The Exterminating Angel: Will Our Natural Inertia Constrain Industry Reinvention?

‘The best explanation of this film is that, from the standpoint of pure reason, there is no explanation.’
Caption at the beginning of ‘The Exterminating Angel’

Luis Bunuel’s 1962 film ‘The Exterminating Angel’ begins with an aristocratic dinner party on Providence Street. Curiously, as the guests arrive, the stewards, cooks and domestics are busy making excuses and slipping away from the mansion. 

'The help becomes more impertinent each day.’

Nonetheless a skeleton staff remains, and the visitors enjoy a long, indulgent feast, peppered with hearsay, slander and sharp remarks. After dinner they stroll into the drawing room for more drinks and a piano recital. So successful is the evening that the guests seem reluctant to leave. Some take preliminary steps towards going, but don’t quite get round to it. They begin to overstay their welcome.

Gradually it becomes apparent that, for one reason or another, the guests can’t leave. There is an invisible barrier at the edge of the drawing room – something psychological, not physical - that they just don’t feel able to cross.

'Wouldn't it be a good joke if I sneaked up and pushed you out?'
'Try it, and I'll kill you.’ 

Eventually they all bed down where they have been partying. But after an uncomfortable night they wake up confronting the same problem. They want to leave, but they cannot. 

The group’s self-control and composure deteriorate. They argue with each other, plot and conspire. The old and infirm fall ill. Some of the guests conceal a corpse in a cupboard. And in another a couple conducts a romantic tryst. They slaughter some hapless sheep that have wandered into the room, and turn to Masonic codes and Kabbalah rituals. A woman sees a severed hand crawl across the room towards her. She squashes it with a desk ornament.

‘We turned this room into a gypsy campground.'

As the internment continues, a crowd of onlookers gathers outside. But they are equally incapable of breaking the deadlock. To add to the confusion Bunuel repeats certain short sequences of the film, creating the impression that the characters are stuck in some sort of time loop. 

Over the years critics have endeavoured to interpret ‘The Exterminating Angel.’ It seems to be a dark satire on the thin veneer of civilisation, the savagery that lies just beneath social etiquette and proprieties; on the hopelessly detached world of the elite, and their condescension towards the lower orders. Some have proposed that Bunuel was specifically criticising Franco’s regime in his native Spain. 

'I believe the common people, the lower class people, are less sensitive to pain. Haven't you ever seen a wounded bull? Not a trace of pain.'

More broadly ‘The Exterminating Angel’ implies that communities, cultures and corporations are prone to inertia, to repeating anachronistic behaviours and beliefs even when they have determined to change; that we are not as free as we may think.

Boxed in by consensus, custom and convention, we consistently struggle to accept that the world no longer conforms to our cosmology; that things have moved on. We claim we want to break free, but we don’t know how to.

In the communications industry, for all our visionary talk of new models, new platforms and new behaviours, we have in the past found it hard to change. We create initiatives and frameworks, launch disciplines and departments, coin phrases and aphorisms. But we remain addicted to habitual practices and familiar routines. 

Of course, as we emerge from the pandemic, we have a better chance than ever to reinvent the industry. New ways of working have already been embraced. Agile thinking comes more naturally now. Nothing is quite as it was. Perhaps finally we will be able to leave the party.

At the end of ‘The Exterminating Angel’ the bourgeois guests manage to escape the cursed mansion. They attend a church service to give thanks – only to find they have been trapped once again by an unseen force. Outside the church there are gunshots and riots on the streets. Bunuel seems to be suggesting that revolution is the only answer.

'We wouldn't change this thing even if we could somehow.
Cause the darkness of this house has got the best of us.
There's a darkness in this town that's got us too.
But they can't touch me now.
And you can't touch me now.
They ain't gonna do to me
What I watched them do to you.

So say goodbye, it's Independence Day.
It's Independence Day
All down the line.
Just say goodbye, it's Independence Day.
It's Independence Day this time.'

Bruce Springsteen, ‘Independence Day'

No. 325

‘Seeing More Deeply’: Hilma af Klint, the Abstract Pioneer

Staggering’: The Ten Largest, Youth, 1907. Photograph: Albin Dahlström/Courtesy of Stiftelsen Hilma af Klints Verk

‘Every time I succeed in finishing one of my sketches, my understanding of humanity, animals, plants, minerals, or the entire creation, becomes clearer. I feel freed and raised up above my limited consciousness.’
Hilma af Klint

I recently watched a fine documentary by Halina Dyrschka about the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint (‘Beyond the Visible’, 2019). 

Af Klint produced a prodigious amount of thrilling work in the early 20th century. She pioneered abstract art – painting her first abstract piece in 1906, five years before Kandinsky. She experimented with new creative techniques twenty years before the Surrealists. And, as the film demonstrates, her work foreshadowed that of Mondrian, Klee, Warhol, Twombly and Albers.

However, af Klint was intensely private and not inclined to self-promotion. She rarely exhibited her paintings, and she requested that, after her death, her work should be hidden away for twenty years. Art historians, until recently, chose to ignore her, because she was inspired by her spiritualist beliefs - and because she was a woman.

Artist Hilma af Klint in her studio at Hamngatan, Stockholm, circa 1895. Photograph: Courtesy of Stiftelsen Hilma af Klints Verk

Let us consider what we can learn from this remarkable painter.

1. ‘Explore the Infinite Possibilities of Development’

Hilma af Klint was born in 1862, in Solna, Sweden. Her father was a naval officer and mathematician, and most of her childhood was spent in the cadet school at Karlberg castle. In the summers the family adjourned to an island in Lake Malaren, and it was here that she developed a fascination with nature.

In 1882 af Klint enrolled at the Royal Academy of Arts in Stockholm and, after graduating with honours, she was awarded a studio in the city’s artist quarter. Dressed in black, with neat hair and cool blue eyes, she quietly worked away at her landscapes, botanical drawings and portraits, gaining recognition and financial independence. She was a shy, gentle person. But she had a fierce yearning to explore.

‘In this moment, I’m aware, living as I do in the world, that I am an atom in the universe, possessing infinite possibilities of development. And I want to explore these possibilities.’

2. Take Inspiration Wherever You Find It

Af Klint became interested in spiritualism and the occult, and her curiosity was enhanced when in 1880 her ten-year-old sister died.

‘What I needed was courage, and it was granted to me through the spiritual world, which bestowed rare and wonderful instruction.’

Af Klint’s fascination with the paranormal was not unusual at the time. Many intellectuals sought to reconcile a growing awareness of the plurality of religions with an acknowledgement of scientific progress.  

‘Accept, accept, Hilma… Hilma, you were brought here to do this.’

In 1896, with four female artist friends, af Klint established The Five. The group held séances every week and recorded mystical thoughts and messages from spirits called The High Masters. They also experimented with free-flowing writing and drawing; with intuitive and spontaneous ways of creating art, opening themselves up to their unconscious selves. 

Af Klint believed that a force was guiding her hand in the act of creation. 

'The pictures were painted directly through me, without any preliminary drawings, and with great force. I had no idea what the paintings were supposed to depict; nevertheless I worked swiftly and surely, without changing a single brush stroke.’

Hilma af Klint Group X, No. 1, Altarpiece (Grupp X, nr 1, Altarbild), from Altarpieces (Altarbilder), 1915. Guggenheim Museum

3. ‘See Beyond Form’

As scientific interest at the time focused on the world beyond the visible – sub-atomic particles, x-rays, gamma rays and radio waves - so too af Klint wanted to see beyond her already acute understanding of physical form.

‘Those granted the gift of seeing more deeply can see beyond form, and concentrate on the wondrous aspect hiding behind every form, which is called life.’

In 1906, at the age of 44, af Klint painted her first series of abstract paintings and, in a torrent of creativity, she went on to produce 193 pieces, some of which were extremely large - measuring over 2 metres by 3 metres. 

Af Klint painted biomorphic and geometric forms; segmented circles and bisected spirals; shapes suggesting shells, butterfly wings, flowers and fans; cellular structures; beams and hoops, cones and curves; all rippling and pulsing, overlapping and intersecting. She used bold, soft colours: feminine blue and masculine yellow; pink and red for physical and spiritual love; golden orbs. There were symbols, letters and words; swans and doves; dualities expressing heaven and earth, good and evil. 

Af Klint imagined installing the collected work, themed around the different phases of life from early childhood to old age, in a grand spiral spiritualist temple. 

‘My mission, if it succeeds, is of great significance to humankind. For I am able to describe the path of the soul from the beginning of the spectacle of life to its end.’

4. ‘Through Nature We Can Become Aware of Ourselves’

After Af Klint completed the Paintings for the Temple in 1915, she continued to explore abstraction and mystic themes, but without spiritual guidance. Her work became smaller, she experimented with watercolour and she produced more than 150 notebooks of thoughts and studies.

‘The more we discover the wonders of nature, the more we become aware of ourselves.’

In 1920 af Klint moved to Helsingborg, a coastal city in Southern Sweden and she committed to examining the wondrous truths in the natural world around her.

‘I shall start with the world’s flowers. Then with the same care I shall study whatever lives in the waters of the world. Then comes the gate into the blue ether with its many species of animals. And finally I shall enter the woods to study the damp mosses, all trees and animals living among the cool dark multitude of trees.’

Group IX/SUW, No. 17. The Swan, No. 17, by Hilma af Klint. Courtesy of Stiftelsen Hilma af Klints Verk. Photo: Moderna Museet / Stockholm

5. ‘Achieve Stillness in Both Thought and Feeling’

Af Klint was a fiercely independent thinker, a vegetarian, a loner who didn’t need the affirmation of others. Having spent a lifetime contemplating existence, she seems to have attained peace.

‘Only for those prepared to leave their familiar life behind, will life emerge in a new gown of continually expanding beauty and perfection. But in order to attain such a state, it is necessary to achieve stillness in both thought and feeling.’

6. Don’t Hide Your Light, or Let Your Light Be Hidden

Though af Klint was wholeheartedly committed to spiritualism and her artistic path, she rarely had the confidence to show her work to her contemporaries, and she only exhibited a few of her abstract paintings at paranormal conferences. She was not actively engaged with the artistic movements of her time, and to the outside world she maintained the profile of a conventional landscape artist. 

In 1908 af Klint had invited Rudolf Steiner, the founder of a spiritualist movement whom she greatly admired, to view her abstract paintings. Much to her dismay, he disapproved of them and of her claim to be a medium, and he advised her not to let anybody see the work. The setback prompted her to give up painting for four years and she concluded that the time was not right for her abstractions. 

Af Klint wrote a will leaving all her art to her nephew and stipulating that it should only be made public twenty years after her death. Accordingly more than 1200 paintings and drawings, 100 texts and 26,000 pages of notes and sketches were carefully stored away.

The Ten Largest, №7., Adulthood, Group IV, 1907 Tempera on paper mounted on canvas 315 x 235 cm Hilma af Klint

Af Klint died in Djursholm, Sweden in 1944 following a traffic accident. She was nearly 82 years old.

Perhaps it was no surprise, given all this, that when in the 1940s and 1950s the Museum of Modern Art in New York set about defining the history of modern art, af Klint did not feature. Yet even when her archive was opened at the end of the 1960s, recognition came slowly. In 1970 her paintings were offered to the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, but the donation was declined unseen, due to scepticism about her spiritualism. This seems particularly unfair, since many artists working in the same period, including Kandinsky, Mondrian and Malevitch, were also enthusiasts for the paranormal. 

‘You must learn to ignore fear, for without the will to believe in yourself, nothing good will happen.’

Now, at long last, af Klint is being given the credit she deserves. In 2018-19 more than 600,000 visitors attended her first major solo exhibition in the United States: ‘Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future’ at the Guggenheim in New York. It was the most-visited show in the museum’s history. 

Af Klint had finally found her grand spiral temple.

Hilma af Klint Exhibition @ Guggenheim. Photo: Radiofreemers

'All the modern things
Have always existed.
They've just been waiting
To come out
And multiply
And take over.
It's their turn now…'

Bjork, ‘The Modern Things’ (B Gudmundsdottir / G Massey)

No 324

A Family Outing to the Beach: There’s a Gap in the Market, But Is There a Market in the Gap?

'I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.’
John Masefield, ‘Sea Fever'

All through the school holidays we’d been pestering Dad to take us to the beach. He was somewhat reluctant, I suspect because he regarded summer as a time to be watching cricket on TV. 

And then one day, out of the blue, he announced:

‘It could be a good day to go to the seaside.’

I was a little confused. It was not the blistering hot day I had imagined. Rather it was overcast and blustery outside. Perhaps he’d been studying the weather forecasts and knew something we didn’t.

Mum packed some cheese and pickle sandwiches into the blue tartan picnic basket and prepared a Thermos of sweet tea. Dad ensured he had a supply of roll-ups to sustain him. We four kids picked up a few buckets and spades, and crammed into the back of the ageing Austin Cambridge (no seatbelts back then, of course). 

And so we all set off down the Arterial Road to the coast. The thrill of it all!

My friends at school had entertained me with stories of days out in Southend. I could expect a crooked house and a carousel at the Kursaal amusement park; candyfloss and kiss-me-quick hats on the pier. There would be crowds of carefree holidaymakers, abundant fish and chip shops, seagulls soaring up above. The town would be teeming with life.

When we’d been on the road for some time, Dad announced that we were not in fact heading for Southend, but nearby Walton-on-the-Naze. 

‘It won’t be so busy.’

He took us to a rather secluded part of the coast. It wasn’t really a beach - more rocks and pebbles than golden sand. And there was no one else there. 

This didn’t seem to trouble Mum, who made herself happy poking around among the shallow pools for elegant rocks and ancient fossils; nor Dad, who just stood there, admiring the view and puffing on his roll-ups.

‘I’ve always found water very relaxing,’ he sighed.

There’s a tatty old photograph of the family on the deserted beach at Walton-on-the-Naze that day. I used to keep it pinned to my desk at work.

Martin and I wear home-knit sweaters and school shorts, and Martin has adopted the confident squatting pose of a footballer from the Soccer Stars sticker album. Sarah and Anne are wrapped up in neat anoraks, and Anne seems to be carrying a Filofax 10 years ahead of her time. We’re all sporting sandals. Mum gives Sarah a tender embrace. 

Dad was probably happier taking the shot than appearing in it. He tended to avoid crowds and he had naturally shunned the hustle and bustle of Southend. No doubt he had calculated that a pebble beach on an overcast day would be more peaceful than a sandy shore on a sunny afternoon.

Of course, he was right. It was certainly tranquil. But to me as a child he seemed to have got it all wrong. This certainly wasn’t the day out at the seaside that I had envisaged.

There’s an old marketing saying: ‘There may be a gap in the market, but is there a market in the gap?’

The aphorism is designed to remind us that the existence of an empty space in a sector does not necessarily entail commercial opportunity. That space may be deserted for a reason.

We spend a good deal of time seeking out the roads less travelled; the unusual, uncommon and unfamiliar. We like to discover new territory, to pioneer new frontiers. But we must always ask ourselves: is there a good reason for this absence, this inaction, this stillness?

A year or so after our trip to Walton-on-the-Naze, one of Dad’s mates from the pub took Martin and me to Southend. We rode on the dodgems and ate candyfloss. We gambled on the slot machines and tottered around the crooked house. That day I had my first hamburger. It was at a Wimpy, and was washed down with an extravagant milkshake.

It was bliss.

'Somewhere beyond the sea,
Somewhere, waiting for me,
My lover stands on golden sands
And watches the ships that go sailin’.
Somewhere beyond the sea
She's there watching for me.
If I could fly like birds on high,
Then straight to her arms,
I'd go sailing.’

Bobby Darin, ‘Beyond the Sea’ (A Lasry / C Trenet / J Lawrence)

No. 323

The Old Dark House: The Risks Posed by Repressed Emotions

‘You will have to stay here. The misfortune is yours, not ours.’
Horace Femm, ‘The Old Dark House’

‘The Old Dark House’ is a 1932 film directed by James Whale, the master of horror, based on a novel by J B Priestley. It’s a brilliantly atmospheric, gothic confection, blending fear and suspense with comedy and romance. And it has at its heart a resonant psychological theme.

Young marrieds Philip and Margaret Waverton (Raymond Massey and Gloria Stuart), driving at night through the Welsh countryside with their blithe pal Roger Penderel (Melvyn Douglas), lose their way in a heavy storm. They are assaulted on all sides by floods, thunder, lightning and landslides. The couple bicker.

'For heaven's sake stop. Let's look at a map or something.'
'My view is we're not on a map.’

At last they come across a grim old farmhouse where they are greeted by the heavily-scarred mute butler Morgan (Boris Karloff). The property is owned by punctilious Horace Femm (Ernest Thesiger) and his half-deaf sister Rebecca (Eva Moore). Horace is nervous about letting them stay the night. Rebecca is downright inhospitable.

'No beds! They can't have beds!'

Eventually the Femms concede to the visitors’ pleas. While Margaret changes into dry clothes, sanctimonious Rebecca warns her that this is a cursed house. 

'They were all godless here. They used to bring their women here - brazen, lolling creatures in silks and satins. They filled the house with laughter and sin, laughter and sin.’

As the old woman speaks, her reflection is warped in the bedroom mirror. She turns to Margaret and feels the fabric of her gown.

‘Fine stuff, but it'll rot.’

Suddenly she touches Margaret on her chest. 

‘Finer stuff still, but it'll rot too!’

The storm rages, windows blow open and doors slam shut. The wind whistles through the rooms, the electricity goes on the blink and the candles cast long shadows. 

Two more hapless travellers arrive seeking shelter: hearty northern industrialist Sir William Porterhouse (Charles Laughton) and his jovial young companion Gladys DuCane (Lilian Bond).

The group settle down to an awkward supper of beef, bread and pickled onions. Femm repeatedly offers:

‘Have a potato.’

There are class tensions at play here and romance is in the air. But there is also a sense that the guests are not revealing their true selves - that they are hiding behind polite social conventions.

‘Here we are six people sitting around and we’ve been talking now for nearly two hours. What do we know about each other? Not a thing.’
‘How reassuring.’ 

What’s more, trouble is brewing. Morgan, the burly butler, has taken a shine to Margaret, and he’s dangerous when he’s drunk. A mysterious cackle is heard coming from upstairs. And there’s a padlocked room with a tray of half-eaten food left outside.

At the heart of the mysterious events in ‘The Old Dark House’ are family secrets. The Femms are haunted by the untimely death of their sibling many years ago. And they are ashamed and afraid of the madness that runs in their family.

‘You’re afraid, Horace. You’re afraid, aren’t you? You don’t believe in god and yet you’re afraid to die. You’ve seen his anger in the sky and you’ve heard it in the night, and you’re afraid, afraid, afraid.’

We also come to realise that the visitors that night have their own secrets, their own regrets, doubts and fears.

Seemingly carefree Roger has in fact been scarred by his service in the Great War. 

‘I presume you are one of the gentlemen slightly, shall we say, battered by the war?’
‘Correct, Mr Femm. War generation, slightly soiled. A study in the bitter sweet. The man with the twisted smile.’

Gladys confesses she is a failed chorus girl who only accompanies Sir William to make up her income. Her real last name is not DuCane, but Perkins.

'If I were better at my job, I probably wouldn't be weekending with you.'

Sir William is still in love with his young wife, who died in shame some years ago when she was snubbed by the local elite. After her death he single-mindedly turned his hand to business as an act of vengeance.

'When you've started making money, it's hard to stop. Especially when you’re like me. There isn’t much else you’re good at.’

There is a sense that the visitors to ‘The Old Dark House’ are not merely unwitting victims of its curse. They, and their anxieties, are in some way the cause of their nightmarish ordeal. 

Indeed, while one could interpret the movie simply as an archetypal haunted house drama – just without a ghost - it also seems to be a critique of class-ridden, war-ravaged British society, of the damage done by unspoken traumas and unresolved tensions.

In the world of commerce we have a tendency not to enquire too deeply into our colleagues’ personal lives, their backgrounds and backstories. We imagine this stuff is best left outside the office. But bottled-up emotions - unconsciously repressed memories and consciously suppressed feelings - can impede performance, hamper collaboration and damage wellbeing at work. They can bedevil a business as much as they haunt an individual. We’d all be better off talking about it. 

‘The first duty of a psychotherapist is to create a safe space, a situation where difficult and sometimes dangerous truths can be articulated and explored without fear of judgement, rejection or condemnation.’
Frank Tallis, ‘The Act of Living’

Sometimes it’s important to take a step back from the day-to-day grind and ask the fundamental questions: How did you get to where you are today? What experiences shaped you? What are you worried about? What’s holding you back? How will we get the best out of each other?

At length, after much drama, the visitors to ‘The Old Dark House’ survive their ordeal. The storm passes, the floods subside and the dawn breaks.

'So, I'm really dead and gone to heaven?'
'No, it's morning and we've only just left hell behind.'

'I know that you don't understand.
'Cause you don't believe what you don't see.
When you watch me throwing punches at the devil,
It just looks like I'm fighting with me.
Julien Baker, ’Shadowboxing'

No. 322

‘I am a Woman of Activity’: Alice Guy-Blaché, the Persistent Pioneer

Alice Guy-Blaché (behind camera tripod) on the set of The Life of Christ, in Fontainebleau, France, in 1906.Photograph: courtesy of Collection Société Française de Photographie

'There is nothing connected with the staging of a motion picture that a woman cannot do as easily as a man, and there is no reason why she cannot completely master every technicality of the art.’
Alice Guy-Blaché, 'Woman's Place in Photoplay Production', Moving Picture World, 11 July 1914

I recently watched a fascinating documentary made by Pamela B Green about the French filmmaker Alice Guy-Blaché (‘Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché’). 

Guy-Blaché witnessed the birth of cinema and became the first female film director. For 10 years she was the only female director. In a career that spanned more than 25 years, she was also a screenwriter, producer and studio head. She pioneered the use of narrative in film, inspired Eisenstein and was admired by Hitchcock. She helped create modern movie-making. 

Let us consider what we can learn from her story.

1. Be Curious

Alice Guy was born in Paris in 1873 and raised in Switzerland, Chile and France. Her father, who owned a bookstore and publishing company in Chile, was concerned when she expressed ambition to work in the theatre.

‘My father said, “No! Never! Actress? I'd rather see you dead." You know how the bourgeoisie was at the time.’

Alice trained as a stenographer, and in 1894 she got a job at a manufacturer of cameras and other optical devices, which subsequently became Gaumont et Cie.

‘I knew nothing about photography. Absolutely nothing…I had to learn everything.’

In 1895 Alice attended, with her boss Leon Gaumont, the first demonstration of film projection by the Lumiere brothers. 

'It seemed extraordinary to me. It filled me with adoration. It was the birth of cinema.’

Alice set about familiarising herself with her employer’s stock of cameras and with the mechanics of the business. And Gaumont acceded to her request to be taught how to make a film, ‘on the condition she didn’t let the mail suffer.’

2. Be Inventive

Early motion pictures documented everyday life: workers leaving the factory, street scenes, trains coming into the station, waves crashing on a beach. Alice determined that her first film should tell a story - albeit a very brief one. 

Shot in 1896 with a hand-cranked camera mounted on a tripod, and lasting less than a minute, ‘The Cabbage Fairy’ features a cheerful nymph who plucks babies from a magical cabbage patch. It is considered the world's first narrative film.

3. Be Ambitious

From 1896 to 1906 Alice was Gaumont's head of production. She directed dance and travel films, animal and stunt movies. She employed some of the first special effects, including hand-tinted colour, double exposure, close-ups, and running a film backwards. She learned to use Gaumont's revolutionary Chronophone system, which recorded sound on a wax disc and synchronized it with the film. She hired and trained writers and directors, set designers and art directors, and she ran weekly production meetings at the Gaumont studio in Parc des Buttes Chaumont.

‘And so, bit by bit, we improved what we did.’

Gradually Alice became more ambitious for her output. Her 1906 film ‘The Life of Christ’, dramatising illustrations from the Tissot Bible, comprised 25 episodes and employed 300 extras.

4. Be Active

In 1907 Alice married Herbert Blaché, a London-born colleague at Gaumont.

'Actually, I didn't want to marry an Englishman. Englishmen aren't very nice.’

The couple moved to the US where Herbert was appointed Gaumont’s production manager, and in 1908 Alice gave birth to their first child in New York.

But Alice was reluctant to settle down as a housewife.

‘I had had experience of the picture business – I knew it thoroughly and it seemed a shame not to put my knowledge to some good advantage when there was so much room.’

After working for a while with her husband at Gaumont, in 1910 Alice founded The Solax Company in Flushing, New York. 

‘I am a woman of activity. I still want to work and I think I can make money.’

5. Be Diverse

Alice was the first woman to run her own studio, and she hired and trained the first American female director, Lois Weber.

At Solax Alice created films about marriage and parenthood, seduction comedies, chase films and Westerns; military movies, song and dance films and political pictures. She consistently wrote strong roles for women. She also directed the first film with an entirely African-American cast, ‘A Fool and His Money’ (1912).

6. Be Commercial

Solax went from strength to strength. In 1912, while pregnant with her second child, Alice built a new, technologically advanced studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey, which had become the home of early American cinema. The production facility had stages built under a glass roof, administrative offices and dressing rooms; a set-fabrication workshop, costume-design department and a film-processing laboratory. 

In a feature article at the time the New York Dramatic Mirror observed of Alice:

‘She stands as the dominant figure in a motion picture factory and studio which she organised and built.’

7. Be Natural

Alice pinned up a large sign in her Fort Lee studio instructing her actors to 'Be Natural'.

Although many of Alice’s films have been lost or destroyed, you can still find a number of them online. Most are simple sketches under 10 minutes long. They are concise, insightful and often very witty. And, as suggested by Alice’s motto, they exhibit remarkable naturalism. 

‘The Drunken Mattress’ (1906) features a mattress that takes on a life of its own (rather like a modern duvet joke). ‘Madam’s Craving’ (1907) presents a pregnant woman who can’t resist stealing a child’s lollypop, a drinker’s absinthe and a homeless man’s herring.

Still from  ‘Madame a des envies’ 1907 Directed by Alice Guy-Blaché

In ‘The Sticky Woman’ (1906) a lady at the Post Office instructs her maid to lick all her envelopes. A top hatted gentleman, rather excited by this, steals a kiss from the maid, but becomes glued to her mouth. When they are eventually cut free, the man’s moustache is left on the maid’s top lip.

‘The Consequences of Feminism’ (1906) takes a comedic look at what life would be like if the roles of men and women were reversed. The men do the housework, while the women sit about reading the paper, smoking and drinking.

In the poignant ‘Autumn Leaves’ (1912) a young girl, whose older sister has consumption, overhears the doctor say: ‘When the last leaf falls she will have passed away.’ The child goes out into the garden and ties some of the falling leaves to their branches to stop this prognosis coming to pass. 

A number of factors led to the demise of Solax. First there was the Edison Trust, an agreement between major film companies, distributors and Eastman Kodak, which constrained independent filmmakers and prompted many to move west to Hollywood. Then there was Herbert. Although he was a less capable filmmaker and businessman than Alice, he insisted on an active management role at Solax. He was also unfaithful. In 1918, he left his wife and children to pursue a career in Hollywood.

Solax accumulated debt, the studios were rented out to other companies, and, after a fire in 1919, what remained was auctioned off. 

Alice, who had almost died from the Spanish flu while filming her final film ‘Tarnished Reputations’ (1920), divorced her husband and returned to France. Despite her extraordinary experience, she struggled to find work in the film industry there.

‘People don’t want to hire white haired women.’

Gradually Alice’s contribution to the motion picture industry was erased. In the early years of cinema plagiarism had been endemic and record keeping erratic. An official history of Gaumont failed to mention her, film critics misattributed her films to other directors, and no publisher was interested in her memoire. What’s more, since few of the early pictures survived, Alice was unable to correct these injustices.

‘At the head of the Gaumont company, I think I was responsible for a good part of the success of the pictures department. But in France, especially in that time, and more especially for women, I had to fight hard to keep my rank…I only claimed the title of the first female director that I alone was entitled to.’

A subsequent American documentary about Fort Lee stated that Herbert had founded Solax. Here too Alice’s role in the story of film, along with that of many other women directors and producers, was written out. 

'Wall Street money comes in the front door, women are forced out the back door.’
Stephen J. Ross, Professor of History, USC

Alice lived quietly with her daughter in France and Switzerland, and then in 1964 she returned to the US, settling in New Jersey. In 1968, at the age of 94, she died in a nursing home. 

Alice Guy-Blaché had overseen the production of more than 700 films. She had been a vibrant creative force, a shrewd businesswoman, a persistent pioneer. She teaches a great many lessons for people working in the creative industries today:

1. Be Curious
2. Be Inventive
3. Be Ambitious
4. Be Active
5. Be Diverse
6. Be Commercial
7. Be Natural

But there is a final critical lesson that we should all take from Alice’s story:
 
8. Always give credit where credit is due.

'She was more than just a talented businesswoman. She was a filmmaker of rare sensitivity with a remarkably poetic eye. She was more or less forgotten by the industry she helped create.’
Martin Scorsese

'We really thought we had a purpose.
We were so anxious to achieve.
We had hope,
The world held promise,
For a slave to liberty.
Freely I slaved away for something better.
And I was bought and sold.
And all I ever wanted
Was to come in from the cold.’

Joni Mitchell, ‘Come in from the Cold'

No. 321

It Only Takes a Minute To Lose a Pitch: A Tough Time for Optimists

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn ‘The Sampling Officials’

'We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorns have roses.’
Alphonse Karr, ‘A Tour Round My Garden’

I consider myself an optimist.

I was certainly optimistic about our pitch for the prestige pen brand. We had assigned a top team and worked really hard over the previous six weeks. We had a pedigree in the sector, and, what’s more, we had arrived at a compelling proposal.

Luxury goods the world over had been de-coupled from the expertise and craft that originally justified their premium. They had been reduced to names and logos, gold and glitter, soulless fixtures in airport retail. If appointed, we would re-harness our pen brand to the skill and artistry of its design and manufacture, and embed it in a community of like-minded craftspeople and makers. We would re-position it within the emergent world of artisanal care.

We presented in an airless room in an anodyne airport hotel. There were neatly arranged water glasses, nondescript mints, blank notepads and a dispiriting flip chart. Arrayed before us was a panel of suited executives from the key sales regions around the world. Our audience looked on - stern, impassive, pokerfaced. One talked quietly into his mobile phone every now and again. Another popped out for something important.

Undeterred, we gesticulated and enthused. We were animated and energetic. We radiated positivity. I nodded my head a lot. 

We had been told to pay particular attention to the Chinese representative, as he carried a lot of commercial clout. But he wasn’t giving anything away. 

A trolley of mayonnaise-soaked sandwiches was brought in.

Our Creative Director took to the floor with a flourish, and presented our idea across a range of platforms, tasks and territories. The work was elegant, thoughtful and intimate. It completely eschewed the tired category conventions of bling, gloss and glamour. 

I summarised our pitch and invited questions. 

There was a stony silence. 

At length the Chinese representative put his hand up, gestured towards our creative work and, with measured enunciation, asked:

‘Where is the luxury in this?’

I mumbled something about new prestige codes, opinion leadership and the artisanal aesthetic. But, of course, I knew immediately that with those six words we were defeated. 

It only takes a minute to lose a pitch.

Ours is a curious business. All that industry and innovation, argument and anxiety; all that energy and enthusiasm, those late nights and early mornings - they can just go up in a puff of a smoke. 

What a waste.

'Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable.’
Voltaire

We are, of course, sustained by our optimistic outlook, our relentless positivity. Upwards and onwards. Let’s learn the lessons. Let’s get up and do it again. 

But relentless positivity can be exhausting. And through the pandemic I’ve been struck by the fact that optimism can sometimes be a curse. I’ve personally been steadfastly optimistic: expecting waves to recede, targets to be met, data to improve. And I’ve been consistently wrong all year. 

It takes its toll.

The Stockdale Paradox was popularized by Jim Collins in his book ‘Good to Great.’

James Stockdale was a US naval officer who, while flying on a mission in the Vietnam War, was shot down and taken captive. He was held in the Hỏa Lò Prison (the infamous ‘Hanoi Hilton’) for the next seven-and-a-half years, and was routinely tortured and denied medical attention. 

When afterwards he reflected on his traumatic experiences, he concluded that the people less likely to survive were the optimists. They pinned their hopes on getting out by Easter, and then Thanksgiving, and then Christmas. And each time they were disappointed. 

‘They died of a broken heart.’

The Stockdale Paradox suggests that, to get through an ordeal, we must confront the reality of our situation, however grave it may be; that we must find an appropriate balance between realism and optimism.

‘You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end - which you can never afford to lose - with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.’

Admiral James Stockdale

We should have known from the first chemistry meeting for that prestige pen brand - from the bureaucratic process and fragmented hierarchy; from the sales-driven culture and conservative communication to-date - that this was not a pitch for us.

But hope can make you blind.

‘Pessimism is the one defence I have against optimism.’
Arthur Miller

Of course, we should continue to regard the inherent optimism of creative professionals as an asset. Optimism catalyses camaraderie and inspires innovation; it prompts industry, ambition, and often success. But we should also nurture Resilient Realists: people with the objectivity properly to assess a situation; and the fortitude to endure disappointment.

As the old saying goes,‘we should hope for the best and prepare for the worst.’

'Son, don't put your hat
Where you can't reach it.
It doesn't make no sense.
Good things come
For those who work hard for it.
Adjust yourself
To the life you can afford to live.
The road to the top
Is long and winding.
A foolish dog
Barks at the flyin’ bird.
Patient man
Ride donkey.
Cool Out Son.
Cool Out Son.
Junior Murvin, 'Cool Out Son' (J Gibson)

No. 320

Last Year in Marienbad: Setting Ourselves Free from Stories and Storytelling

‘You still wait for someone who will never come. Someone who may never come, to separate us again, to take you away from me.’

'Last Year in Marienbad' is a 1961 French film directed by Alain Resnais from a screenplay by Alain Robbe-Grillet. It’s an elegant exploration of memory and dreams, of the process of thought. It is wilfully enigmatic. And it sets to one side conventional approaches to narrative structure.

An unnamed man (Giorgio Albertazzi) paces the long corridors of a baroque chateau hotel - past a few silent servants, past empty salons with stucco ceilings and gilt ornamentation; past hallways with sculptured doorframes, grandiose chandeliers and crystal mirrors; past potted palms and walls hung with sombre oil paintings and horticultural prints.

There’s a performance of an Ibsen play in the hotel theatre and the formally dressed audience sits in rapt concentration. When it’s over the guests talk in hushed tones. Their conversation is banal. Sometimes they stare, impassively, like statues frozen in time and space. A couple argue.

‘You confine me in a whispering silence worse than death. Like these days that we live through, side by side, and almost hand in hand - our mouths forever apart.’

Our man addresses a beautiful Chanel-clad woman whom he finds standing in a doorway (Delphine Seyrig). 

‘You haven’t changed. I feel I left you only yesterday.’

He shows her round the hotel, explaining the architecture. They dance. She is amused, charmed perhaps, but cannot recollect ever having met him.

‘It was not me. You must be mistaken.’

He, however, is sure of it. 

‘It was last year. Have I changed so much? Or are you pretending not to know me?’

He recalls their first encounter in the gardens at Frederiksbad. He remembers the precise location, her posture, their conversation. They had a romance and agreed to meet one year later.

‘You’ve still the same faraway eyes, the same smile, the same sudden laugh. The same way of holding out your arm to ward off something in the way, of raising your hand to your shoulder. You’re wearing the same perfume.’

The couple wander about the hotel and the opulent geometric gardens - along gravel paths, past pools, waterfalls and hedges.

And then he is alone again, walking through the labyrinth of halls, foyers and corridors, in silence.

The other guests play at cards, dominoes and matchsticks. Some compete at target practice. The woman has a partner (Sacha Pitoëff), a mournful fellow, who, whilst repeatedly winning the games, keeps a wary eye on her movements.

‘I suggest a different game, a game I always win.’
‘If you can’t lose, it’s not a game.’
’I can lose, but I always win.’

Our man encounters the woman repeatedly at different spots around the hotel. She persists in denying that they have ever met, and asks to be left alone. He begins to lose confidence in some of the details of his story. Perhaps they first made their acquaintance in Karlstadt or Baden-Salsa. Or Marienbad?

We notice that, on the various occasions we have seen the woman, she has been wearing different dresses. Conversations are repeated. The chronology and locations are scrambled. The gothic organ music of Francis Seyrig is unsettling. The people in the garden cast long shadows, but the trees do not.

'Last Year in Marienbad' is certainly puzzling. 

Is the man trying to recall events or wishing them to be true? Is he an author pondering different storylines? Is he Orpheus attempting to recover Eurydice from Hades? Is he the woman’s psychoanalyst? Is it all going on in her head, not his? Did he assault her? Did her partner kill her? Is everyone dead?

Director Resnais suggested that the film explores cognitive mechanics.

'For me this film is an attempt, still very crude and very primitive, to approach the complexity of thought, of its processes.’ 

Whatever the explanation, we are invited to consider untrustworthy memories and illusory dreams. 

We replay events in our minds, in the theatre of our imagination. We precisely recall isolated moments, fragments of conversation, while vaguely forgetting the context, the before and after. We have memories of memories. We reconstruct the past as we would wish it to have been. We reconfigure recollections to relieve our doubts, our regrets, our guilt. We are unreliable narrators of our own lives.

‘There is an experiencing self, who lives in the present and knows the present. Then there is a remembering self, and the remembering self is the one that keeps score.’
Daniel Kahneman

Certainly the film was revolutionary in its day because it cast aside conventional narrative and plot development. It offered instead a complex set of thoughts, moments and impressions. And in so doing it presented a different kind of truth.

Of course, stories can be insightful, educational and entertaining. Of course, they provide reassurance. They make sense of the world. They bind us together. 

But stories also reduce our understanding of the past to crude linear constructions, rationally ordered and causally connected. We instinctively find patterns in events and experiences. We assign cause and effect, agency and victimhood; heroes and villains, beginnings, middles and ends. And yet life, experience and relationships are rarely so neat. Thinking, remembering and imagining are seldom so tidy. Sometimes stories over-simplify. Sometimes narratives are partisan. And in the modern world of unchecked falsehoods, stories and narratives too easily become conspiracies. 

Resnais suggests that we should occasionally hold in check our natural instinct to impose order, to locate obvious explanations. Sometimes a more compelling truth can be found if we set ourselves free from the constraints of stories and storytelling.

At the conclusion of 'Last Year in Marienbad' the couple endeavour to leave together at midnight.

'The grounds of the hotel were symmetrically arranged, without trees or flowers, or plants of any kind. The gravel, the stone and the marble were spread in strict array in unmysterious shapes. At first sight, it seemed impossible to lose your way. At first sight... Along these stone paths and amidst these statues, where you were already losing your way forever in the still night, alone with me.’

'There are places I'll remember
All my life, though some have changed.
Some forever, not for better,
Some have gone and some remain.
All these places have their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall.
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I've loved them all.
But of all these friends and lovers
There is no one compares with you
And these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new.’

The Beatles, ‘In My Life’ (J Lennon / P McCartney)

No. 319

Miles Davis: Head Chemist in the Creative Laboratory

Photo: Herman Leonard Photography, LLC, courtesy of the Miles Davis Estate

‘Music has always been like a curse with me. I’ve always felt driven to play it. It’s the first thing in my life – go to bed thinking about it and wake up thinking about it. It’s always there. It comes before everything.’
Miles Davis

I recently watched a fine documentary about Miles Davis (‘Birth of the Cool’ by Stanley Nelson Jr).

Davis was a revered jazz trumpeter, a titanic bandleader, a revolutionary composer. He was cool jazz, orchestral jazz, hard bop, post-bop and fusion. He gave us ‘Birth of the Cool’,’’Round About Midnight’ and ‘Kind of Blue;’ ‘Milestones,’ ‘Miles Ahead’ and ‘Miles Smiles.’ He was a restless pioneer, a sensitive soul, a troubled genius.

Let us consider what Davis teaches us about living a wholehearted creative life.

1. ‘Go Where the Action Is’

Miles Davis was born in Alton, Illinois in 1926 and raised in East St. Louis. His family were relatively affluent landowners, his mother a music teacher and his father a dentist. 

Davis received his first trumpet as a gift on his 13th birthday. To escape his feuding parents, he would go out into the woods, listen to the wildlife and play what he was hearing. He began to perform in the school marching band, in talent shows and local ensembles. 

In 1944, Billy Eckstine visited St. Louis with a band that included Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. When a trumpeter fell sick Davis was invited to fill in. 

‘The greatest feeling I ever had in my life – with my clothes on – was when I first met Dizz and Bird. I was 18 years old. I decided right then and there I had to be in New York, on 52nd Street where the action was.’

2. Learn Your Craft

Davis moved to New York and hung out in the jazz joints on 52nd Street. He followed his idol Charlie Parker from club to club, immersing himself in the intense bebop scene. 

At the same time Davis enrolled at the Juilliard School to study classical music theory. Though he was mocked by fellow jazz artists, he was keen to learn his craft.

‘A lot of the old guys thought that if you went to school it would make you play like you were white - if you learned something from theory, you would lose the feeling in your playing. I would go to the library and borrow scores by all these great composers. I wanted to see what was going on in all of music.’

3. ‘If You Want to Keep Creating, You Have to Be About Change.’

Soon Davis was performing and recording with Parker in cities across America. In 1948 he met pianist and arranger Gil Evans with whom he struck up an immediate rapport.

‘We heard sound in the same way.’

They assembled a nine-piece band, the Miles Davis Nonet, which included the French horn and tuba and embraced a textured orchestral sound. Davis was bringing into play both his experiences on 52nd Street and lessons learned at the Juilliard. It was a radical combination.

‘Living is an adventure and a challenge. It wasn’t about standing still and becoming safe…If anybody wants to keep creating, they have to be about change.’

After signing a contract with Capitol Records, Davis’ Nonet released a series of tracks that were subsequently compiled on the 1957 album ‘Birth of the Cool.’

4. Find Your ‘Illusion of Possibility’

In 1949 Davis was invited to perform at the Paris International Jazz Festival. 

‘This was my first trip out of the country. I loved being in Paris and loved the way I was treated.’

Davis enjoyed the freedom and respect he found in post-war Paris. Moving in creative circles, he socialised with the likes of Sartre and Picasso. He began to appreciate the scale of his own potential as an artist.

‘Paris was where I understood that all white people weren’t the same – that some weren’t prejudiced and others were. It had only been a couple of weeks, but I was living in an illusion of possibility. Maybe a miracle had happened.’

5. Dig Your Way Out of the Holes

Davis’ return to the States was marked by disappointment and depression. He developed a heroin habit, lost his sense of discipline and his career spiralled out of control. He also gained a reputation for being detached and irascible. 

‘I was just cold to mostly everyone. That was the way I protected myself – by not letting anyone inside of my feelings and emotions.’

Davis’ somewhat forbidding presence was enhanced when an operation to remove polyps from his larynx went wrong and left him with a raspy voice for the rest of his life. 

He retreated to his father’s farm for several months to clean up. 

‘I figured there wasn’t nowhere for me to go but up. I was already on the bottom.’

Davis was partially successful, but in the early ‘50s he was in and out of work. He managed to sign a recording contract with Prestige and gradually evolved his style. He took to using a mute, placed close to the microphone, and his phrasing became more spacious and relaxed.

‘Miles had a way of playing that sounded like a stone skipping across a pond. He just touched on the waves.’
Herbie Hancock

In 1955, Davis' fortunes turned when he was invited to perform at the Newport Jazz Festival. 

‘Miles put the bell of his horn right into the microphone and changed the whole of jazz right there - and changed his career right there. Because the beauty of that song, and the beauty of Miles’ trumpet, made bebop a music that could be accepted by everybody.’
George Wein, Promoter

6. Speed Can Be a Creative Ally

After Davis’ performance at Newport, he was snapped up by Columbia Records. But his incumbent contract with Prestige required him to release four more albums.

Davis assembled his band in the studio: Red Garland on piano, Paul Chambers on double bass, Philly Joe Jones on drums and John Coltrane on saxophone. This line-up has been labelled the First Great Quintet. Together they recorded four albums in two one-day sessions. ‘Cookin'’, ‘Relaxin'’, ‘Workin'’ and ‘Steamin'’ are regarded as some of Davis’ best work. Speed can be a creative ally.

7. Allow Space for Spontaneity

In 1957 Davis embarked on a five-album collaboration with Gil Evans. He greatly enjoyed the experimentation: playing a flugelhorn, interpreting classical pieces, employing orchestral arrangements. 

In 1959, he recorded ‘Kind of Blue.’ Rather than turn up to the sessions with a finished score, he built in the opportunity for improvisation.

‘I didn’t write out the music for ’Kind of Blue,’ but brought in sketches - because I wanted a lot of spontaneity in the playing…I knew that if you’ve got some great musicians, they would deal with the situation and play beyond what is there and above what they think they can.’

Cicely Tyson and Miles Davis. Photo Credit Ron Galella

‘Kind of Blue’ was an instant success and is still the best selling jazz album of all time. 

8. Don’t Be Embarrassed by Success

Davis enjoyed his success. He invested in sharp suits and fast cars. He wore silk scarves, directional sunglasses and an intense look.

‘Being cool and hip and angry and sophisticated and ultra clean, I was all of those things and more. But I was playing the f**k out of my horn and had a great group. So I didn’t get recognition based only on a rebel image.’

When asked how he tallied owning a sports car with parenthood, Davis replied:

‘I tell them to get a taxi.’

9. Know When It’s Time to Break Up the Party

Success didn’t protect Davis from the racism endemic in America at that time. 

Taking a break from a recording session at Birdland in New York, he stepped outside to escort a woman to a taxi. A policeman told him to ‘move on.’ When Davis explained he was working at the club, he was arrested and beaten up. His head wound needed five stitches.

‘That incident changed me forever. Made me much more bitter and cynical than I might have been.’

Despite the success of ‘Kind of Blue’, Coltrane left the band to start his own ensemble, and soon the others followed. Davis recognised that it was time to break up the party and rebuild from scratch.

'In the last years that Trane was with my group, he started playing for himself. When that happens the magic is gone out of a band and people who used to love to play together start not caring anymore. And that’s when a band falls apart…. I had always been looking for new things to play, new challenges for my musical ideas. Now it was time for something different.’

Miles Davies In New York City 1955. Photo: Tom Palumbo

10. If You’re Good Enough, You’re Old Enough

Between 1963 and 1964 Davis put together what became his Second Great Quintet: Herbie Hancock on piano, Ron Carter on bass, Tony Williams on drums and Wayne Shorter on saxophone.

Hancock was 23 and Williams was just 17. Davis regarded their youth as an asset. 

‘Creativity and genius in any kind of artistic expression don’t know nothing about age. Either you got it or you don’t. And being old is not going to help you get it.’

11. Set Up a Creative Laboratory

The Second Quintet could play at great speed and embraced elements of free jazz, all five contributing simultaneously as equals. The band was a creative laboratory for ideas.

‘We were looking at every night going into a laboratory. Miles was the head chemist. Our job was to mix these components, these changes, this tempo, to something that explodes safely every night with a bit of danger. And it happened every night.’
Ron Carter

Davis encouraged his musicians to work outside their comfort zone.

'Miles wanted us to live on the stage in front of the people, creating in front of the people. In other words, don’t lean on what you know. What he was looking for is the stuff that you don’t know. Miles even told us, ‘I pay you to practice on the bandstand in front of the people.’’
Herbie Hancock

12. ‘Play As If You Don’t Know How to Play’

'Do not fear mistakes. There are none.' 

One of the fascinating aspects of Davis’ working practice was his special relationship with miscues and missteps. He found merit in mistakes.

‘The note next to the one that you think is bad corrects the one in front.’

Herbie Hancock relates how Davis was completely non-judgemental: he regarded errors as creative opportunities.

‘I played this chord that was so wrong. I had destroyed everything. Miles took a breath and then he made some notes that actually made my chord right. How do you do that? I had judged what I had done. Miles didn’t judge what I did. He heard it and heard it as part of the music - something new that came into the music.’

Davis was a true pioneer who wanted to take his music right to the edge. And beyond.

‘Do you ever get tired of playing music that sounds like music? Do you ever feel like you wanna play as if you don’t know how to play?’

Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter, Miles Davis & Tony Williams | Miles Davis Quintet

13. Stay Competitive, Stay Ambitious

At the end of the ‘60s Davis was increasingly conscious that the younger generation were into rock, soul, and funk. He became an enthusiast for the work of James Brown, Sly Stone and Jimi Hendrix.

‘1969 was the year rock and funk were really selling like hot cakes. People were packing stadiums to hear and see stars in person, and jazz music seemed to be withering on the vine. We played a lot of half-empty clubs in 1969. That told me something.’

In particular Davis was aware of how lucrative the rock business model had become.

‘I started realising that most rock musicians didn’t know anything about music. I figured that if they could do it – reach all those people and sell all those records – without really knowing what they were doing, then I could do it too. Only better.’

Davis threw away his sharp suits and restyled himself for the hippie era. Having expanded his band to include multiple percussion players, sitar and electric bass, he started recording long, dense improvisational fusion pieces. 

‘I told the musicians that they could do anything they wanted, play anything they heard. So that’s what they did.’

For the 1970 double album ‘Bitches Brew’ Davis adopted studio techniques like splicing, distortion, multi-track recording and tape loops. The album went on to sell a million copies.

 ‘I wanted to change course - had to change course - for me to continue to believe in and love what I was playing.’

14. Never Look Back

By the mid ‘70s Davis was suffering repeated health problems. He turned to alcohol and cocaine for support, and became violent and abusive. Artistically drained, he gave up playing and became a recluse.

But by the early ‘80s Davis was back with his horn. He continued to record and perform, collaborating with artists like Prince, appearing on talk shows and in movies, learning to paint. 

As his son Erin observed, he never looked back.

‘Miles never talked about his old records. He didn’t keep them in the house. He didn’t have any of them - not one of them. He didn’t want them in there. He only wanted the stuff he was working on.’

Davis carried on creating until he passed away in 1991. He’d had a five-decade career, lived an extraordinary life and left a phenomenal musical legacy. On his deathbed he observed:

‘When god punishes you, it’s not that you don’t get what you want. It’s that you get everything you want and there’s no time left.’

No. 318

Don’t Be a Busy Fool: My Stressful Experience as a Debenhams Dishwasher

Kitchen Maid with the Supper at Emmaus, Diego Velasquez

'It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?'
H D Thoreau

In my holidays from College I took a number of random jobs. I distributed law reports around Chancery Lane (beautiful buildings). I delivered the Christmas post around Romford (great canteen). I dug holes in Harold Hill (excellent for sun tan and body tone). And I did a fair amount of filing - which was a major occupation in the pre-digital age (not good for anything really, other than mind control).

My most stressful employment was in the kitchens of the Debenhams Department Store in Romford Town Centre.

I was stationed on my own alongside some large stainless steel sinks and industrial dishwashers. A conveyer belt brought me dirty crockery, cutlery and glasses in a steady stream from the adjacent customer restaurant. All I had to do was sort and stack the items as they came through.

The problem was that I had no control of the speed of the conveyer belt or the volume of the dishes. And I couldn’t prevent myself pausing occasionally to finish off an attractive unwanted pastry. 

As the lunchtime rush accelerated, I struggled to keep up. Pots and plates, mugs and jugs, saucers, soup bowls and serving spoons presented themselves to me in an ever more confused, messy muddle. I piled and loaded with diminishing care and increasing anxiety, spilling gravy on the floor, dropping the occasional glass. I became somewhat flustered, which hampered me even more. 

And the conveyor belt kept on rolling. And the dirty dishes kept on arriving, unrelenting, unforgiving. 

It all got a bit too much. I shouted through the plastic flap to the restaurant, begging the nearby waiters to slow things down. But they carried on regardless, pacing the floor in a catatonic stupor.

I read somewhere once that stress derives in large part from lack of control. The problem is out of our hands, beyond our ability. There’s nothing we can do. Well, dishwashing at Debenhams was the very definition of a stressful occupation.

Eventually, as lunch turned towards afternoon tea, the volume of crockery declined and I recovered my composure. 

I helped myself to one last custard tart.

President Dwight Eisenhower made a celebrated distinction regarding the challenges he faced in office (quoting Dr J R Miller, president of Northwestern University):

'I have two kinds of problems: the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.’ 

This sentiment should resonate with many people in modern business. We know that we should really be applying ourselves to the big long-term issues that loom on the horizon. But we just can’t quite get around to them, because pressing short-term problems keep demanding our attention.

The truth is that some of these short-term concerns are not as urgent as they may seem. They’re a distraction, and they should probably be dealt with by someone else. Indeed a few of them may be entirely superfluous. What’s more, some of those long-term issues really need to be addressed right now. 

'Nothing is less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all.'
Peter Drucker

Smart business people learn to concentrate on the urgent issues that are really important, and the important issues that are actually urgent. They have the ability to differentiate and delegate, categorise and schedule. Prioritisation of tasks and challenges is a critical skill in life and business.

'Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment, and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.'
Thomas Edison

Gwyn and I left BBH at the same time, and we both embarked on a stage in our careers that is more plural in nature. BBH Founder John Bartle, wary of the pitfalls of such a path, offered Gwyn the following concise advice: ‘Don’t be a busy fool.’

'Got to have a job to put the food on the table.
Got to have a job to keep that party able.
Got to have a job to bring home the bread.
Got to have a job to keep that family fed.

Sometimes your business is all messed up.
Sometimes you don't have your thing together.
And when your thing is all messed up,
Somebody will take that fire, yeah!
So, if you don't give a doggone about it,
If you don't give a doggone about it,
Then they—
They won't give a damn!’

James Brown, 'If You Don't Give A Doggone About It'

No. 317

North by Northwest: ‘You Fellows Could Stand a Little Less Training from the FBI and a Little More from the Actors Studio'

‘North by Northwest’ is a 1959 thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Featuring a screenplay by Ernest Lehman, a score by Bernard Herrmann and titles by Saul Bass, it is breathlessly dramatic, playfully romantic and thoroughly stylish.

Cary Grant stars as Roger O Thornhill, an advertising executive who is smooth-tongued and somewhat superficial.

‘Roger O Thornhill. What does the O stand for?’
‘Nothing.’

While meeting Clients in the Oak Room at the Plaza Hotel, New York, Thornhill is mistaken for a Government agent and abducted. The villains, led by the charming but menacing Vandamm (James Mason), have been smuggling Cold War secrets out of the United States. They orchestrate a fatal road accident for Thornhill and, when that fails, they frame him for a murder at the United Nations Building.

Soon Thornhill is being hunted down by spies, federal agents and the police. He eludes his pursuers at Grand Central Station, and joins mysterious stranger Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint) for a Gibson in the restaurant car of the Twentieth Century to Chicago.

Why is she helping him? Why is she seducing him? Can she be trusted? 

Next Thornhill is lured to a rendezvous in an isolated, sun-drenched field in Indiana. Suddenly he is attacked by a murderous crop-dusting biplane.

'That's funny. That plane's dustin' crops where there ain't no crops.’

‘North by Northwest’ is a compelling tale of mistaken identity, of an innocent caught up in espionage and intrigue. It is littered with diversions, distractions and deceptions. It is far-fetched, knowing and mischievous. And in keeping with the theme of artifice, the film is incredibly well dressed.

Grant spends most of the movie in a grey flannel, ventless, three-button suit, tailored by Kilgour, Savile Row. Despite everything he’s going through, he never looks particularly flustered. Saint’s wardrobe was sourced entirely from Bergdorf Goodman. She exudes confidence in a black business suit; sustains her cool in a belted blue-grey dress; holds her nerve in an almost off-the shoulder black silk number, full-skirted with a red rose pattern. The clothes act as protection, as projection, as disguise.

When eventually the Government agents catch up with Thornhill, he needs some convincing if he is to assist them in foiling the villains.

'Now you listen to me, I'm an advertising man, not a red herring. I've got a job, a secretary, a mother, two ex-wives and several bartenders that depend upon me. And I don't intend to disappoint them all by getting myself ‘slightly' killed.’

Of course, as an advertising person Thornhill should have been comfortable playing the red herring. Ours is a profession that can countenance artifice, exaggeration and the occasional rhetorical flourish, if such devices help to achieve our objective. We like to emphasise urgency and heighten suspense; to enhance benefits and excite emotions. We employ all manner of tactics in the art of selling.

'In the world of advertising, there's no such thing as a lie. There's only expedient exaggeration.’

The practice of persuasion often calls for creative flare, a dramatic flourish, a sense of style. As Vandamm observes to Thornhill, the theatrical arts are often underestimated.

'Seems to me you fellows could stand a little less training from the FBI and a little more from the Actors Studio.'

‘North by Northwest’ reaches its climax in a nail-biting chase scene among the huge Presidential sculptures on Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. Grant is now in a loose Brookes Brothers button-down shirt. Saint is in an elegant orange wool suit. It’s gripping stuff.

'If I could turn the page in time, 
Then I'd rearrange just a day or two.
Close my eyes,
But I couldn't find a way.
So I'll settle for one day to believe in you.
Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies.
Tell me lies.’

Fleetwood Mac, ’Little Lies’ (C McVie, E Quintela)

No. 316