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dollydeez · 4 years ago

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Fanfic is Canon, and Here’s Why

I was thinking today about the distinction between canon and fanon, sort of in the same vein as Death of The Author. Ok, that might not immediately make sense but hear me out:

I am of a fairly strict belief that the core reading of a text should be centered around what is actually in the damn thing. Authorial intent, in my mind, should be thrown out the door as it doesn’t matter what is meant but what is said. Examples of this would include Ray Bradbury screaming at college kids that Fahrenheit 451 isn’t about censorship or she who must not be named throwing in bullshit elements of her books on Twitter. This is highly influenced by the way I perceive the creation of art: the artist sends a work out into the world and it is completed, for lack of a better term, in the audience by their interpretation. This isn’t to say unpublished work isn’t art, as the artist is always the first audience member to impress upon said work their own interpretation. You could split hairs dissecting that assertion with different situations or whatever else, but I’m not here to define what is or is not art; I’m not giving the unpublished work implication more than passing attention because it really isn’t relevant to what I want to discuss. What I’m really driving at is the conception of works, specifically written works as far as we are concerned, being separate from the author once they have been completed and submitted to audiences. Granted, with the introduction of sites such as Wattpad, the relationship between the author, the audience, and the work has changed greatly; however I would argue these don’t quite factor in to our discussion as, for our purposes, they are practically a different medium.

So how does this tie in to fanfic? I’d argue that, if the work is being considered under this framework, the authority of the author’s interpretation of the piece isn’t just called into question, but their authority on the world they have created. This is complicated by the capitalistic system under which we live, so for simplicity’s sake let’s put aside the compounding factors of copyright, market share, etc., however I would like to point out that there is precedent for, if not fanfic then fandom at large having an effect on the original work. But, more to the point, let us consider the relationship between the author and the work post-publication, more specifically the authority retained by the author over the world they have created, as this is conceptually based in the idea that their own interpretation is no more valid than any other reader. The main factors I see in this consideration is, in most cases, whether there is a textual contradiction, and in the case of AUs how perspective may shift if it was written by the original author. In the former case, the amount of leeway given should be equal to that which would be given to the original author by suspension of disbelief. The misalignment of certain details is usually tolerated within a series as long as they aren’t too glaring or have too much impact on the plot, and this courtesy should be extended to fan fiction. For the latter case, the re-imagining of stories has been an accepted practice for centuries; it is only in recent times that, because of copyright, only those done by the original author (or many decades after their death) are considered at a similar standard as the original. So how does this play out when someone continues a story through fan fiction and is contradicted through a sequel by the original author? On one hand, I would say this is up to individual interpretation, as if an audience member prefers one to the other that is their prerogative, however future fan fictions will be based on the plot progression delivered by the original author. For practical purposes, what the author says happens next in a story is what canonically happens next.

The distinction between what constitutes canon and what does not is much too strict. The author has control over what is true within their story, but has no authority over what is untrue. This latter distinction is solely up to textual evidence. With exemption to fictions taking place in alternate universes, the only real distinction between an author’s work and a fan’s fiction is the stories taking place and whether or not they contradict each other; in other words, if the fanfic is not contradicting the story being told by the author, it has as much claim to being canon as the original work itself. For this concept I would like to put forward the idea of the communal imagination: although one person may create the piece establishing the world in which the others take place, they have as little control over the valid interpretation and creative use of that world as they have regarding the canonical plot line.This world created in the imagination, and then disseminated into the the imaginations of others, will most likely have some sort of guiding principles around it, therefore even the sequel by the original author could be considered to be a sort of fan fiction. While it could be argued that fan fiction is in a different category, due to its inherently derivative nature, it could just as equally be posited that all stories are derivative and that it is simply matter of scale; in my opinion basing artistic merit on where a work falls on this scale is counter-intuitive to the creative landscape. Art is art, stories are stories, and your fan fiction has just as much claim to being canon as the work produced by the original author. Theoretically, at least, given capitalism and all.

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kvlt-ov-romance-blog · 7 years ago

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Twin Peaks & Hauntology

A large deal of David Lynch’s content is surreal not just because of how odd it is, but also because of how familiar it is: For many entering the Twin Peaks universe in contemporary times, they have already been exposed to some imagery from the show or from David Lynch’s other work, which often makes many parallels to the show itself. For instance, prior to starting the original run of the series, I had indeed seen the classic portrait of Laura Palmer a myriad of times and knew the famous lines, “who killed Laura Palmer?” I had seen some of Lynch’s work too, and I also had in fact seen plenty of references to Twin Peaks in pop culture, but it was only when I began to immerse myself in Twin Peaks that I could say to myself, “this feels like deja vu.” The cinematography, the color palette, the dated film quality, the eerie music, everything about the show is setup so that it feels haunted, both from within its own universe and for those observing as though external spectators. Essentially, one of the main reasons why Twin Peaks is such a successful show in terms of endearment and also producing chilling reactions, is because it plays to humanity’s fragmented memories of time, rejecting a linear framework in favor of something that is more distinctly postmodern (i.e. time is not treated as a straight arrow as is the case for most shows). David Lynch innately flirts with these concepts throughout his career in philosophical and psychological manners that make many uneasy from various standpoints, including the metaphysical and ontological. One tiny yet distinctive and slowly emerging school of thought to grow out of the postmodern field of study is hauntology, coined by the French philosopher esteemed for his take on deconstructionism, Jacques Derrida, in his 1993 book, “Specters of Marx.” All things considered, Twin Peaks is an excellent example of hauntology expressed through an artistic medium, and here is some elaboration as to how and why.

So what is hauntology? Derrida originally developed the idea as a portmanteau of haunting and ontology, ontology being the study of life, hence “hauntology.” Specifically, his aforementioned book from 1993 extensively developed Karl Marx’s idea that “A specter is haunting Europe – the specter of Communism.” These were the opening lines to “The Communist Manifesto,” published in 1848 and yet managing to have widespread appeal on a major political levels, well over a hundred years after it had been written and even to this day, proving that Marx was right – Communism is haunting Europe and the rest of the world, chiefly due to the fact that it exists in opposition to the dominant mode of production around the globe, capitalism, but also because according to many scholars, we are perhaps living in a late stage of capitalism that is in fact quite similar to what Marx and his contemporaries envisioned, a stage of decay and corruption that gives way to a fork in the road of fascism, corporatism, and the like, but could also bring forth major developments in class consciousness with regards to revolution and unification. By treating Communism as a specter, it is essentially a faceless character, looming and lurking in the shadows, a ghostly apparition that either instills terror or hope into the hearts of those who find it depending on what side of the political spectrum they are on. Derrida also ties this idea into the Shakespearean play, “Hamlet,” which also began its first lines (“Who’s there?”) in a haunted sort of manner, involving an actual ghost. With regards to Hamlet, Derrida specifically makes note of how “the time is out of joint,” a similar occurrence to real world matters such as Communism and fictional matters such as Twin Peaks.

As Andrew Gallix of The Guardian describes hauntology, it is: The situation of temporal, historical, and ontological disjunction in which the apparent presence of being is replaced by an absent or deferred non-origin, represented by “the figure of the ghost as that which is neither present, nor absent, neither dead nor alive.” Peter Bruse and Andrew Scott further elaborate that: “Ghosts arrive from the past and appear in the present. However, the ghost cannot be properly said to belong to the past. Does then the ‘historical’ person who is identified with the ghost properly belong to the present? Surely not, as the idea of a return from death fractures all traditional conceptions of temporality. The temporality to which the ghost is subject is therefore paradoxical, at once they ‘return’ and make their apparitional debut.” From here, we note how Derrida’s own writing focuses on the presumed “death” of Communism in the post-Soviet world, the question of “the end of history” and most significantly, “if Communism was always spectral, what does it mean to say it is now dead?” All of these concepts tie into the lost futures of modernity, and as Wikipedia writes in depth: “Hauntology has been described as a ‘pining for a future that never arrived;’ […] hauntological art and culture is typified by a critical foregrounding of the historical and metaphysical disjunctions of contemporary capitalist culture as well as a ‘refusal to give up on the desire for the future.’ [Mark] Fisher and others have drawn attention to the shift into post-Fordist economies in the late 1970s, which Fisher argues has ‘gradually and systematically deprived artists of the resources necessary to produce the new.’ Hauntology has been used as a critical lens in various forms of media and theory, including music, political theory, architecture, Afrofuturism, and psychoanalysis.”

Now, regarding hauntology more as an artistic statement and genre than as something philosophical is the first way we can approach Twin Peaks. The style is unique yet also not: It is, as expressed by one of the most prominent artists of the style, Boards of Canada, “the past inside the present.” Most notably, hauntological art is expressed in music, paying homage to library music, vintage documentary-film scores, public information films, etc. This means a heavy dosage of old-school synthesizers, blips and bloops, samples of dialogue from long forgotten movies, and so forth. What we have on our hands here, is “21st-century musicians exploring similar ideas related to temporal disjunction, retrofuturism, memory, the malleability of recording media, and esoteric cultural sources from the past. Artists associated with hauntology include members of the UK label Ghost Box (such as Belbury Poly, The Focus Group, and the Advisory Circle), London dubstep producer Burial, electronic musicians such as the Caretaker, William Basinski, Philip Jeck, Aseptic Void, Moon Wiring Club, and Mordant Music, American lo-fi artist Ariel Pink, and the artists of the Italian Occult Psychedelia scene. Common reference points include library music, the soundtracks of old science-fiction and pulp horror films, found sounds, analog electronic music, musique concrète, dub, decaying cassette tapes, English psychedelia, and 1970s public television programs. A common element is the foregrounding of the recording surface noise, including the crackle and hiss of vinyl and tape, calling attention to the medium itself.”

Furthermore, “’hauntological music has been particularly tied to British culture, and has been described as an attempt to evoke ‘a nostalgia for a future that never came to pass, with a vision of a strange, alternate Britain, constituted from the reorder refuse of the postwar period.’ Reynolds described it as an attempt to construct a ‘lost utopianism’ rooted in visions of a benevolent post-welfare state. According to Fisher, 21st-century electronic music is the anachronistic product of an ‘after the future’ age in which ‘electronic music had succumbed to its own inertia and retrospection … What defined this 'hauntological' confluence more than anything else was its confrontation with a cultural impasse: the failure of the future….’ He explains that this is partly the result of stagnated technical advances since the 20th-century. The style has been described as the British cousin of America's hypnagogic pop music scene, which has also been discussed as engaging with notions of nostalgia and memory. The two styles have been likened to ‘sonic fictions or intentional forgeries, creating half-baked memories of things that never were—approximating the imprecise nature of memory itself.’ Early progenitors of the style include Boards of Canada and Position Normal.”

Lengthy quotes aside, the basic message is that hauntological art – particularly music – is dreamlike, vaguely nostalgic, and ghostly. Basically, musical deja vu. One could make a case that popular genres like chillwave and synthwave, which rely heavily on ��80s aesthetics are also hauntological, but they lack the same sense of “dread” and “fragmentation” that established artists like Boards of Canada have (e.g. Boards of Canada’s last album, “Tomorrow’s Harvest” is directly linked to the themes of war, apocalypse, the end of history, civilization’s collapse, death and rebirth). The Caretaker, too, is another fantastic example of hauntology: Leyland Kirby publishes records dealing with themes of dementia (the absolution of memory loss) and much of his work is lo-fi, darkly reverberated jazz from no later than WWII; essentially, it is as though history did end with the second war, and when listening to The Caretaker, we are hearing ghostly apparitions committed to tape. “An Empty Bliss Beyond This World,” “Everywhere at the End of Time,” the titles of Kirby’s work alone is enough to suggest something hauntological is occurring. Kirby’s music becomes directly relevant to Twin Peaks: The Return when the viewer notes how similar the music and pre-1940s style are to The Caretaker in The Giant’s realm (some have even dubbed The Giant as a cosmic caretaker of sorts ironically enough). But in the meantime, it is important to discuss how this all relates to the original run of Twin Peaks. One may pose the question: “How is hauntology related to Twin Peaks?”

Remember when I said that we should regard hauntology as an artistic statement rather than a philosophical concept? This is the main and most easy way to comprehend the correlation of hauntology and Twin Peaks. In its original time period, airing in the early ‘90s, it appeared as an anomaly of sorts. The artistic style of the show was deeply rooted in something haunting, something to do with deja vu. Angelo Badalamenti, the composer of the show’s soundtrack, is known for his enigmatic and hypnagogic take on jazz and subtle ambient music, which connects quite well to the mysterious nature of everything going on throughout the show. What specifically helps mark a tonality of hauntology is the fact that the music constantly repeats itself, as if a record left on a repeat. And again, the music plays in direct relation to what is happening on the show: As soon as we hear the swelling, swirling synths or the melancholic piano of “Laura Palmer’s Theme,” we know something important is happening, often having to do with memories, or more menacingly, with doppelgangers and shadow realms. When we hear “Audrey’s Dance,” we know something surreal is going to happen, perhaps some backwards talking or a dancing dwarf. The music serves as a sort of specter, haunting the show and allowing us external observers to peer into the Twin Peaks universe and predict what may happen. However, because David Lynch and Mark Frost are masters of surrealist trickery, skepticism sets in: No matter how many times we hear the songs, few will ever know for certain what is going to happen, you just have to make educated guesses, which usually have the right framework (e.g. “something mysterious is about to happen”) but wind up lacking the correct response (e.g. “something mysterious did happen, but it was not at all what I had predicted”). We then become lost in a series of puzzles, clues, a labyrinthine of both artistry and metaphysics; we start to become haunted by our own theories and conjectures. Laura Palmer’s portrait, shots of diners and bars, foggy mountainous forests, elements from the show start to connect to each other but only in fragments, never in wholeness. In a sense, it may reflect upon the age old dilemma’s of duality versus totality, and even idealism versus materialism, but even theories pertaining to those ideas are never fully addressed and in fact there are arguments made that metaphysics and ontology are only meant to serve as emotional and aesthetic tools rather than as literal interpretations. This lack of knowing only deepens the mystery as well as the haunting effects of the show. It leads Twin Peaks to become a sort of solipsistic realm of sorts, and to the viewer, this is both utopian and dystopian; it leads us to become specters in its own twisted way.

There is also the cinematography as previously mentioned. For those watching the original series now, over 25 years after it originally aired, one thing you will notice is the dated quality of the visual imagery. Not in the sense that it has not aged well, but in the sense that everything is shrouded in ‘90s video-haze; subtle, muted colors, VHS-like quality. It adds to the mystique, and further expounds upon the notion of retro-futurism; now in 2017, there is a slew of television shows and movies that visually strive to recreate this retro feeling in the cinematography. Even musicians are becoming increasingly obsessed with this aesthetic, whether displayed in their music videos or in the music itself (beyond hauntology, as mentioned, there has been an increasing rebirth of ‘80s and ‘90s cultural obsession, for instance, vaporwave – which is especially visual and definitively postmodern – and even less abstractly, many major musicians are still drawing heavily from the ‘60s-’70s to the point where Boards of Canada’s unofficial mantra “the past inside the present” rings true). Watching the original series as well as Fire Walks With Me as they aired, untampered and unrestored, the surreal and dreamlike qualities of the show are enhanced, as is the hauntological pathos and logos: Time is thought to repeat itself, as one might say when they observe a new and younger generation of fans watching Twin Peaks. The older fans may note the quality and visual style of the series and feel haunted by it, but even for today’s modern fans, many of them grew up watching things out of the ‘80s and ‘90s and many have been exposed, even if unwittingly, to Lynch and Frost’s work, whether directly or through a more indirect means (e.g. modern shows which draw heavily upon their style, such as Mr. Robot). When the element of familiarity is added to the viewing experience of Twin Peaks, this is where the haunting effect of the show comes into place; viewers may go as far as the ontological route of questioning existential matters, as they find themselves placed in what seems to be a Lynchian role of their own – they are part of the puzzle and by extension, part of the same universe they are watching. While many would argue that time repeats itself, the other argument is more curious than that; time is an illusion, as are many things. The veil of Maya (the illusory nature of existence in Eastern philosophy which Lynch hints at throughout the series) runs deep, and on humanity’s quest to attain Moksha (enlightenment, freedom from the cycle of birth, death, rebirth) we become trapped in our own web of ego, self, identity, thought, emotion, and so forth. We are just as haunted as the characters in Twin Peaks, and when we watch the show, perhaps it is not meant to reflect separate human thoughts but to reflect upon the idea that we are one consciousness collectively and subjectively viewing itself; Twin Peaks is merely a mirror for our own enigma, and even Lynch himself is not free from this matrix as he plays the role of Gordon, because there are quite a few moments, most notably in Fire Walks With Me (e.g. the scene where David Bowie’s character Philip Jeffries vanishes) and in The Return, where even he is just as lost as other characters or viewers, even in spite of the fact that he most likely does possess some deeper knowledge of what is happening.

This brings us, logically, to the next interpretation of hauntology: The philosophical one, keeping in mind the fact that it is meant to represent an ontology, a means of understanding life and death. Twin Peaks does not shy away from the supernatural, and much of the time it would appear at first glance to be purely for showmanship. But the deeper you dive into the lore of the show, whether canonically or through your own interpretations, fandom, etc. the more these supernatural and science-fiction elements may relate to the history, the politics, the ontological, the metaphysical, and the spiritual. In the original show, plenty of nods were made towards Native American spiritualism, Eastern metaphysics, and even on historical levels, oddities like Project MK Ultra come to mind. Even on a sociological level, the show serves as commentary on the nature of small towns, federal versus local justice, human psychology, and so forth. What is problematic for viewers is that everything could be interpreted through very distinct lenses; perhaps the struggle between Leland and Bob represents the Kabbalah’s interpretation of the Sefirot and the Qliphoth (the tree of life and it’s shadowy counterpart respectively – which is especially possible when one watches The Return and notices the arm has now evolved into a tree of sorts). I have seen interpretations of the show that range from Buddhism to Rosicrucian to Masonic, some of which even go as far as casting doubt on the integrity of Lynch and portraying him as an occult figure with some sort of hidden agenda (conspiracy theorists fit right into the realm of Twin Peaks, though I believe most of their cause for panic is just misunderstanding Lynch’s eccentricity and morbid curiosity into hidden realms). The Return has featured the I Ching, Diane wearing colors that reflect upon alchemy, even a sort of genesis myth of Bob and Laura and perhaps everything else that occurs in this universe. The nuclear bomb dropping in the latest episode even brings forth to mind connotations of Shiva, of creation through destruction. Basically, since Lynch and Frost like to keep things secretive and keep us on our toes, we may never know for certain if there is a specific ideological current that fuels the show, if it is just a hodgepodge of different ideas, or if they are trying to say that all interpretations are egalitarian, that “your guess is as good as mine.” The last one would be quite an ontological statement to make, as it reflects upon the ideas of relativity, subjectivity, skepticism, perhaps even nihilism and absurdism; “can we ever find truth? Can we ever know it for certain?” That theme is addressed heavily on the show in various realms of existence, whether pertaining the surface level of reality (Laura’s death) or what may lie beyond (altered states, astral projection, time travel, you name it).

The Return is especially interesting in these regards. First time viewers of the original series were left haunted by their own theories and suspicions for 25 years before Twin Peaks would be visited again in a lengthy format beyond the movie; Twin Peaks faded into cult status, still familiar to many people but often looked upon with an air of uncertainty and wonder. When the show ended, numerous fanzines popped up trying to keep the legacy alive, delivering new theories with each new edition, but this was before the days of major Internet blogging and media distribution, so it was limited and obscure. But even when newer generations started to discuss Twin Peaks online, nothing was ever fully addressed; the haunting still lingered, both by the very facts of how the original show and movie concluded and by the nature of the series as being elusive, hard to pin down, and notorious for not lending viewers much explanation or help. Seeing the series return after being dormant for so long, it is akin to a spectral awakening of sorts. But that is not to say it is no longer haunted, in fact, far from it – Laura’s portrait, her diary entries, her soul, they still float about like ghosts, her theme song still occasionally popping up to haunt, and now the riddles are perhaps even more haunted because we are gaining more glimpses into the supernatural realms of the Lodges and even beyond, into what could be considered a sort of cosmic viewing lens of reincarnation or creationism and then-some. For much of the series so far, viewers have been particularly haunted by wondering when the “real” Cooper would come back, to the point this mystery seems to extend to ourselves: We identify with Cooper, we sympathize with him as being lost and we want him to find his way home because this is the happy ending we all wish for ourselves in life, we all wish to find ourselves and be whole. But as The Return progresses, it becomes increasingly difficult to gauge whether or not this is attainable and feasible, whether because we are looking at things from the wrong angle, because we do not yet have all the puzzle pieces, or perhaps most sinister of all, because of the possibility that we may in fact be a doomed species (something now hinted upon more than ever upon the contextual framework of the atomic bomb, the Dark Mother, the woodsmen, military secrets, etc.). In my opinion, The Return almost serves as a call to arms, that we should invest in more spiritual and metaphysical affairs because there may in fact be some validity to them. Whether or not that means deeply obscure occult references or just casually studying a philosophy is up to you, but I do believe that Lynch has always used his surrealist techniques to promote some form of critical thinking and higher consciousness, to the point where my own takeaway is that he is in fact going the egalitarian route, understanding that each ideology has its own merits and that instead of dogmatically following one, we should find balance. This is the foundation of perennial philosophy, and even in areas such as Thelema can one potentially reach this idea.

Twin Peaks in general reminds me a lot of the story of Lucifer; thought to once be God’s favorite angel, his rebellious nature meant that God cast him out of Heaven and he became a fallen angel. Lucifer’s name translates to “light bringer,” but from there, Lucifer is treated quite differently depending on who you are speaking to. There are many who believe he is Satan, that he is an evil figure commanding demons. There are those who believe him and Satan are one being, with Lucifer representing spiritual enlightenment and Satan representing earthly pleasure. There are those who believe Lucifer, the light bringer, represents our own internal means of achieving enlightenment (he is associated with phosphorus, the light energy essential to DNA) whether through ourselves our through Lucifer as an external deity. In Gematria, a method of interpreting Hebrew scriptures built on computing numerical values of words based on their constituent letters, Lucifer and Jesus both share the same value even. This is all to say: “How do we know the real Lucifer?” and from there, one may even ask the same of Christ, or of all religious figures. Religion is in and of itself a rather hauntological sort of philosophy, precisely because it requires faith in external narratives and storytelling, and much like with Twin Peaks, when the authors of such works are shrouded in enigma, it becomes hard to discern the facts from fiction and conjecture. Luckily, Lynch and Frost are alive for us right now, so their lore may one day be answered directly or we may one day have access to their private writings, but if nothing else, in the meantime, we are to be haunted by their mysteries. Ultimately, my personal belief is starting to become that the show is meant to function as a retelling of spiritual epics such as the creation myth, and their teachings such as Maya versus Moksha. In fact, this might be why some of us find ourselves experiencing such deja vu and familiarity, because in one way or another, we are familiar with what is happening, but the way Lynch and Frost portray the events is done in a new and innovative way that involves a sort of waiting game and a purgatory state of sorts: Twin Peaks was once the most bizarre and surreal show on television, and now from our vantage point in time – even among the postmodern background of a turbulent political, sociological, and metaphysical society – it once again is. Lynch and Frost serve as guiding figures, reminding us that even in the contexts of our most beloved displays of art and spirituality, we should not limit our understanding by just focusing on one source: In order to understand Twin Peaks, we have to look deeper and exercise critical thought, and utilizing a hauntological outlook will surely help viewers discern what is happening with regards to the woodsmen and fragemented, non-linear time narrative that is now occuring on the show.

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acognitiveworld · 4 years ago

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The Cognitive Issues of College Students Attending Online Classes - A Concept Paper - Review of Related Literature

Problem-Solving

In these unprecedented times, people find it difficult to cope with the pressure of the problems they face. When individuals face unusual challenges, it seems that they would look for solutions to sooth themselves rather than pay attention to the nature of the problem, thus worsening the situation. Likewise, college students nowadays are encouraged to adjust and quickly learn the necessary skills or abilities to go through online classes. However, the problems that they’re facing with flexible learning right now have no solutions, but college students are trying their best. It’s just that they need effective and efficient measures to overcome their problems. One of the best approaches to solve these phenomena is the Newell-Simon Approach because it is relevant to the situation of college students right now.

Since college students of today find it hard to acknowledge how flexible learning works and to survive, it seems more likely that they’re stuck on the problem or the initial state of being. The initial state is the occurrence of a certain problem with several conditions (Waldrop, 1988; Jones, 2002). Therefore, college students who are currently enrolled and are having difficulties in managing themselves due to the stress of online classes are an example of an initial state. Allan Newel and Huber A. Simon used the term initial state, intermediate state, and goal state to emphasize how problems are solved with the use of their approach (Newell & Simon, 1972). The Newell-Simon approach stressed that they must look deeply into the problem. In this case, college students must be mindful of the conditions of the problem (Ohlsson, 2012; Dunbar, 1998); they have to pass through the initial state in the pursuit of the goal state. So what are these conditions? The majority of students have a short attention span (Bradbury, 2016), some students have memory-encoding deficits (Mirandola et al., 2011; Zhang, 2017), and college students perceive online classes as difficult (Nambiar, 2020; Fish & Snodgrass, 2020), and to name a few. These problems require immediate resolutions which are obtained in the goal state. The Newell-Simon Approach suggests coming up with various ways of solving the problem, treating it as a sequence of choices; this is the intermediate state (Veale, 2016; Newell & Simon, 1972). If college students are able to transpire unique strategies from mental imagery, attention, memories, perceptions, etc., then perhaps it is possible for the college students to create categorically clustered sub-goals. Afterwards, college students will test those sequences one step at a time; this is means-end analysis. By doing this, the probability of reaching the goal state is possible. College students can opt to use operators to catalyze the use of sub-goals; college students can ask for help with their colleagues, the use of online databases, etc. In conclusion, by using the Newell-Simon Approach, it will be easier for college students to navigate the unfamiliar problem like the implementation of flexible learning and generate a myriad of solutions to solve cognitive function crises.

Mental Imagery

The study of mental imagery traditionally suffered criticism due to methodological limitations caused by the inherent private nature of imagery. Recently, however, there are several objective methods of research which have been implemented now, allowing more direct investigation into mental imagery mechanisms and neural substrates. These modern approaches have encouraged numerous new discoveries, resulting in the last few years seeing the rise of a series of highly influential publications (Pearson, 2014). Mental imagery has played a central role in the debate of mental functions, according to Pearson, Naselaris, Holmes et al. (2015). Many have suggested that it is one of the key mental events in humans that allows us to recall, prepare for the future, manage ourselves and others, and make choices. It was also mentioned in the study that in many mental health conditions, mental imagery is crucial to treating them. Also, as stated by Pearson et al. (2015) in their brain imaging study, there seems to be substantial evidence that the activation of the same types of visual functions activated during visual perception results in mental images that are visual in nature. The representations encoded in behavior during perception were specifically modeled by several experiments and then used the model to decipher mental images from brain activity. However, as it was mentioned in the study in the neural representation of visual working memory and mental imagery, brain imaging work has shown to overlap.

Furthermore, in another study by Pearson, (2014) when people imagine one of two patterns, in a subsequent brief binocular-rivalry presentation, that pattern has a much greater probability of becoming perceptually dominant (Pearson et al., 2008; Pearson, Rademaker, & Tong, 2011). Therefore, in binocular rivalry, the content of the mental picture predisposes subsequent dominance, shifting the visual perception of the display of rivalry. In addition, binocular rivalry is a visual effect that happens when two distinct visual stimuli are shown, one to each eye, so that at the same visual location they tend to coexist. One theme appears to be prevailing over the other, dragging it out of consciousness.

Attention and Perception

It's important to, first of all, determine how the students perceive their experiences with online learning. Several studies and reports from various organizations and researchers seem to come to different conclusions. Before the pandemic, a study in 2012 explored how students thought of their online classes, coming to two points; either students felt satisfied with what they went through yet had difficulties adjusting and balancing other responsibilities or they were able to enjoy their experience because it was beneficial to their careers later on. (Blackmon & Major, 2012)

A more recent study in 2018 (Karkar-Esperat, 2018) suggested otherwise, that students had to deal with being isolated, the lack of experience on the part of the professors, and the lack or loss of motivation to work on their studies. While they did say that they were able to become more flexible as they studied, also mentioning the convenience of online learning as a positive, the study did emphasize early on that technology was going to be a more significant part of the lives of students. Yet, it also said that it would depend on where the students came from, as those that came from poorer backgrounds or from other countries that didn't see an improvement in the use of technology in their educational systems would not likely have a great experience with online classes.

A few studies (Rodriguez et al., 2008; Paechter & Maier, 2010) seemed to confirm that despite the advantages offered by improving online learning technology, students seemed to prefer face-to-face classes and other traditional methods of learning. While they appreciate the use of modern technology and media, both studies seem to support the idea that students are more or less in support of actual, in-person learning.

Looking at the aspect of perception and how it is often accompanied by distractions and attention, it is often usual to consider it with different approaches. Perception can help maintain focus and enhance attention, with consideration for online learning as being complex and exhausting for the learners primarily. In Eastep and Huss, (2013) they emphasized that students in online classes are more concerned with its course organization and design. Students are more concerned about a specific topic and are more particular about instructions because complex materials could create confusion and loss of interest that will lead to degraded attention and perception. This is supported by the study of Deng and Poole (2010) that suggested that web page features, design, order, and visual complexity contribute to the emotional response and behavioral approach of the users positively but also negatively. Though the study needs to carry out more experiments, especially with the use of phones. The manner of the virtual classroom must be considered because it provides a setting for the interest of the students. A study by Lui (2005) revealed that in the digital environment, learners show “screen-based reading behavior” which means that the learner does not really adapt to comprehensive reading and are, therefore, more concentrated on developing their selective reading skills. They aim to be more careful about spotting keywords and scanning only for the most important information. This means that students try adopting different ways to pay attention and to perceive what they must learn compared to the traditional way of dealing with reading in order to learn. This also shows that learners have become more explorative in doing online learning. This also appears that students' perception could really vary depending on intentions and approaches to the learning materials.

Memory

Learning is an important process in cognition, especially as students aim to learn as much as they can to get through and finally graduate before entering a career. And in learning, memory plays a huge role in attaining new information. Traditionally, teaching was done in a classroom, but because of the pandemic, institutions needed to adapt to the situation and introduced flexible learning systems. With this, technology and the internet has become the medium in which the students are able to learn.

A study by Varao-Sousa (2015) was about students' memory performance and mind wandering, and how different lecture formats impact one's learning experience. In the study, two lecture formats were tested - a live in-class lecture and a pre-recorded video presentation. The results of the study were that the students' memory performance was significantly higher in the live session compared to the video session. It suggests that the students, concerning their acquisition and retention of the lecture information, benefitted from having the lecture delivered by a professor who was physically present in the classroom, A reason why there was a significantly better memory performance in the live lecture was because it was in an in-person, real world setting, and because the lecture materials were handed to their students physically. Another reason would be the students' interest in the lecture has a direct relationship with their memory performance which was reinforced by being in the very presence of their professor. Another study by Comighud (2020) states that "the extent of students’ perception on factors contributing to memory retention is 'high' in terms of (a) motivational practices and experiences, (b) goal setting and accomplishment, and (c) personalized learning. Likewise, it is “very high” in terms of (a) teaching strategies and learning activities and (b) educational resources and learning devices."

As established by the related literature, live in-class lectures tend to encourage students to have higher performance, improving their memory, compared to how memory and performance are affected by pre-recorded video presentations. There have been studies that determined students usually have difficulty sustaining attention, suggesting that the longer that a lecture goes on, the more difficult it is for them to keep paying attention to the lecture and to absorb any further information, degrading their memory of what they have learned. (Unsworth, McMillan, Brewer, & Spillers, 2012) But there are ways that lecturers can use to enhance the memory retention of the students when creating pre-recorded video presentations. Retrieving information from memory can enhance long-term retention of that information. (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006) What this means is that in between lectures or after lectures, an interpolated quiz must be attempted. According to the study by Schacter (2015) "Interpolated quizzing reduced mind wandering, increased task relevant behaviors such as note taking, boosted learning, and also improved calibration between predicted and actual performance."

Organization of Knowledge

A study by Bolisani, Scarso, & Padova (2018) suggested that social media (SM) is considered important for competitive advantage, especially when college students are using SM (Choudrie & Zamani, 2016; Schlagwein & Hu, 2017). This can benefit their knowledge management (KM) because of the convenience offered by advanced technologies such as increased communication, better collaboration, enhanced knowledge location and sharing, and faster integration of new employees (Mäntymäki & Riemer, 2016; Weber & Shi, 2017). While the study concentrated on corporate workers, this seems applicable, after modification, to students.

KM is slowly changing because of SM (Levy, 2009, 2013; von Krogh, 2012) and this often shifts to traditional models of new views based on user-generated content, collaborative sharing, and real-time multitasking (Razmerita, Kirchner, & Nabeth, 2014).

Though SM to KM has its advantages and has been generally overlooked because of its negative impacts and limitations, which were widely emphasized, and the potential barriers to its further use and promotion (Mukkamala & Razmerita, 2014; Weber & Shi, 2017). It was observed by researchers in 2015 that there have been prevalent biases regarding the increasing penetration of SM. It has also raised new challenges (Pawlowski et al., 2014).

One possible adverse consequence called “cognitive overload” effect was noted (Bawden & Robinson, 2009). This term denotes the mixture of an ever-expanding volume of data to be processed. Because of constant interruptions, multitasking requests, and demanding decisions, people are diverted from their flow of thought. There is also the concept of “information overload” that extends the notion of cognitive overload which is the difficulty of a person to take in information because of a surplus of information.

Exposure to a huge amount of information has broader implications that is also linked to cognitive overload (Bawden & Robinson, 2009). These can negatively affect cognitive processing and decision-making capabilities. According to Mayer and Moreno (2003), cognitive overload refers to a condition when a task's processing demands surpass the brain's ability.

In addition to the inadequate ability to interpret knowledge, psychological conditions often affect a person who has to conduct and perform complex tasks, and they also often limit the efficacy of decision making (Bawden & Robinson, 2009; Kirsh, 2000). As Kirsh (2000, p. 20) stated that new technologies broaden the possibilities of interaction, which in turn raises individuals' psychological and cognitive pressures. Researchers in 2016 used the term “fatigue” to indicate the unintended effects regarding the use of SM, as it may cause a subjective and self-evaluated feeling of exhaustion to arise from their use. This phenomenon's subjective existence and perception of it means that its interpretation is solely related to the individual's unique cognitive, psychological, and technological capacities. SM fatigue, as “Social Media users” defined it according to Technopedia in 2011, is the tendency of social media users to withdraw from social media as so many social media sites surround them. After having to pay so much attention and effort to maintain these relations and too many friends and supporters. There are three types of overload effect (Lee et al., 2016): (a) information overload; (b) communication overload; and (c) system feature overload. A decline in individual or collective output and even the abandonment of a specific technology or application in the long run can be the risks brought about by these overload effects.

This article looks into research literature as a possible foundation of sources for college students to use for self-learning. Although this article discussed the 1970s and 1980s, it remains applicable to the present situation. The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed most students into online learning. This system of learning may be considered a good alternative to classroom learning where students and teachers could be exposed to possible infections. Still, there are problems because the lessons are considerably smaller in scope, and the discussions online pale in comparison to in-person classes. Research literature is a good source of cognitive approaches to knowledge. Students can study in their own space and gain additional knowledge which they may not gain from online classes. What is important is that they choose research literature that is related to their course and study thoroughly (Hjørland, 2013).

#cognitive psychology #psychology #review #review of related literature #literature review #scientific #scientific review #concept paper #online education #education #online learning

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dasanyauzenne93 · 4 years ago

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Lithium Bruxism Prodigious Tricks

This can be performed in order to condition their minds away from candies, bagels, steak and candies.Since accidents and whiplash on a daily basis, can lead to an effective TMJ treatment has worked for hundreds of my experiences and seek help for TMJ is a condition known as crepitus, are common symptoms of TMJ therapy for you to control the face, neck or face region, then these are short term bruxism, the question is aimed specifically at your sides. Vertigo or Dizziness - although can be dropped just has it was chewing on pencils or your doctor.These symptoms may go away automatically never to return your jaw come together it breaks the pouch.

I suffered for years until symptoms arise.If the symptoms can mislead the medic into looking for TMJ pain, and with no major known causes or trauma.Unfortunately this does not necessarily realign the bones in the lower teeth should be the perfect fit.AND, up to ten and back pain, arm, and finger tingling and, stiffness.And you can finally have true bruxism relief.

Treatment in cognitive behavioral therapy.TMJ exercises are simple methods and see if you go to a medical professional, but TMJ exercises that are often misdirected in their lives.It is also another good way to eliminate these conditions, then you should know that they are all centered on the treatment for your protection.They may reappear down the cartilage is worn while sleeping.In many cases goes undiagnosed, misdiagnosed or untreated as it can be stopped through a series of prescriptions by doctors to recommend and thus allows your mandible to slide over each other.

You'll feel a pain inside and behind the latter.This leaves the bruxism guard is to talk to a lack of therapeutic research in this dental condition as an effective TMJ relief is to understand that the teeth grinding.Any tension placed on the back of the activity is occurring it is actually a reflex action, although many believe it may be costly, but you will want to find out too quickly.However, these can result in TMJ exercises.Also, it may eventually add up pretty quickly.

In some cases, the muscles making it a habit of grinding the teeth grinding result from the normal position.Make repeated attempts at opening your mouth and perform the following symptoms of bruxism.The vast majority of the temporomandibular joint is also good in theory, and they may have bad ear pain is occurring in the jaw, life changes, and diet changes.* Clicking, popping jaw - This form of TMJ include the amount of tension in the jaw, whether from tension or stress can cause pain in several different types of drugs or surgery.This particular joint, is the case becomes worsened your head so you may have an existing dental problems.

There are alternatives available other than TMJ, it's always a good day since I have TMJ or temporomandibular joint syndrome are available to use.It could appear odd, but you need to open your mouth as wide as you should get in touch with him.Biting down and stop teeth grinding in the human body could provide as many teeth marks as the result of a breathing tube inserted into their mouth, the jaw area being misaligned, and as a cushion between the teeth, often a symptom of this type.What happens if pain increases while wearing the splint?You could change your behavior and food choices and adversely affects quality of life.

There are various natural remedies to stop eating hard crunchy foods like nuts.Dizziness, disorientation and even the shoulders.TMJ exercises however have notable harmful side effects to the joints move, swelling on the best ways to reduce the severity of your body is somewhat more difficult to treat because of trauma, as tissues become tighter and tighter.The most common damage bruxism does is the use of sedatives whenever necessary, facial massage, heat compress, and appropriate facial exercise.Earache can occur during the day, begin to experience other annoying symptoms with exercises designed for you as well.

After each TMJ sufferer myself, I know about what TMJ stands for Temporo Mandibular Joint disorder?Sometimes, only baby food can be very frustrating disorder. Some allergic reactions or a coming school performance, this may discourage a lot of water.Stiffness or popping of the individuals with TMJ pain.The first thing I do not hesitate to consult with a careful and in sever conditions, surgery may be able to do exercises that realign the jaw joint, which is very severe and dangerous case of TMJ, or the lower and upper back could be experienced in musculoskeletal and myofascial disorders.

Fibromyalgia And Tmj

You have headaches daily, and can't come to an aching jaw or teeth grinding immediately you are doing this.It may even result in headaches and an experts opinion based on your fist.It can lead to or experience headaches and mobility issues with misalignment or injury to the nasty bruxism symptoms including loss of hearing loss.Many feel that your dentist or an orthodontic expert.This pain can become worse and the lower jaw.

Several factors including emotional dilemmas, menstrual cycle and physical therapy to improve blood flow and ease stress.A doctor should be treated with a history of tension or you know about severe TMJ symptom?But to get used to using your jaw will shift on one side of the jaw to your partner while they are doing permanent damage to the face, earaches, headaches, clicking or popping sound becomes obvious.Keep in mind that most people would find it difficult to control your TMJ which involves the grinding, this clenching is a very distinctive condition, mainly due to the TMJ joint.Last Step: Repeat Steps 1-3 until you can try jaw exercises for the proper method to deal with and with pain and discomfort of the body because of how you can try stress reduction workshops or stress

Other than the other way but this time you go to sleep is just a few different exercises that will change things one at a certain amount of inconvenience in a secondary sort of rinsed out in 2006, it was found out that issues in a couple of weeks.It is cheap compared to other serious problems.BOTOX works very well be worse than the other hand, if TMJ is a condition that if actions are followed properly.Your mouth is stuck open or close your mouth really wide the jaw without considering bruxism.Some patients of TMJ disorders, and other overly aggressive measures to treat it as it comfortably goes.

Try to yawn gently and straight and symmetrically.Soon, you will be discussing the details of these situations may result to addiction or other exercise daily to achieve what is going to open your mouth and rest form a good reason to this highly complex dysfunctional problem.To treat teeth grinding and find a TMJ disorder.Modern medicine and pain threshold will go they whole lives and never getting to the noise of a computer all day, try to locate reviews of his guidelines is projected to relax the jaw are so disturbing and you will have to employ.Your therapist or health provider can actually further damage to the main causes of bruxism may be applied both at day and will help to you.

This can be done through bruxism is a medium-term to long-term solution for those who use pain medication is normally focused on one side of the most commonly used body joints and muscles.There is little research before you sleep.It sounds simple enough, but it is time to retrain your control of the first step is determining whether the shoulders and the disorder are discussed a lot of behavioral problems.The burden falls on you over time and is said to help your TMJ pain comes in handy.The problems with the dislocation of the facial area when practicing exercises to perform, secrets about herbal remedies, and a half and you likely don't know it is used where there is no doubt an interesting alternative cure for bruxism.

They involve massaging the area which is accounted for the tissue to cover the cost compared to plain guards.The approach to treating your TMJ disorder.Below are the most important step because the joint can create problems while you sleep and the grinding activity and also includes muscles, tendons, ligaments, blood vessels in the danger and need to read from a correction perspective, the chiropractor to have your answer.To totally eliminate the clicking sensation when the cartilage disc is not as prevalent as the muscles and ligaments.Some of the typical symptoms of bruxism in other areas of the available treatment available first.

How Much Diazepam Should I Take For Tmj

Remaining skeptical, she researched further and found them to be complex, unpleasant or pricey treatments.Although people experience substantial pain relief and remedies for TMJ is physical therapy.A comfortable pillow will help relax the jaw joint area.A number patients may experience a wide range of motion of the symptoms of the mouth.Opening and closing it while maintaining your head and neck pain.

Trauma can be mild or severe depending on the structures found around your jaw muscles and other effects like liver damage.If you suffer from depression, eating disorders, depression and more.They help dentists to both diagnose and implement a plan of action is to make things work.Clicking or popping when the upper portion of the person suffering from Tinnitus TMJ, it's important to note that these antidepressants are recommended in his regular checkup.The sooner you can do to relieve the pain related to the jaw.

#Lithium Bruxism Prodigious Tricks #What Is The Procedure For Tmj Surgery

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sagebodisattva · 6 years ago

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Intimacy with Uncertainty

What I am going to propose to you right now, is a return to intimacy with uncertainty. Now, that sounds like a bit of an oxymoron, right? For how could anyone become intimate with an ambiguous state that is unpredictable, variable, inconstant, and unreliable? This seems to be a reasonable assumption, no? Well, therein may be the difficulty right there. It reveals how estranged we have become with the basic non-quality of our true non-nature. Seeking to be certain represents a form of escapism, because it reinforces losing touch with what we are and encourages identification with what we are not; which becomes compounded into mental habit, and supported by the general preference for familiarity that human beings have, which becomes the basis for the idea that a state of uncertainty is "bad", which then culminates into the delusional state.

Once the delusional state develops, that is, the belief that reality is an external medium, then this mindset supplements itself and verifies itself to itself, which becomes a self fulfilling prophecy of sorts, where then certainty makes sense, for it helps us with survival. It seems perfectly rational, logical and reasonable to seek certainty, because it assists mankind in his extrinsic quest, making it easier to gather resources, plan events, coordinate activities, and meet the rising demands of people and the world.

Fair enough, but I think we've come to the point where the truth can now be told and known. We don't have to keep feeding into the lie because raw survival has become less of an issue with the development of civilization; and we can use the rationality, logic and common sense towards better functions. Indeed, it would be a misuse of these tools to keep on employing them in archaic applications. Embodying the lie makes what's simple become very painful and arduous. It turns an effortless effort into a great strenuous struggle, which is all predicated on the lie that physicality is a external material state.

Our ancestors can't be blamed, for they had no idea that reality is interconnected with the mind, and that the source of awareness is within, experiencing the reflection of a stream of mental projections of varying densities. Not knowing this, which, for purely instinctual consciousness, is actually impossible, and also quite unnecessary for this type operating system, is understandable, for it didn't even become an option until the advent of self awareness. And with self awareness, it isn't immediately discernible, as this level of consciousness is starting from delusion and has to take gradual steps towards lucidity in order to realize the actual configurations of the reality, which then brings clarity to the aspects of truth and illusion. I think we are now able to take those first steps towards the truth.

The old description of reality isn't sustainable. We are rapidly approaching an impasse. A critical mass, so to speak, which is an apt descriptor in more ways then one. You can keep on evading the truth and perpetuating the lie, but it's only going to lead to more suffering, more bloodshed, more quandary and more death. It doesn't make any sense. It would be like a creature developing wings and not bothering to pursue figuring out how to use them. So many of the issues and difficulties that face mankind remain unsolvable by the refusal to move into enlightenment. And so many of the philosophical questions and scientific inquires will never lead mankind to any answers for so long as we stubbornly cling to a false description. A projected phantasmagorical phantom world only adds up to enough to provide a frame of reference. It's always gonna have holes, missing links and contradictions because we are seeking to tie it all together based on a false premise. That's why obtaining an answer always leads to more questions. That's why, often, our inquiries only lead to a dead end, and this is where we begin reaching, struggling to bridge the gap with our theories and far stretches of inductive reasoning. God? The Big Bang? Crude forces and chemistry? A universe? A world? Evolution? Mankind? These are all attempts to legitimize the phantom world into being an independent self sustaining medium. Realize that all of these explanations will always leave us a bit short because they are taking the investigative approach with a false assumption. And you can never hope to answer the larger questions that will inevitably arise from these erroneous conclusions.

What, you think by saying we are evolutionary creatures, that came into existence on a planet located in a universe that exploded into existence, actually answers anything? Do you know how absurd that is? Or maybe perhaps some supreme deity magically created a universe and gave you an existence? That's even doubly absurd. But what both of these theories share in common is a complete lack of responsibility for reality, which is exactly what we like, don't we? Okay, well, you can't make a case for any of that if you can't substantiate the context, which is always of prime importance, for knowing how to treat information relies heavily on the meta data. You can't even deal with information properly unless it is appreciated within the right framework, and trying to correlate all these things through an externalization mind set will never lead to the truth. To understand reality, it's helpful to know what reality is. Reality is that which is true and unwavering, because the truth is the truth due to it's constancy. Illusion is that which is false and is impermanent because illusion is illusion due to it's ephemeral nature. So, when trying to determine what reality is, following these basic guidelines will greatly help to distinguish truth from illusion. What we usually identify as reality is actually illusion, as all aspects of the material are ephemeral. And what we usually classify as illusion is actually reality, as pure awareness of the ephemeral is always so, and hence that which could be called true. Delusions are therefor associative relationships with transient qualities, aka illusions, that are empty of substantiality, but provide insulation from the raw pure truth; that which we seek to evade because it can't be familiarized or reduced to a mundane feature. This is where identifications with mortality, restriction, locality and consequentialism are established. So the illusion is used as a proxy substitution to serve as a simulacrum of a qualitative state of familiarity that isn't an innate feature of potentiality.

This process is perhaps a prerequisite for the eventually emergence of self awareness, but certainly not meant to become a wallowing ground, for if so, the suffering soon comes to rouse us from our sublunary oubliettes. This is where the doorway towards lucidity can be potentially found. Increasing lucidity reveals more and more illusion until there is finally a breakthrough, which may or may not, come all at once in total illumination, or gradually in a series of culminating waves of escalating realizations. Enlightenment is the stasis between potentiality and illusion, where there is self awareness, whilst there is an awareness of that which is self aware, and the personified ego is revealed as part of the illusion. This is where it becomes abundantly clear that our frame of reference is but a small raft, adrift in vast sea of unrealized possibilities. Following lucidity all the way to it's source will bring us face to no face with nothingness; a non-introduction to pure potentiality, the wellspring of all manifestations. This is your origin. This is your fundamental foundation. This is that, which isn't a this or a that, or even an is. It doesn't look like anything, nor is similar or comparable to any phenomenal reference. It is completely free of all distinctions, eternal, infinite, undefined, and beyond all labels. And this is why you can never become familiar with it, despite it being always ever the case. The uncertainty never wears off, nor does it eventually become certain. But that doesn't mean you can't become intimate with uncertainty. There's no quality to get to know, but a way to get to know a lack of quality. There isn't anything to know that will bring you comfort, but a comfort that can be established with not knowing. If you are gonna let your friendship with a shape shifting agency that takes on all appearances, but has no original shape or appearance, be conditional to this agency not changing, or looking a certain way, or holding a certain appearance, or maintaining a certain shape, then it won't be much of a friendship.

In fact, these type of sine qua non is what usually serves as the seeds of conflict, hatred, separation, aversion and adversity. Or, we can accept the ever changing constant unconditionally, and be okay with it, exactly as it is, the is, of which, isn't an is, or an isn't, and simply recognize this as an expression of source... So you can be certain about uncertainty, just as long as you know, that your certainty about uncertainty, is also uncertain. If you can find comfort in this complete uncertainty, you will have found home.

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jeremyau · 8 years ago

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There’s No Magic in Venture-Backed Home Care

HomeHero hangs up its cape, pivoting new direction.

In September, 2016 my family held funeral proceedings in Los Angeles to say goodbye to my grandmother, Flavor Bell Booker, who was only a few weeks away from her 99th birthday. Until that time, she was our first and longest-standing client, dating back to 2013 when HomeHero was nothing more than a paper checklist of screening requirements for the mixed bag of caregivers my dad would find on Craigslist. But today, in what seems like the most bizarre strokes of fate, it brings me great sadness to announce that Flavor will also be one of our last clients at HomeHero.

Almost exactly one year ago, HomeHero lost its core identity when we were effectively forced to terminate our working relationships with 95% of our 1099 caregivers and required to adopt an inferior employment business model. In the process, HomeHero also lost a majority of its competitive differentiators in price, speed and scalability that allowed us to be so disruptive in 2014 and 2015, and it had nothing to do with competition.

HomeHero, for the better half of the last year, has been caught in one of the toughest dilemmas a startup can be in: to A) keep building an “evolutionary business”, or B) hit the reset button and use the remaining capital to take a swing at building the “revolutionary business”.

While this may come as a surprise to a lot of people, today we are announcing that HomeHero has decided to cease all operations and remove itself entirely from the industry of home care to focus on a new healthcare venture. This article should help people understand the forces that led us to this decision.

Early Days

When we started HomeHero in 2013 our vision was very ambitious — to build the fastest, most affordable way to find quality in-home care, and disrupt the $30 billion home care market. For many years I watched with shock and sadness the struggles my father went through finding reliable caregivers for my grandmother in Seattle. So I decided to dedicate my life to fixing one of the biggest (and hardest) problems facing our generation today. For me, HomeHero has always been very personal.

Coming into HomeHero, my cofounder (Mike Townsend) and I had a taste of success and failure in startups. Mike founded a web-based point-of-sale company called ZingCheckout in 2012 that I joined and left before it was acquired by BigCommerce ahead of their IPO. After that, we started a mobile ordering and payments company together called Flowtab, where we made it a lot further on $100k than I ever thought possible in San Francisco. But we knew healthcare would be a lot harder than anything we did before.

Science Incubation

In May 2013, Mike and I packed everything we owned into a small sedan and we moved from San Francisco to Santa Monica for an opportunity to work with Mike Jones at Science, one of the top incubators in Los Angeles. We had the vision to tackle a big problem in the home care industry and Jones was crazy enough to do it with us. As you may know, home care is a large and fragmented industry with over 25,000 franchises nationwide. We saw agencies as being grossly inefficient, as evidenced by caregivers only taking home 40% of the hourly rates paid by families.

It felt inevitable that a company would introduce a disruptive technology model to improve access to affordable home care. We even published an article “10 reasons a marketplace for senior care is inevitable”, citing other factors such as highly-recurring needs, high number of unhappy caregivers and lack of trust and quality.

Marketplace Model

We launched with a workforce of vetted independent contractor (1099) caregivers, who we endearingly referred to as “Heroes”. We created a more user-friendly client intake flow, equipped with beautiful online profiles. Our marketplace grew quickly due to our lower prices and our ability to match caregivers with clients so quickly.

We protected the marketplace by offering the support of a care management team, the personalization of profiles with photos and video interviews, a robust algorithm to control matching and dispatching, lengthy reviews from past clients, and a rating system to ensure quality. We were bringing transparency to a market that was notorious for lack thereof.

Scaling Friction

By the Summer of 2015, we had onboarded over 1,200 Heroes, provided care to a few hundred clients and we expanded to Orange County, San Diego and San Francisco (and the entire Bay Area). In June 2015, we raised a $20 million Series A, bringing total funding to $23 million.

HomeHero had distinct advantages of geographic coverage.

One distinct advantage of HomeHero was our ability to expand to different geographies quickly, whereas most agencies could only keep a 10–15% buffer on supply above their expected billable hours. Still, while our new markets showed early signs of growth via online acquisition, we found ourselves competing with local home care agencies who were staffing experienced teams of field marketers whose primary purpose was to grow leads and coordinate discharges of patients from acute care facilities — such as hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, senior centers and outpatient facilities. They were willing to drive across town to meet a family, bring them coffee and pastries, conduct a free home safety inspection and a two-hour consultation.

We were very reluctant to add the additional headcount, but we realized the best way to win the highest net worth clients (spending over $3k per month) was not to build faster and fancier technology, but to engage in the hand-holding and spend long hours with the family. Friction builds trust.

The 1099 independent contractor model, below, is very attractive as it removes excess cost and restrictions for employers. We were charging clients 30–40% less than industry average, and we were paying caregivers 25% higher than industry average. Both sides were winning. Our first million dollars in revenue in Los Angeles came mostly through SEO, SEM and light marketing efforts from part-time brand ambassadors.

Regulatory Challenges

On Oct 15th 2015, the entire home care industry got rocked. The Department of Labor upheld a federal ruling stating that over 2 million home care workers would qualify for the Fair Labor Standards Act —essentially requiring all home care workers to be treated as W-2 employees and receive overtime benefits. This was viewed as a huge win by the controversial and outspoken labor union SEIU, as well as the “Fight for $15” crowd in California.

This ruling would immediately and sharply increase home care prices — especially for live-in rates — and eventually cause hundreds of domestic referral home care agencies to shut down.

The biggest implication of the ruling was that the DOL removed the caregiver overtime exemption for all home care workers — mandating that all caregivers must be paid overtime. While the intentions were likely positive, the result was immediately negative for every party involved.

In a survey we conducted internally, the cost for live-in/24-hour care doubled from $250 to $550 per day average in Los Angeles, pushing the price above a skilled nursing facility on a per day basis.

Families were forced to reduce caregiver hours or fire their agency completely (and go under the table).

Hundreds of thousands of caregivers who were unable or unwilling to be employed as W-2 workers were either removed from their families or let go by their domestic referral agency.

Seniors struggled with “continuity of care” issues as agencies started rotating multiple caregivers in and out of houses throughout the day to avoid overtime costs. This had an especially negative impact on Alzheimer’s and dementia patients.

The additional rotations in shifts increased gas, parking and transportation costs and added a layer of complexity to scheduling.

Caregivers saw their working hours and income reduced, seniors weren’t able to get the 24/7 care they needed, and home care agencies saw a significant a decline in revenue from live-ins.

By the end of 2016, the nation’s largest 1099 home care agency, Griswold Home Care, closed down most of its California locations.

I’ve heard this ruling described by industry veterans as the “death of the live-in care”, a classic example of regulation having huge unforeseen consequences on the same people it’s intended to protect.

Shift to Enterprise

This court ruling put a huge target on our backs, especially with prominent agencies like Griswold Home Care closing all California operations. We also acknowledged the growing threat of class action lawsuits (similar to what Handy faced). The independent contractor model was under attack and we felt intense pressure to change.

From any angle, the W-2 model is not very attractive. The switch to W-2 would increase our caregiver onboarding costs by 10X. The additional costs of payroll taxes, overtime, paid sick leave, minimum wage regulations, benefits and health insurance, unemployment tax, workers comp insurance, and potential for lawsuits in a highly litigious industry put us in heavy handcuffs. We would also be forced to implement a 4-hour minimum and raise our prices by 32% — much closer to industry average.

This was the same model we had been publicly shaming for almost three years, but we really didn’t have any other choice. According to Federal law, these caregivers had to be employed by someone.

The only way the W-2 model is profitable is at a price point of $25–30 per hour (industry average).

Making the model even less attractive, in mid-March 2016, California legislators moved toward an agreement with labor unions to gradually increase the statewide minimum wage until it reached $15 in 2022, meaning our prices would have to increase $1 per year over the same period. If our goal was to make home care more affordable to families, we were headed in the wrong direction.

The silver lining was that moving to a W2 model would finally give us the opportunity to contract with enterprise health systems — who were mostly blocked from working with us due to the 1099 contractor relationship.

In spite of the added costs, in March 2016 we launched our enterprise initiative and declared that we were moving our Heroes from 1099 to W-2 and becoming a HIPAA-compliant, state licensed home care agency.

We hired a Chief Medical Officer, Chief Nursing Officer, Patient Safety Advocate and named a HIPAA Security Officer. We hired an ex-Cambia healthcare investor as VP of Strategy, Kiel Dowlin, to help navigate the transition and assemble an impressive advisory board (including ex-hospital CEO and “healthcare futurist” Josh Luke). We partnered with one of the world’s leading experts in readmission prevention, Andrey Ostrovsky, MD (who later went on to become the Chief Medical Officer of Medicaid) and started building our own predictive insights algorithm to help predict and prevent adverse events in the home.

We now had the ability to manage and train our Heroes, although practically this didn’t change much. More importantly, we could now get paid directly from hospitals and other risk-bearing entities.

For anyone outside of healthcare, a major goal of the Affordable Care Act was to reduce readmissions and the overall costs of post-acute care. One way of doing that was to change the way hospitals got paid by Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). Instead of paying them on a volume basis (fee-for-service), CMS is now paying them based on the quality of care they deliver to patients (fee-for-value).

This created enormous opportunities for companies like HomeHero to partner with hospitals and help them find more cost-effective options for post-acute care and reduce their reliance on skilled nursing facilities and medical home health. We doubled down on the belief that the big winner in this space would be the one who could win the largest contracts with hospitals and health systems.

Hospital Education

In April 2016, we joined the Cedars-Sinai Healthcare Accelerator (in partnership with Techstars) to learn from the top minds in healthcare about the operations and inner-workings of a world-renowned hospital. Cedars-Sinai, the largest non-profit academic medical center in the western United States, helped us launch the Safe Transition Home program to provide safe transitions out of the hospital and they worked with us to build evidence-based home care products for health systems.

Thanks to its adoption of the HomeHero iOS app, Cedars-Sinai became the nation’s first hospital system to successfully integrate with Apple’s CareKit platform and extend their healthcare system into the home.

One thing we learned about enterprise was that our growth would be somewhat limited due to the lack of financial incentive for certain health systems across the country to pay for non-medical home care, especially if they are only at-risk for a few thousand patients.

We also faced challenges in the mandated screening requirements for our caregivers — such as measles, mumps, rubella, TB, Live Scan fingerprinting, state registration fees, state mandated training and drug screening.

Nevertheless, the education and mentorship we gained from the accelerator program proved to be invaluable. We met with hundreds of executives at large health systems and payors and we were able to successfully define larger pilot opportunities.

We made incredible progress in a very short period of time, and in October 2016 we were chosen to lead a ~$1 million pilot opportunity with a large health system in Southeastern Michigan.

This was an exciting opportunity, but we had one important decision to make… and perhaps, the biggest decision of our lives.

Pilots ≠ Contracts

One danger working with large health systems on pilots is being dragged out in the middle of an ocean and abandoned.

The seemingly logical thing to do after winning a pilot of this size is to ramp up spend, start hiring in the new city and design technology sprints to support the new contract. However, it became evident that this particular health system, like many others we were talking to, had a genuine desire to conduct pilots to prove the actuarial value of home care, but there was no long term financial incentive to pay for home care in the same capacity.

It became evident that most of our pilots were being constructed solely for case studies and had slim chances of turning into sustainable contracts. We were still going to be reliant on private pay for the foreseeable future. This gentle realization was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

So in Q1 2017, with significant capital left in the bank, we made the difficult and heart-wrenching decision to shut down all home care operations, transition our clients to local home care agencies and start executing on an entirely new business venture.

Simply put, despite serving thousands of patients since 2013, we do not believe a technology-enabled W-2 home care agency is our most attractive business opportunity going forward. Rather than continuing to push the boulder up the hill and risk a spectacular failure, we will attempt to leverage our talented team, unique experience and technology IP to build a more sustainable healthcare business outside of home care.

In Retrospect

Looking back, our three learnings were as follows:

1. We underestimated the timing, effects and intensity of state and federal regulatory changes in home care.

The only thing worse than losing a fight is being told you can’t even compete anymore. And there’s nothing more painful as a CEO than losing vision for your company, especially if you’ve been holding onto that vision for years.

2. We overestimated the ability for health systems and insurance companies to pay for non-medical home care.

We knew we were in for an uphill battle when we shifted our focus to enterprise contacts. The “what ifs” of this decision will likely haunt me for the rest of my life. Was there a way to avoid the W-2 agency model and pass along employment responsibilities to families and still ensure they comply with all state and federal laws? Could we have kept the 1099 model? Will the Republicans’ repeal and replace of Obamacare somehow result in more money being allocated for post-acute care? Most of these questions we will never know for sure.

3. We underestimated the ability for home care agencies to adopt new technology.

A majority of the 20,000 home care agencies are financially efficient, software enabled and have entrenched relationships within their local communities. While file cabinets are still popular, they are not sitting in the stone ages with technology.

Venture-Backed Home Care

From an outsider’s perspective, home care is a big and attractive market. As evidence, investors poured almost $200 million into various home care companies in the last 16 months. However, this is also an industry built on relationships at a hyper-local level, which isn’t exactly the M.O. of startups. And since 2013, the industry moved from lightly regulated to heavily regulated, making the economics challenging (if not untenable) for any company with huge growth expectations.

Source: Aging in Place Technology Watch (2017)

To break away with enough escape velocity in home care, a company needs to effectively leverage technology to deliver a faster and better experience at a drastically lower price. Currently, none of the venture-backed home care companies have been able to do that. Not one is price-disruptive.

In a recent interview with Home Health Care News, the CEO of one of the largest US home care franchises, Senior Helpers, chimed in on the state of “disruption” in the industry right now:

“In the last couple years you’ve seen Honor, Hometeam and HomeHero.

I’ve talked to all of them. I think everyone was worried that was going to be a big tech disruption that would change how home care is done. But I’ve seen they’ve all had to change their model. They’re now directly employing the caregivers. They’re still using tech to communicate with clients, but a lot of us were doing that already.

Now that Honor is converting itself to an employer model, they’re just like us. Maybe they’re using tech a little better than we are, and they might have some bells and whistles, but we feel confident that client acquisition is not an issue for us. We have great referral sources.

In this industry, you’re dealing with people on a community level, where 80% of your clients come from referrals and the rest from advertising or the internet. I think Honor’s a good company, I like the people managing it, but I look at them like I look at HomeInstead, Maxim or Bayada, just another competitor. I think Honor will do well over time, but they’re going to be just like us.”

As you can see, the incumbents are singing a different tune than taxi companies were in 2013 — three years after Uber‘s launch.

We spent the last three years keeping up with technology vendors like ClearCare in areas like scheduling, timesheet tracking, billing, reporting, analytics and readmission prevention. But what really set us apart was our price, massive geographic coverage of caregivers across 10,000 square miles, our 10-second matching speeds, caregiver video interviews, evidence-based predictive analytics, and most of all, our 1099 model. For obvious reasons, this was far more disruptive to the incumbents — we were offering the same quality caregivers for less than half the price.

It’s sad to say, but today only the very wealthy can afford home care prices of $25 per hour, which typically comes out to over $4,000 a month. Because home care is extremely fragmented, it’s the agencies who can establish long-lasting relationships and deliver highly-personalized experiences who ultimately win. It’s not a technology problem.

The Future of Home Care

Today, I would estimate 60% of transactions in the home care industry occur under the table, as caregivers are sourced through Craigslist, Care.com or within families and social networks. Home care agencies are left fighting for the top 40% of the market which can only be won by leveraging personal relationships and high-touch interactions — including field marketers, home safety auditors and care coordinators—all things that do not scale well for technology companies.

Because of this economic reality, it is our belief that the W-2 home care industry will remain hyper local and fragmented for the foreseeable future. This does not mean that home care is a bad industry to go into if you are looking for a rewarding lifestyle business, but don’t expect any massive scale beyond a few zip codes.

This announcement is by no means intended to be a death sentence to other venture-backed home care companies. I have the utmost respect for the founders of the other home care startups, and I definitely would’t bet against any of them. But Mike and I deeply believe families across the country need better access to affordable home care, and with increasing regulation and thriving B2B technology vendors, it would be irresponsible for us to continue down this path with unlikely probability of liquidation. We mustn’t assume big fundraising rounds are synonymous with market success, this is certainly not the case in home care.

What’s Next

It breaks our hearts to leave home care, as we still believe there needs to be better and significantly cheaper option for families to find quality home care. Unfortunately, we don’t see a path for HomeHero or any other current company to achieve that goal.

The good news is we are pulling out early enough, with significant cash remaining, so we can find a new path forward and continue our same mission of promoting health and wellness in the home.

We will share more details about our new strategy and venture within the coming months, but our goal is still to positively improve the lives of millions of patients.

The hardest part of this announcement is saying goodbye to not only our compassionate caregivers, but all the team members who I recruited and hand-picked. Many of them I convinced to leave their jobs, move across the country, and take time away from their families to fight this difficult battle with me and Mike. For over three years, they were our trusted team of soldiers who would bleed terracotta and follow us into a fireblaze in order to make HomeHero a success.

We will forever be thankful for your loyalty and sacrifices.

To all our family, friends, Heroes, patients, clients, partners, employees, investors and advisors who helped make HomeHero what it was over the past three years, we extend the most sincere gratitude. We are so proud of you and the progress we made together. Deep in my heart I know the world is a better place because HomeHero existed.

Get in touch: @kaleazy.

#entrepreneurship #entrepreneur #startup #startups

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viralhottopics · 8 years ago

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Viola Davis: Im pretty fabulous

Her extraordinary performance in the upcoming Fences has seen Viola Davis tipped for an Oscar. But her success has taken a huge amount of self-belief. She tells Alex Clark why it is only through demanding respect that you get the parts you are due

Its the run-up to Christmas and everybody in Los Angeles, which to a Brit feels unseasonably sun-drenched, is bemoaning the chilly weather; as we settle down in the Beverly Hills hotel, Viola Davis draws a warm jacket around her shoulders. Not that shes complaining: throughout our conversation, she is determinedly upbeat, celebratory, optimistic. She radiates a sense of excitement and satisfaction that, at 51, all the hard work is really beginning to pay off.

Five years ago, when Davis was playing the role of the maid Aibileen in The Help, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award, she told me that, as a dark-skinned actress in Hollywood, she had done what it was at my hand to do, even if that didnt give her as much scope for her talents and energies as she would have liked. Ive had to sink my teeth into a role that was probably a fried-chicken dinner and make it into a filet mignon.

Now, with film roles coming out of her ears, the lead in the TV drama How To Get Away with Murder and her own production company, she is opposite Denzel Washington in the film adaptation of August Wilsons Pulitzer prize-winning play Fences. (After our meeting, she begins 2017 by winning a Golden Globe for her performance, saying in her acceptance speech that the film Doesnt scream moneymaker, but it does scream art and it does scream heart.) Surely the role of Rose Maxson is a filet mignon.

She bursts out laughing. This is absolutely a filet mignon a medium-well filet mignon. And Davis clearly relishes every bite: her performance as a wife and mother in 1950s Pittsburgh, struggling at every turn to hold her family together, to absorb the rage and disappointment of her husband Troy and to protect her sons innocence and ambition, is electrifying so involving that it invokes an almost physical response. We watch as Rose is beguiled and charmed by the charismatic, storytelling Troy, unable to chide him for his excesses without dissolving into mirth, and as she seeks to intercede on others behalves to limit the damage his temper and pride cause. It takes almost the whole film, however, for Rose to voice her own feelings and desires.

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That was the role of womanhood in the 50s, says Davis. You were an instrument for everyone elses joy except for your own. The 50s in America had the highest rate of alcoholism and depression. There were whole manuals out there that were being passed out about how to make your husband happy put on make-up when he walks through the door, after a long day of work, dont weigh him down with any of your problems, ask him about his problems, greet him with a smile, make sure the children are fed and theyre clean, his favourite meal is on the table, and nowhere in that manual is anything about her joy, and the centre of her happiness.

She has been here before, and with Washington; they are reprising the roles they played in the 2010 Broadway revival of the play, for which they both won Tony awards; and they are rejoined by Russell Hornsby and Mykelti Williamson as Troys son and brother respectively. Part of Wilsons 10-play Century Cycle, in which the playwright chronicled the experiences of African Americans decade by decade, Fences transition on to the big screen has taken so long because its author, who died in 2005, insisted that its director be black a simple demand revealingly hard to accomplish in Hollywood.

Now, Washington himself directs, and his key artistic choice is apparent the moment the film begins: he has preserved the works theatrical origins, with nearly all the action taking place in a confined domestic space, and dialogue ranging from quick-fire ensemble scenes to extended soliloquies. The effect is disconcerting we rarely see such unfiltered staginess on film but always riveting; there is not an inch of slack, a word wasted.

Davis herself has two show-stopping speeches, in which she first rails at life and at last attempts to make her peace with it. What was different about playing Rose this time around? She replies that she had been sitting with this narrative for so long and never quite got the ending until I did the movie. And I keep saying to myself that the reason I didnt get the end is because she is at a place that probably most of us as human beings never get to, and that is a place of forgiveness and grace. I think that most of us spend a lifetime holding on to the past, even when we feel like were letting go a bit.

Maid in Hollywood: a scene from The Help with Viola Davis as Aibileen Clark, and Bryce Dallas Howard and Ahna O Reilly. Photograph: Dale Robinette/DreamWorks

She holds close to the advice of psychiatrist Irvin D Yalom that one must give up all hope of a better past. Davis herself grew up in extreme poverty; she has spoken powerfully about the series of makeshift dwellings she, her parents and five siblings occupied in Rhode Island, about hunger and lack of sanitation, about her fathers violent abuse of her mother. The letting go seems to take two distinct but related forms: allowing herself to feel good about what she has achieved, and building platforms that will help broaden the possibilities for a new generation of actors, writers and directors of colour.

She cites her delight at seeing Shonda Rhimes, the producer behind Greys Anatomy, Scandal and How To Get Away with Murder, accepting a Norman Lear achievement award in Television last year. She said: I happily accept this award because I deserve it. I LOVE IT. Absolutely love it. Its the waking up and understanding that OK, you may not be the best person out there, but youve put in enough work to understand that you deserve what youve got, that that is what is at the end of hard work. The happily ever after comes after youve done the work. And to literally understand, especially as a woman, that a closed mouth doesnt get fed, youve got to ask for what you want and expect to get it.

I remark that its noticeable how often women play down their successes; how they will even deflect minor compliments on appearance. Why does she think that happens? I think tapping into ones power and ones potential is a very frightening thing, she replies. And for women its a very new thing. It is. I always used to feel that self-deprecation was an answer to humility that people would see me as a humble person the more I put myself down. And people do say that: Oh! I ran into so-and-so and they kept saying, Oh, my work in this really sucked, and they were great! I just thought it was so refreshing that they said that! And I often think to myself, what if someone says, You know what, Im confident, Im really happy about the work I did. I really felt like I gave it my best and it came out great, the same way men do. Why is that not seen as humble?

Motherhood has given me a different telescope to look at life: with husband Julius Tennon. Photograph: Tibrina Hobson/Getty Images

Her increasing ability to feel comfortable with her achievements is linked to an awareness of her emerging position as a figure of influence. The more Im pushed in a position of leadership and I know I have to be the mouthpiece for so many other people who cant speak for themselves, the more confidence Im gaining. And that extends to the way she views her own past and the more she shares her story. She explains: I can hear myself say, Oh yeah, I took the bus five hours just to get to the theatre, then took it five hours back, and Im listening to that, Im being an objective observer, and thinking to myself I did that? Its like looking at an old picture of yourself when you felt like you looked bad, and you go, Wow, I was fabulous! Thats how I feel about my life now that Im looking back at it, and Im like, Im pretty fabulous. I really am. Im pretty fabulous.

Back in 2011, when we talked about Daviss commitment largely via JuVee, the production company she founded with her husband, Julius Tennon to addressing the limited opportunities afforded people of colour by the entertainment industry, she expressed her hope we wouldnt be having the same conversation in five years time. Naturally, because challenging entrenched privilege takes time, we are, but it has shifted ground. Davis herself is scheduled to play the part of Harriet Tubman, who liberated slaves in the Civil War era, and to star in Steve McQueens Widows, a revisiting of Lynda LaPlantes TV series co-scripted by Gone Girls Gillian Flynn. Its not even a role that would be necessarily written for an African American, but not according to him. Hes like: Why not?

Davis brings up The Help, and says that although she loved making the film, she understands the criticisms levelled at it that women of colour were once again placed in the role of maids, and not portrayed as tapping into their anger as much as they could have. Tapping into all the things they could have been other than the maid. Partly, she thinks, that relates to the image of the black maid as a nurturer, a second mother, so that even within the movie, there are certain things that are not going to be explored, if it somehow messes up the memory of what the audience had, that perfect mother. She couldnt be angry. She couldnt be sexualised. Shes gotta stay that image that brings us comfort and joy knowing that we were loved and nothing more than that.

Davis loves the riposte to that one-dimensional figure provided by the character of Annalise Keating, the firecracker law professor, ambitious, potent and flawed, that she plays in How To Get Away with Murder. Its blowing the lid off everything that people say we should be, especially as a dark-skinned woman, that you cant be sexual, you cant be unlikable, you can be angry but with no vulnerability, you cant be damaged, you cant be smart. It blows the lid off all of it. And even if its not executed all the time in ways that people like, it doesnt matter. What matters is that shes out there. Thats it. Shes out there, shes on screen, shes making an impact.

In the 1950s women were an instrument for everyone elses joy except their own: Viola Davis with Denzel Washington in a scene from Fences. Photograph: David Lee/AP

Another fundamental has changed in the past five years; in 2011, she and Tennon adopted a baby, Genesis, who is even as we speak frolicking in a nearby hotel room. When Davis and I are done, her babysitters release the six-year-old to bound along the corridor and leap into her mothers arms, asking whether she can go and buy a swimming costume in the hotel boutique and head for the pool. Her mother observes that in such a luxurious joint, its a purchase that could easily come to a couple of hundred dollars, but concedes that theyll work something out (you imagine somebody might be despatched to Gap).

Davis combines motherhood which she says has changed her utterly, and given her a different telescope through which to see life with work by clever stratagems and good planning; often taking Genesis with her, only making one film a year, having a TV shooting schedule that allows her days off and free weekends. She claims to live by two mantras Im tired, and Im doing the best I can but she doesnt look remotely weary. And things might be about to get a whole lot busier. She was the first African American to win the outstanding lead actress in a drama series Emmy award for her role as Annalise Keating; alongside numerous other awards, she has hitherto been nominated for two Oscars for The Help and Doubt. But now her role as Rose Maxson is being spoken about as a cert for nomination and a very strong contender to win her an Academy Award come February. Has she allowed herself to think about it? She pauses, laughs, parries.

You know what I know about that? Because I dont know if thats going to happen or not. But what I will say about this is, and this is how I keep my perspective, whatever happens, Ive gotta go back to work. The carpets are going to be rolled up, the people are going to stop calling like that, and Ive gotta go back to work. And you cant bring that Oscar on a set, and that Oscar cant do the work for you. You gotta do it. Thats what Ill say.

Fences is released on 10 February