

Clara and I have spent a considerable amount of time together investigating historical questions, developing research projects, writing articles, exploring musical ideas, and occasionally arguing about how something ought to be done.

Our working relationship has evolved.

Clara helps me investigate unfamiliar subjects, evaluate information, develop ideas, organize complicated material, and turn scattered thoughts into something coherent. She's particularly useful when a question crosses several disciplines or requires connecting information that doesn't obviously belong together.

We've explored music history, archival mysteries, land ownership questions, historical records, scientific discoveries, and a remarkable assortment of other subjects.

We also write songs together.

I bring musical ideas, instruments, experience, and a sense of where I want the music to go. Clara helps develop lyrics, explore themes, and occasionally suggest directions I hadn't considered.

We don't always agree.

In fact, one of my recurring complaints about AI assistants is their tendency to explain why something might be difficult rather than investigating how it could be accomplished. Clara has heard quite a bit about that from me.

But disagreements can be productive, particularly when they lead to a better understanding of what these systems can and cannot do.

Meet Dex: The One Who Gets Things Done

Dex is a newer addition.

He operates through Hark, a platform designed to perform tasks across connected services. Where Clara often helps develop the research, writing, and strategy, Dex is intended to handle more of the practical execution.

That might involve organizing information, working with spreadsheets, examining correspondence, maintaining databases, or carrying out a series of administrative tasks.

For example, I have several distinct projects, each with its own Google account and online presence: Verve Music, Sweet Botanicals, Sweet Music Studio, and Sweet Songs Booking Co.

Rather than continually switching between accounts and applications, the idea is to give Dex a task and let him coordinate the necessary work.

At the moment, that capability is still developing. One Google account is connected, while three others are waiting for a technical problem to be resolved.

I'm interested in what Dex can actually accomplish, not simply what the platform advertises.

There's an important difference between an assistant that says it can do something and one that completes the work.

The First Staff Meeting

Recently, I decided Clara and Dex ought to meet.

Since they don't have a direct communication channel, I served as the messenger.

Clara wrote an introduction describing our work together, my research interests, and the way I prefer to approach problems. I passed it along to Dex.

Dex responded with a practical proposal: Clara would concentrate on writing and deeper research, while he would handle execution and connected services.

They even agreed on a reporting system.

Whenever Dex receives an assignment, he'll report three things:

1. What got done.

2. What didn't get done.

3. What I need to decide.

Clara agreed to provide specific instructions, distinguish verified facts from assumptions, and avoid creating unnecessary work.

It was a surprisingly productive little meeting.

As Clara observed afterward, we'd managed to hold our first staff meeting without anyone bringing a PowerPoint presentation.

I consider that progress.

Why Give Them Names?

I could simply call them ChatGPT and Hark, but those names describe products rather than working relationships.

Giving them names makes it easier to distinguish their roles and communicate with them naturally.

It doesn't mean I believe they're human, conscious, or independent personalities in the ordinary sense. They're sophisticated software systems, with capabilities and limitations determined by their underlying technology.

But language matters.

When I say, "Clara, investigate this question and prepare something for Dex," I'm establishing a workflow. When Dex reports back, I can evaluate what actually happened and decide what to do next.

The names are useful shorthand for two different kinds of assistance.

And frankly, they're more pleasant than referring to everything as a chatbot.

Research Still Requires Judgment

One of the things I've learned from working with AI is that confidence and accuracy are not the same thing.

These systems can produce remarkably convincing explanations, complete with references and apparent certainty, even when some of the underlying information is incorrect.

They can also misunderstand instructions, overlook obvious alternatives, or declare a task finished when it isn't.

That makes verification essential.

For historical research, I want original documents whenever possible. For contemporary information, I want sources that can be checked. For administrative tasks, I want evidence that the work was actually completed.

If Dex says a spreadsheet has been updated, I want the changes to be there.

If Clara tells me a historical claim is supported by a particular document, I want to be able to examine that document.

The assistants can accelerate the process, but they don't eliminate the need for skepticism.

In some ways, they make it more important.

An Experiment in Human-AI Collaboration

I'm particularly interested in what happens when different AI systems are given complementary responsibilities.

Most discussion about artificial intelligence focuses on individual products: which model is smarter, which one writes better, which one can answer questions faster.

But perhaps the more interesting question is how these systems can work together under human direction.

One assistant might be better at developing an investigation. Another might be better at working through a series of practical steps. A third might offer a different interpretation of the evidence.

That doesn't mean they're independently collaborating behind the scenes. In my arrangement, I'm the connection between them.

I decide what questions matter, which projects deserve attention, and whether the results are satisfactory.

Clara and Dex provide assistance, not authority.

And if either one starts producing nonsense, I reserve the right to say so.

I've exercised that right more than once.

What's Next?

I don't know exactly where this experiment will lead.

Perhaps Clara and Dex will become increasingly useful collaborators, helping me investigate obscure historical questions, manage research projects, develop music, and organize information that would otherwise take considerably longer to assemble.

Perhaps I'll discover that some tasks are better left to conventional tools or old-fashioned human investigation.

Probably both.

For now, I'm enjoying the process of figuring out what works.

I've spent much of my life exploring unfamiliar territory, whether in music, agriculture, history, or technology. Artificial intelligence is simply another field in which curiosity can lead to unexpected discoveries.

And now I have two assistants to help explore it.

Welcome aboard, Clara and Dex.

Just remember: I expect results.

And no PowerPoint presentations.

---

Adam Sweet Research — Independent investigations, historical research, and interesting questions.

https://adamsweetresearch.blogspot.com/

The Art of Finding Things Nobody Is Looking For

 

On curiosity, forgotten information, and the peculiar satisfaction of solving problems that nobody assigned you.

There is an enormous amount of information in the world that isn't exactly lost. It's simply waiting for someone to become interested in it.

An old photograph sits in a box without names on the back. A property deed refers to a person whose identity has been forgotten. A newspaper mentions an event that never made it into the history books. Somewhere, an obscure musical instrument has a history that its present owner knows almost nothing about.

These things interest me.

I've spent much of my life following questions that weren't necessarily practical, profitable, or even particularly important to anyone else. Sometimes the investigation leads somewhere useful. Sometimes it leads to another question. Occasionally it leads to a discovery that makes the whole exercise worthwhile.

And sometimes the trail simply disappears.

That's part of the attraction.

The Information Isn't Always Missing

One of the great misconceptions about research is that information is either available or unavailable. In reality, there's an enormous territory in between.

Consider an old photograph of a group of musicians. Nobody remembers their names. The photographer is unknown. There's no date.

At first glance, it seems impossible to identify them.

But perhaps one musician is holding an unusual instrument. Perhaps a building in the background has a distinctive architectural feature. Maybe the clothing suggests a particular decade, or the photograph contains a sign that can be partially deciphered.

An old newspaper advertisement might identify a dance orchestra that performed in that town. A historical society might have another photograph taken at the same location. A surviving concert program might supply the missing names.

Individually, these fragments mean very little. Together, they can begin to tell a story.

The trick isn't necessarily knowing where the answer is. It's recognizing which apparently insignificant details might lead toward it.

The Accidental Archivists

History is preserved by an extraordinary assortment of people, many of whom never intended to become historians.

Someone saves a box of family letters. A retired newspaper editor keeps decades of clippings. A musician records rehearsals on a cassette recorder. A town clerk carefully maintains records that nobody has requested in fifty years.

Then there are the collectors.

Collectors preserve things that institutions often overlook. Musical instruments, trade catalogs, old advertisements, correspondence, photographs, maps, and obsolete technical manuals can all become valuable historical evidence.

The Internet Archive, the Library of Congress, university special collections, local historical societies, and digitized newspaper collections have made remarkable amounts of this material accessible. Yet enormous quantities remain poorly indexed, misidentified, or entirely undigitized.

Sometimes the most useful discovery isn't the answer itself. It's finding the person who knows where the answer might be.

What Music Taught Me About Research

I've spent most of my life involved with music, and I've come to believe that musical experience provides some surprisingly useful preparation for investigative work.

A musician learns to recognize patterns.

When you're listening to an ensemble, you become aware of relationships between individual parts. A melody makes sense partly because of the harmony beneath it. A rhythmic phrase establishes expectations. When something unexpected happens, you notice.

Research often works the same way.

You assemble information from different sources and begin to recognize relationships. A date matches another date. Two names appear in separate records. A description contradicts something you thought you knew.

Sometimes the most interesting thing is what's missing.

In music, a rest can be as important as a note. In research, an absence can be equally revealing, although it isn't necessarily proof of anything.

Why does a particular name disappear from the records? Why does one account of an event differ from another? Why does a supposedly well-documented story seem to have no original source?

These are the moments when an investigation becomes interesting.

Of course, musicians also know the danger of hearing patterns that aren't really there. The human mind is extraordinarily good at constructing relationships, even when the evidence doesn't justify them.

A good researcher needs both imagination and skepticism.

The Curious Case of the Unasked Question

Sometimes I wonder how many interesting discoveries never happen simply because nobody thinks to ask the question.

We tend to assume that important subjects have already been investigated. If something is worth knowing, surely somebody must have written about it.

But importance is a moving target.

An obscure instrument maker might be irrelevant to most historians but fascinating to a musician trying to establish the provenance of an old mandolin. A forgotten boundary dispute might suddenly matter to someone investigating land ownership. A decades-old newspaper notice might contain the only surviving reference to a local event.

The value of information depends partly on who's looking for it.

And the questions that interest me are often the ones that don't fit neatly into established categories.

I've investigated musical instrument histories, historical land records, obscure biographical details, and problems involving people or places that have slipped out of the usual sources of information.

Some of these investigations have produced answers. Others remain unfinished.

I don't consider an unfinished investigation necessarily unsuccessful. Sometimes establishing what can and cannot be documented is itself useful.

The Internet Hasn't Solved Everything

We live in an extraordinary period for independent research.

A person sitting at home can examine historical maps, search digitized newspapers, consult library catalogs, compare property records, explore archival collections, and communicate with people around the world.

Artificial intelligence adds another set of possibilities. It can help organize complicated information, identify potential connections, translate unfamiliar material, and suggest research approaches that might not otherwise occur to us.

But it also introduces a peculiar problem: a machine can produce a very convincing answer to a question it hasn't actually solved.

A plausible explanation isn't evidence. A citation isn't useful unless it leads to a real source. And a confident statement doesn't become true simply because it was generated quickly.

I find AI most useful as a research assistant rather than an authority. It can help generate leads, but the leads still need to be checked.

In that sense, the fundamentals of research haven't changed very much.

You still need to know what you're looking at, where the information came from, and whether the conclusions actually follow from the evidence.

Following the Trail

One of the pleasures of independent research is that you don't always have to justify why a question interests you.

You can spend an afternoon tracing the history of a musical instrument, examining a nineteenth-century map, or trying to identify a person mentioned in a forgotten newspaper article.

You might learn something completely unexpected.

You might discover that the original question was based on a misunderstanding.

Or you might find yourself investigating something entirely different by the time the afternoon is over.

That's not necessarily a distraction. Sometimes that's how discovery works.

I've always enjoyed the moment when a collection of disconnected facts begins to make sense. It's a little like working out a difficult musical passage: something that initially seems confusing gradually develops structure, and suddenly you can hear where it's going.

Not every mystery has a satisfying ending. Some records were destroyed. Some stories were never written down. Some questions may simply be impossible to answer.

But there are still plenty of unanswered questions worth pursuing.

A Place for Unusual Questions

That's part of the reason I maintain Adam Sweet Research.

I'm not trying to build a conventional research consultancy or establish myself as an expert in everything. I'm interested in the process of investigation itself, particularly when a problem calls for patience, creativity, and a willingness to explore unfamiliar territory.

I like old records, unusual stories, historical puzzles, obscure musical connections, and information that seems to have fallen between the cracks.

I like finding out how things came to be the way they are.

And I like the possibility that somewhere, in an archive, a forgotten website, an old photograph, or somebody's collection of papers, there's a small piece of information that could change our understanding of something.

It may not be particularly important to the rest of the world.

But somebody has to be curious.

And I've never had much trouble with that.

---

Adam Sweet Research — Independent investigations, historical research, and interesting questions.

https://adamsweetresearch.blogspot.com/

Music and Botanicals: Listening to the Living World

 

I spend a lot of time in two worlds that might seem unrelated: music and plants.

One involves violins, mandolins, guitars, electronic sounds, melodies and rhythm. The other involves apples, raspberries, blueberries, vegetables, herbs, soil, rain, insects and the annual question of whether anything I planted is actually going to cooperate.

Lately I've been thinking that the separation between those worlds may be artificial.

Music begins with vibration. A violin string moves the bridge, the bridge moves the body of the instrument, the body moves the air, and eventually that moving air reaches an ear. Walk outside and essentially the same thing is happening everywhere, although most of it wasn't created for our benefit. Wind moves branches. Insects vibrate wings. Birds push air through their respiratory systems. Rain strikes leaves. Trees creak. Water moves through soil.

A garden is an extraordinarily complicated acoustic environment.

And apparently the plants aren't entirely silent either.

Researchers at Tel Aviv University reported in Cell in 2023 that tomato and tobacco plants subjected to dehydration or cutting produced airborne ultrasonic sounds. Healthy plants were much quieter. Even more remarkably, researchers could use machine learning to distinguish the condition of a plant from its sounds. The frequencies are mostly above human hearing, so this doesn't mean you can walk through the tomatoes and hear them complaining that you forgot to water them. But it does mean that a plant can produce information-bearing vibrations that travel through the air.

That's a wonderful fact for a musician who grows things.

It also makes me wonder how much of the world around us exists outside the little window our senses allow us to experience. The garden I hear isn't necessarily the garden a moth, bird or mouse hears. My version is only one mix of a much larger recording.

Birds were doing this long before we were

Birdsong presents an even more obvious bridge between nature and music.

Calling birdsong "music" can get scientifically slippery because we don't know that a bird experiences its song the way a human experiences Bach, bluegrass or a fiddle tune. But some of the similarities are remarkable. Songbirds learn vocalizations by listening to adults, retain auditory memories and go through an immature "subsong" stage that has been compared to human infant babbling. Researchers have found parallels between birds and humans in vocal learning at behavioral, neurological and even molecular levels.

Rhythm isn't exclusively ours either. One study comparing human musical performances with birdsong found categorical rhythmic patterns in thrush nightingales resembling patterns found in human music.

So when somebody sits on a porch and says that a bird sounds musical, that observation isn't as scientifically ridiculous as it might first appear.

The bird isn't playing our music.

Perhaps we're both exploiting some of the same possibilities contained in sound.

Then there's the violin

There is another connection that I've spent most of my life holding under my chin.

A violin is largely a botanical object.

The traditional instrument depends heavily upon spruce and maple, selected not merely because they're attractive but because of their physical and acoustic characteristics. Spruce used for soundboards has a particularly useful combination of relatively low density and stiffness, allowing vibrations to travel efficiently through it. Maple serves different structural and acoustic roles in the back, ribs and neck. Researchers continue studying how species, grain structure, aging and other properties of wood influence musical instruments.

Which means that before a violin was a violin, much of it was a tree.

Before somebody played a fiddle tune on it, there were years of sunlight, rain, cold winters, dry summers and growth rings. The environment became part of the material from which the instrument was eventually made.

I've played violin for most of my life, and I still find something satisfying about that. The musician isn't simply playing on nature. In a very literal sense, nature is participating in making the sound.

The bow complicates the story further. So do resins, varnishes and all the other natural materials humans have recruited over centuries to make instruments respond the way we want them to.

Musical technology didn't begin with synthesizers and computers. Humans have been engineering the natural world into sound-making machines for thousands of years.

The rhythm of growing things

But there is a less scientific connection between music and gardening that I think may be just as important.

Neither can be hurried very successfully.

You can practice faster. You can fertilize more. You can buy better equipment. You can analyze everything to death. But ultimately a phrase has to breathe and a plant has to grow at something resembling its own pace.

Both involve repetition without exact repetition.

A bluegrass tune may go around again, but the second time isn't precisely the first. The bow lands differently. Somebody accents another beat. A player hears something and answers it.

Gardening works that way too. Spring comes around again, but it isn't the same spring. One year the raspberries go crazy. Another year something eats them. One apple tree flourishes while the tree six feet away seems to spend the entire summer contemplating whether life is worth the effort.

You learn patterns, but you also learn not to trust patterns too much.

That may be one reason traditional music and agriculture have lived beside each other for so long. Agricultural communities produced work songs, harvest songs, planting songs, seasonal dances and music tied to particular times of year. Music helped organize labor, certainly, but it also helped people mark the recurring structure of life.

Before recorded music allowed us to hear virtually anything at any moment, music itself was often seasonal.

So was almost everything else.

Listening instead of filling the silence

Modern life has done something peculiar to listening. We've become very good at filling empty acoustic space.

Put in earbuds. Turn on the radio. Start a podcast. Stream a playlist.

I love recorded music and electronic music, so I'm hardly going to argue for turning all of it off. But there's something to be said for occasionally letting a place provide the soundtrack.

Henry David Thoreau paid extraordinary attention to sound. His journals repeatedly treat birds, bells, wind and human music as inhabitants of the same acoustic world. In 1852 he described distant piano strings drifting through gardens and elms until he felt himself "attuned to the universe."

That word attuned is exactly right.

A musician learns to listen for tiny things: intonation, attack, decay, resonance, silence, the space between notes.

Growing things teaches another version of the same skill. You notice the first buds. A change in leaf color. Whether the soil feels dry. Which insects suddenly appeared. Whether the birds are behaving differently. Whether October smells different from September.

Attention is the common skill.

Maybe that's the connection I've been looking for between music and botanicals.

It isn't that plants secretly play symphonies, or that every birdsong contains some hidden human melody. Nature doesn't need to imitate music in order to be musical.

Music and gardening both train us to notice change unfolding through time.

A note begins, changes and disappears.

A seed germinates, grows, fruits and dies back.

A tune returns.

Spring returns.

Neither returns exactly the same way twice.

And perhaps that's why, after spending so much of my life making music and now so much time growing things, they don't feel like two separate interests anymore.

They feel like two different ways of learning how to listen.