The South Indies: When Over Thinkers Under Perform

Moore’s tackle on Jairzinho

‘Football is the most important of the less important things in the world.‘
Carlo Ancelotti

I think the South Indies football team mattered more to me than it really should have.

Through the week I washed the kit, recruited players and popped out to Soccer Scene to buy random bits of equipment. I woke up in the middle of the night pondering league tables. I plotted innovative formations on the back of envelopes, but ended up concluding that, erm, 4-4-2 probably best suited our resources. 

We were in many ways a typical amateur side. Our fixtures tended to be on Saturday mornings when many of our personnel were nursing hangovers. Our home ground was the astroturf at Market Road - where Australians sold their VW Camper Vans and local kids hung round to nick our balls. 

Like most such squads, we were a mismatched assortment of characters and talents. John did warm-up exercises that the rest of us scorned for being too ‘continental.’ Dylan was a philosopher off the pitch and an enforcer on it. Tim played with the enthusiasm of a 20 year old, though his body had moved on a decade or so. Andy was quiet, but lethal. Matty kept goal, but not his temper. Striker Kweku had the disarming habit of chatting amicably to opposition Defenders. Vinny played like a troubadour social worker and Tony like a novelist with a fine appreciation of history. Thommo was stylish. Caz was obdurate. Dave was rustic. Doug was contrary. Steve was tidy. And Shamik was late.

‘If I have to make a tackle then I have already made a mistake.’
Paolo Maldini

My own skills as a Centre Back were rudimentary. Slow, lumbering, physical. More comfortable with the ball in the air than on the ground. Whenever a Striker approached me in possession, I could hear over my shoulder Thommo shouting: 

‘Stand up. Stand up, Jim!’

I hesitated and held my ground. I stared the Striker in the face as he contemplated his next move. 

‘Don’t dive in!’ Thommo cried.

For a brief moment the Striker and I were frozen to the spot, each ready to spring into action. Time stood still. 

I felt the same way about this bloke as I did about all Forwards. I resented his speed and agility, his refined skills and youthful good looks. He needed to be taught a lesson. Perhaps, re-enacting Bobby Moore’s tackle on Jairzinho in the 1970 World Cup, I could slide in to dispossess him, with balletic grace, with pinpoint precision.

And then, suddenly, he feinted as if to go one way and went the other. I sensed him accelerate past me as I struggled to build up momentum.

It was now or never. 

And so, with a rush of blood to the head, I made my move. 

Thud, clatter, crash. 

I’d taken him down. 

Penalty.

I looked up from the astroturf to see Thommo frowning at me with accustomed disappointment. 

'Football is a game you play with your mind.’
Johan Cruyff

A little while ago I read an article about the science of spot kicks (‘Want That Penalty?’ The Times, 7 May).

It transpires that, if you’re taking a penalty to win a match, you can expect a 90% success rate, compared with only 60% if you’re trying to avoid defeat. In a shoot-out, striking the first penalty elevates your chances of winning to 60:40. Keepers should waste between 1.7 and 4.5 seconds before the kick is taken.

There’s clearly a good deal of psychology involved.

A recent study published in the journal ‘Frontiers in Computer Science’ monitored the brains of footballers when they took spot kicks. 

22 players were fitted with a cap with sensors that measured oxygen levels in different parts of the brain. Those who missed their penalty tended to have activated cerebral areas associated with long-term planning. By contrast, those who scored had employed unconscious neural pathways. They had performed the task automatically, with well-rehearsed movements.

The research concluded that players miss penalties when they over-analyse the outcomes. Over thinkers under perform. They would do better to employ ‘neural efficiency theory,’ responding to pressure by switching some parts of the brain on and others off.

’The best decisions aren’t made with your mind, but with your instinct. The more familiar with a situation you become, the quicker, the better your decision will be.’
Lionel Messi

It’s easy to imagine such findings having application in business.

Inevitably we spend a good deal of the working week plotting and planning, calculating and co-ordinating. We repeatedly rehearse our arguments, review the pros and cons of various strategic routes, in order to equip ourselves to make the critical calls. But as we approach the key meeting, we should not be too preoccupied with the consequences of our actions. We should be confident, focused on winning, set to seize the initiative. At the decisive juncture in the negotiation; at the point of making the crucial creative recommendation; at the climax of the presentation, we should switch from a mindset of preparation and projection to one of instinct and intuition. We should concentrate on the situation and not the stakes.

After the game we’d adjourn to the Hemingford Arms. Caz, in his genial way would talk to the opposition at the bar and smooth over grievances and misperceptions. The rest of us would sit in a huddle in the corner, re-enacting the highlights, exaggerating our heroics, appointing the scapegoat - usually me.

'My heart was broken.
Sorrow, sorrow.
My heart was broken.
You saw it, you claimed it,
You touched it, you saved it.
My tears are drying.
Thank you, thank you.
My tears are drying.
Your beauty and kindness
Made tears clear my blindness.
While I'm worth
My room on this Earth,
I will be with you,
While the Chief
Puts sunshine on Leith.’

The Proclaimers, 'Sunshine on Leith’ (C & C Reid)

No. 325

The 39 Steps: Does Your Brand Have a MacGuffin?

'Have you ever heard of the 39 Steps?
'No. What's that, a pub?’

‘The 39 Steps’ is a classic 1935 British thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock, loosely based on a novel by John Buchan.

Robert Donat stars as Richard Hannay, a Canadian visitor to London who becomes a murder suspect, goes on the run and endeavours to prevent a spy ring from stealing British military secrets. It’s gripping stuff.

A gun goes off in a music hall and an alluring secret agent seeks sanctuary in Hannay’s flat on Portland Place.

‘There’s a dangerous conspiracy against this island and we’re the only ones who can stop it.’

But the mysterious woman dies with a knife in her back, clutching a map of the Highlands. Hannay escapes disguised as a milkman, hides away on the Flying Scotsman and kisses a fellow passenger to evade arrest. He jumps off at the Forth Bridge, stays the night with a crofter and is chased across the moors by a police gyrocopter. 

'I've been guilty of leading you down the garden path. Or should it be up? I never can remember.'
'It seems to be the wrong garden, all right.’

Next Hannay is shot by an aristocratic villain with a finger missing – but the bullet is stopped by a hymnbook. He is interviewed by an unreliable sheriff and seized by police who may not be police. And he spends the night at a country inn handcuffed to a beautiful blonde who doesn’t quite trust him. 

'There are 20 million women in this island and I've got to be chained to you.'

‘The 39 Steps’ takes us on a breathless chase across the Highlands, along roads blocked by flocks of sheep, through a patrician country house party and a crowded political meeting. We are desperate for our hero to escape his pursuers and foil the villains’ scheme. But, in truth, we are not that concerned about exactly what that scheme is.

This is a classic early use by Hitchcock of a plot technique he called a MacGuffin: a device that drives the narrative and motivates the characters, but is itself unimportant.

'The MacGuffin is the thing that the spies are after, but the audience don't care.’
Alfred Hitchcock

We learn that the 39 Steps refer to a foreign spy organisation that has been scheming to smuggle the design for a silent aircraft engine out of the country. Although we the audience appreciate that silent aircraft engines are hugely important to the key protagonists in the movie - that they are prompting them to risk their lives – silent aircraft engines don’t really matter too much to us, or to our enjoyment of the drama.

Hitchcock was fond of MacGuffins. ‘Foreign Correspondent’, for example, was propelled by a clause in a secret peace treaty; ‘Notorious’ by radioactive uranium; ‘North by Northwest’ by confidential microfilm. 

Indeed you’ll find MacGuffins in many movies, particularly thrillers. There’s the small statuette in 'The Maltese Falcon,’ the stolen transit letters in ‘Casablanca,' the briefcase in ‘Pulp Fiction,' the rug in 'The Big Lebowski.'

I found myself wondering about Brand MacGuffins: particular characteristics that drive a brand narrative, that sustain its core benefits – but that are not of themselves that important to consumers.

Back in the day Cadbury Dairy Milk contained ‘a glass and a half of full-cream milk’; Dove soap was ‘one quarter cleansing cream’; and Boost was ‘slightly rippled with a flat under-side.’ KFC had an ‘Original Recipe of 11 herbs and spices’; Coors was ‘brewed with pure Rocky Mountain spring water’; and Flora margarine had ‘polywassernames’…

Wanting to draw attention to the breadth of his brand’s range, in 1896 Henry J Heinz introduced the slogan ‘57 pickle Varieties.’ In fact he was selling more than 57 varieties, but he just thought the numbers 5 and 7 were lucky.

The 39 Steps (1935) Alfred Hitchcock (second right) directing the handcuffed Madeleine Carroll and Robert Donat on the first day of filming

Brand MacGuffins – Reasons to Believe or Substantiators as we called them back then - were vitally important to the businesses that claimed them. They established difference, explained superiority and justified premium. They were often shrouded in secrecy and guarded with alacrity. As consumers we were glad they existed, but didn’t really care too much about their specifics.

Of course, nowadays Brand MacGuffins are rather thin on the ground. Product differentiators are easy to copy and difficult to extend across sectors. And if you research them, people just shrug their shoulders. Modern brands prefer emotional differentiators and Big Ideas – they’re more pliable, comprehensible, universal. 

It’s a shame. Brand MacGuffins conferred texture, character and credibility. They enabled more engaging, distinctive brand dialogue. They were fun.

Perhaps now, after all this time, it may be pertinent to ask: could your brand benefit from a MacGuffin?

At the end of ‘The 39 Steps’ Hannay realises that the plotters have not actually stolen any secret papers. Rather they intend to smuggle the details of the silent aircraft engine out of the country using the extraordinary recollective powers of a theatre performer. 

We make our way to the London Palladium. Mr Memory, who has been an unwitting accomplice in the scheme, is shot on stage as he reveals the plans. He seems relieved finally to be liberated from his secrets.

‘The first feature of the new engine is its greatly increased ratio of compression represented by R minus over to the power of gamma where R represents the ratio of compression and gamma... Seen in end elevation, the axis of the two lines of cylinders...Angle of degrees… Dimensions of cylinders as follows...This device renders the engine completely silent.’ 
‘Am I right, sir?’
‘Quite right, old chap.’
‘Thank you, sir. Thank you. I'm glad it's off my mind. Glad.’

'I got an X-ray camera hidden in your house
To see what I could see.
That man you was kissing last night
Definitely wasn't me.
And I spy for the FBI.’

Jamo Thomas ‘I Spy (for the FBI)’ (R Wylie / H Kelley)

No. 324

Alice Neel: ‘Always in the Process of Becoming’

Alice Neel, A Spanish Boy 1955

‘I paint to try to reveal the struggle, tragedy and joy of life.’
Alice Neel

I recently watched a fascinating documentary about the American painter Alice Neel, written and directed by her grandson Andrew Neel (‘Alice Neel,’ 2007).

Neel believed passionately that people are worthy of our attention; that every individual merits scrutiny. She created raw, intimate images of diverse characters, revealing their suffering and frailty, their strength and dignity. In pursuing her craft, she made huge personal sacrifices. She persisted with portrait painting when the art establishment determined it was an obsolete artform. She persevered when the world went wild for Abstract Expressionism. And finally she received the credit she had always deserved.

In the documentary there’s a brief clip of Neel at work with a sitter in her apartment. She reflects on how a portrait is shaping up.

‘It’s going somewhere, but it hasn’t arrived there. It’s always in the process of becoming.’

Let us consider what we can learn from this compelling artist.

1. ‘Search for a Road. Search for Freedom’

Alice Neel was born in 1900 and grew up in rural Pennsylvania, in a middle-class family that was often short of money. After graduating from high school, she took a clerical job to help support her parents. She studied art at evening classes, and in 1921 she enrolled at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women.

‘My conscience bothered me, that I should be just fooling about with art when really everybody needed money.’

In 1925 Neel married Carlos Enríquez, an aristocratic Cuban painter, and they moved to Havana to live with his family. There she embraced the thriving avant-garde creative scene and developed a lifelong political consciousness. 

Neel had already travelled a long way from her conventional Pennsylvania upbringing.

'Art is two things: a search for a road and a search for freedom.’

Alice Neel with her paintings at her Spanish Harlem apartment in 1944. Courtesy of Sam Brody, via SeeThink Films

2. ‘All Experience Is Great, Providing You Live Through It’

In 1927 the couple moved to New York where Neel's first-born daughter died of diphtheria. A few years later Enríquez left her, taking their second daughter with him. Neel suffered a nervous breakdown, was hospitalized and attempted suicide. 

‘In a way it was my own fault. I pushed my brain back. And then after it got back there, I was much worse off. I forgot all the Spanish I knew. I couldn’t read. I couldn’t do anything.’

When Neel was released from the sanatorium, she took to painting themes of motherhood, loss and doubt. 

She continued to be unlucky in love. She had an affair with a heroin-addicted sailor, who, in a jealous rage, set fire to 350 of her paintings and drawings. She had a son by a nightclub singer and another by a documentary film-maker. The latter supported her work, but was abusive to her older boy.

‘I look happy. But that’s just a fake. I’m serving a sentence. Instead of jumping out the window, I’m putting in the time.’

Neel sold very few paintings and she participated in only one exhibition in this period. Between 1933 and 1943 she received funding from the Public Works of America Project, one of the Roosevelt's New Deal initiatives. But once that income dried up, she relied on welfare to make ends meet.

‘I had acquired the idea that for art’s sake you had to give up everything. If I had some money, I wouldn’t buy a dress or anything. I’d buy canvas and paint materials.’

Somehow Neel managed to survive.

'All experience is great providing you live through it. If it kills you, you've gone too far.’

Alice Neel, Pat Whalen, 1935

3. ‘People Come First’

In Greenwich Village Neel painted critics, artists, activists and intellectuals. In Spanish Harlem she painted her neighbours, women and children, family, friends and strangers. In West Harlem she painted pregnant nudes and nursing mothers. She painted people from diverse racial, cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. She painted what she called ‘the human comedy’: real people, real bodies, real lives.

'For me, people come first. I have tried to assert the dignity and eternal importance of the human being.’

Neel had developed a direct style of portraiture. Employing bold loose outlines and fresh vibrant colours, stripping away unnecessary detail, focusing with unflinching intensity on posture, personality and nuance; on idiosyncrasies that indicated the sitter’s true character -  a subtle gesture of the hand and a gentle tilt of the head; a clenched fist, folded arms and a furrowed brow; a bored stare, tired eyes and a nervous sideways glance. 

4. Be a ‘Collector of Souls’

'Like Chekhov, I am a collector of souls… If I hadn’t been an artist, I could have been a psychiatrist.'

Neel was aiming to go beyond surface detail to establish psychological truth. This required her to be empathetic; to develop a strong sense of the feelings of the sitter; to be sensitive to the life within.

‘I go so out of myself and into them that after they leave I sometimes feel horrible. I feel like an untenanted house.’

 5. Resist Prevailing Fashion and Dogma

Throughout her life Neel had to steel herself against prevailing cultural fashion and dogma.

There was a view that advances in photography had effectively removed the need for portrait painting. Neel demonstrated that, whereas a photo freezes a sitter in a particular moment and attitude, a painting can animate its subject through time; can penetrate beyond masks and facades; can express an authentic individual identity.

‘I would have to apologise for being psychological because that was considered a weakness.’

In the 1950s and 1960s Abstract Expressionism drowned out all other artforms. As the painter Chuck Close observed, it was as if Neel was ‘broadcasting and no one’s picking up the signal.’ But she remained stubbornly committed to representational work. 

‘I am against abstract and non-objective art because such art shows a hatred of human beings. It is an attempt to eliminate people from art, and as such it is bound to fail.’

Alice Neel, Marxist Girl (Irene Peslikis), 1972

6. ‘Express the Zeitgeist’

Neel was conscious that every individual is imprinted with the values and struggles of their era. And so her portraiture evolved with time. 

‘I like it not only to look like the person, but to have their inner character as well. And then I like it to express the zeitgeist. You see, I don’t want something in the’60s to look like something in the ‘70s.’

As Neel painted sitters of every ethnicity, sexuality, age, gender and economic group, so she recorded the progress of American history: from the Depression, through the Civil Rights era and on to a modern world of material wealth and spiritual poverty.

‘I like to paint people who are in the rat race, suffering all the tension and damage that’s involved in that – under pressure really of city life and of the awful struggle that goes on in the city.’

7. Be Tenacious. Be Interested

Toward the end of the 1960s, the Women's Rights movement celebrated Neel as an unfairly ignored talent, and she became something of a feminist icon. And yet she refused to be categorised simply as ‘a woman painter.’

'When I was in my studio I didn’t give a damn what sex I was… I thought art is art.'

Neel toured the States delivering lectures and participating in panel discussions at museums, art schools and universities. In the documentary an academic relates how, at one such event, Neel grabbed the microphone, set up a slide carousel of her work, and took over the discussion. She was hungry for attention.

At last, in 1974, Neel was given a major retrospective at the Whitney in New York. 

‘I always felt in a sense that I didn’t have the right to paint, because I had two sons and I had so many things I should be doing. And here I was painting. But that show convinced me that I had a perfect right to paint. I shouldn’t ever have felt that, but I did feel it. And after that show I never felt it any more.’

It had been a long, hard struggle for recognition. But Neel was equal to the challenge.

‘If you’re sufficiently tenacious and interested, you can accomplish what you want to accomplish in this world.’

In 1984 Neel died from cancer in her New York apartment.

Detail of Alice Neel, Richard in the Era of the Corporation (1978-79). Photo by Ben Davis.

Alice Neel was a woman of conviction. She adhered to her artistic and political beliefs, despite desperate poverty, untrustworthy lovers, a fickle art establishment and systemic sexism. She left us with a portrait of America in the 20th century, a tapestry of individual lives; of struggle, passion and endurance. 

There’s a telling scene in the film where this seemingly sweet little old lady upbraids an interviewer.

‘You must take what I give you. Don’t be so demanding. Just sit there.’
 She smiles gently.
‘Now. What was I talking about?...’

(You can see a retrospective of Neel's work at the Met Fifth Avenue, New York until 1 August 2021: ‘Alice Neel: People Come First.’)

‘Me.
Can you focus on me?
Baby, can you focus on me?
Babe.
Hands in the soap,
Have the faucets running,
And I keep looking at you.
Stuck on your phone,
And you're stuck in your zone,
You don't have a clue.
But I don't want to give up.
Baby, I just want you to get up.
Lately I've been a little fed up.
Wish you would just focus on
Me.’
HER, ‘Focus’ (D Camper / G Wilson / J Love)

No. 323

The Conversational Gambit: If You Were Restricted to Five Fruits, What Would They Be?

Basket of Pears, 1882 by Édouard Manet. Photograph: © Ordrupgaard, Copenhagen

‘'What ho!' I said.
'What ho!' said Motty.
'What ho! What ho!'
'What ho! What ho! What ho!'
After that it seemed rather difficult to go on with the conversation.’
PG Wodehouse, 'My Man Jeeves’

I have often thought that what little success I have had in business derives from one particular conversation.

I had been working at Bartle Bogle Hegarty for only a short while when I was invited to a dinner. Co-Founder Nigel Bogle wanted to meet a few of the recent recruits, to get a sense of the emergent talent pool and perhaps to impress on them some of the company’s values.

I’m not the most socially confident person, and I am generally awkward at such work events - worried that I will say the wrong thing or, worse still, say nothing at all. And so I approached the occasion with some trepidation.

'I think I only appear smart by staying quiet as often as possible.'
Sally Rooney, 'Conversations with Friends'

My nerves jangled all the more when I found that I was seated next to the evening’s host. Nigel was an imposing figure. Fiercely intelligent, serious-minded and somewhat laconic. How could an anxious fool like me keep him interested and entertained for three courses?

My Classics teacher at school, Mr Deasy, had advised that such situations called for the deployment of a Conversational Gambit: a short remark, story or question that would start a discussion. And so I had subsequently developed a stock of gambits to see me through uncomfortable interactions:

‘What would be your final meal?’
‘What’s your favourite bus route?’
‘Which body part would you change if you could?’
‘When were you happiest?’

On this occasion, I thought I’d try my Five Fruits gambit:

‘If you were restricted to five fruits, what would they be?’

I’ve always been drawn to the idea of limiting choice, particularly in the area of food. Too many permutations. Too much fuss. Altogether a distraction. A little editing would do us all a favour.

And so the table debated my question.

‘Well, you’ll want an apple as a work-horse fruit.’

‘And a banana as an indulgent fruit – with all its associated energy benefits.’

‘You’ll need one citrus, probably orange. I’m tempted to go for satsuma for easy peeling.’

‘And then perhaps a berry. Raspberry is slightly more tasty, and certainly less obvious, than a strawberry.

‘Or grapes, as you wouldn’t want to do without wine.’

Inevitably there was some disagreement. Snobbishness about satsumas. Preference for exotic varietals like mangoes and mandarins. Debates about the botanic status of plantains and avocados.

‘Is a tomato a fruit?’

The gambit served its purpose. It had the whole table buzzing. And I noticed Nigel was particularly engaged. He probed away at the question as if sitting an exam, exploring the many ways of interpreting it, developing different strategies for answering it. He was addressing the task with a little more seriousness than I had intended.

In any case, I was informed the next day that I’d made an impression on the Agency Co-Founder. And from that moment on I felt I had earned his tacit support. Something about my Five Fruits gambit had suggested to him that I could be of value to the Agency. What value exactly was not entirely clear to me.

Perhaps there is a lesson here.

We treat conversation as something effortless and instinctive; a consequence of social chemistry and circumstance; a gift that comes naturally or not at all. But in fact conversation is an art worthy of our study. It merits time and attention, practice and preparation, strategies and tactics. Our ability to converse shapes how people think of us.

'My idea of good company, Mr Eliot, is the company of clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.'
Jane Austen, ‘Persuasion’

I have continued to employ Conversational Gambits in both my professional and domestic lives. In the course of an average day, as I’m working my way through The Guardian or The Times, I’ll make a few notes of interesting news items or cultural topics at the foot of the front page. And then later, as my wife is preparing dinner, I like to pepper our discussion with anecdotes, facts, quotes and opinion.

It amuses me at least.

'Surely she had endured enough for one evening without having to listen to intelligent conversation?’
Stella Gibbons, 'Cold Comfort Farm'

Of course, the pandemic has presented a particular challenge to our social confidence. We all feel a diminution of experience, a narrowing of bandwidth. When we emerge blinking into the wider world, will we have forgotten how to converse? Will we have anything to say?

I have taken to compiling a list of candidate conversational topics, loosely categorised, on a piece of paper: recently watched movies and documentaries, political events, aphorisms, fashion trends, music tips. I carry my list with me at all times, so I’m properly equipped if ever I get to encounter another human being.

A recent Conversational Gambit list suggests:

French generals; ‘Not trickle-down, but bottom-up and middle-out’; the dignity of labour; protest against ‘guys’; Blair Hair; Abrdn; shullet, shrobing, linners; languishing; Citizen Kane v Paddington 2; ‘I Am Duran’; HER.

One of the rare pleasures of lockdown (when we’re allowed) has been meeting My-Mate-Andy-from-Back-Home on a park bench at the Stratford Olympic Park (Excellent amenities!). Wrapped up against the elements in hoodies and anoraks, drinking a bottle of wine from plastic beakers, I’m sure we look like a couple of old tramps. But we’re happy enough.

With the advantage of familiarity built over many years, we can chat effortlessly about people and politics, sport and music, old times and new places. And then, after a good while, there is a break in the conversation. And a pause. And when the silence drags, Andy looks across at me.

‘Go on then. What have you got on your list?’


'Talk to me,
Talk to me.
I love the things you say.
Talk to me,
Talk to me,
In your own sweet gentle way.
Let me hear,
Tell me dear.
Tell me you love me so.
Talk to me,
Talk to me.
Tell me what I want to know.’

Little Willie John 'Talk to Me, Talk to Me’ (J Seneca)

No 332

'Who Pushed Taylor Off the Pier?': Why The Big Sleep Is a Little Confusing

'Your story didn't sound quite right.’
'Oh, that's too bad. You got a better one?’
'Maybe I can find one.’

‘The Big Sleep’ is a classic 1946 detective thriller directed by Howard Hawks, based on the novel by Raymond Chandler, and starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.

Private investigator Philip Marlowe (Bogart) is commissioned by wealthy invalid General Sternwood to extract his troublesome younger daughter, Carmen, from extortion over gambling debts. But nothing is straightforward: Sternwood is also keen to locate his trusted bodyguard who has recently disappeared; his older daughter Vivian (Bacall) seems unduly curious about Marlowe’s brief; and Carmen is being inappropriate.

'She tried to sit on my lap while I was standing up.’

When Marlowe embarks on his enquiries, he discovers a drugged Carmen beside the dead body of the blackmailer, and a hidden camera with the film missing. This sets him off on a trail of vice, violence, corruption and infidelity; of sophisticated clubs, hired guns and poisoned drinks. There’s a disappearing corpse, a mugging in the car park and a shooting at the apartment door. 

'You know what he'll do when he comes back? Beat my teeth out, then kick me in the stomach for mumbling.’

Marlowe navigates these challenges with a cool head and worldly cynicism. And he meets his match in Vivian - reserved, sharp tongued, quietly amused - and not entirely to be trusted. 

'Why did you have to go on?'
'Too many people told me to stop.’

Marlowe and Vivian are clearly attracted to each other and they spar flirtatiously whenever they meet.

Vivian: Speaking of horses, I like to play them myself. But I like to see them work out a little first, see if they're frontrunners or come from behind… I'd say you like to get out in front, open up a little lead, take a little breather in the backstretch, and then come home free…
Marlowe: You've got a touch of class, but I don't know how far you can go.
Vivian: A lot depends on who's in the saddle.

They make a compelling couple. The suited Bogart, hard-boiled and obstinate, nervously touching his ear lobes when he thinks, striding through the mean streets in battered trench coat and fedora. Bacall, her head tilted down, her eyebrows arched, her feline beauty gliding across the screen in trousers, loafers and velvet shirt; in hounds-tooth jacket and black beret; in gold lame evening gown.

‘The Big Sleep’ has a labyrinthine plot, with key characters we never see, seven murders and numerous double crosses and false leads. It’s difficult to keep up.

Of course, the complexity was written into Chandler’s original narrative. But it was exacerbated by the troubled production process. Bogart and Bacall had embarked on an affair, and, with his marriage on the rocks, Bogart was drinking heavily. Bacall’s agent, concerned by her recent box office flop, and the fact that Martha Vickers as Carmen was dazzling in every scene, demanded rewrites that diminished the younger sister’s role and gave Bacall a chance to shine. The resulting edit did not entirely make sense.

On one occasion, Bogart, perplexed by the death of one of the minor characters, marched onto the set and asked Hawks:

'Who pushed Taylor off the pier?' 

Equally confused, Hawks could get no explanation from scriptwriters William Faulkner and Leigh Brackett. So he sent Chandler a telegram, asking him to clear things up. But the author couldn’t answer Bogart’s question either. 

At length Hawks concluded that strong character development and powerful individual scenes should take precedence over narrative coherence. 

'I never figured out what was going on, but I thought that the basic thing had great scenes in it, and it was good entertainment. After that got by, I said, 'I'm never going to worry about being logical again.''

This may give us pause for thought.

Given the necessary brevity of advertising communication, we go to great lengths in script reviews, pre-production conversations and research to ensure that everything contributes to a simple powerful story with the brand at its heart; that every script, casting, wardrobe and set decision has a logic; that it is all pointing in one direction. 

But as we iron out irregularity and polish off inconsistency, so we also diminish character, credibility and memorability. Even in our reduced format, texture, tone, quirks and foibles matter.

Thankfully Marlowe and Bacall emerge from ‘The Big Sleep’ in tact and together. With the chief villain lying dead in the hallway, they sit in a gloomy parlour awaiting the police. Marlowe sketches out the story he will tell Sternwood and the cops; and the treatment best suited for Carmen. Everything seems resolved. 

Vivian: You've forgotten one thing… Me.
Marlowe: What's wrong with you?
Vivian: Nothing you can't fix.

'She is watching the detectives.
"Oh, it's so cute."
She's watching the detectives,
When they shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot.
They beat him up until the teardrops start,
But he can't be wounded 'cause he's got no heart.’
Elvis Costello, 'Watching the Detectives'

No. 331

Poly Styrene’s Provocation: ‘When You Look in the Mirror Do You See Yourself?’

‘I just consider myself a person first. And anything else that anybody else might call you - well, they’re just names really, aren’t they? ’
Poly Styrene

I recently enjoyed a documentary about the luminous singer and inventive songwriter Poly Styrene.

Co-directed by Paul Sng and Poly’s daughter Celeste Bell, ‘Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché’ reminds us that, as leader of her band X-Ray Spex, Poly gave us some of the most inspiring music of the punk era. She engaged with issues - sexism, racism, consumerism and identity - in a way that was heartfelt, insightful and way ahead of her time. She was a creative force, a defiant political voice and a unique style icon.

Let us consider what Poly teaches us today.

‘Who am I? I’m just an ordinary tough kid from an ordinary tough street.’

Mari Elliot was born in 1957 in Bromley and raised in Brixton. Her mother was a Scottish-Irish legal secretary, her father a Somali dockworker. Bullied at school, she encountered racism from all sides.

‘They see us as a threat to their genetic existence.’

As a teenager Mari travelled around the country going to gigs. She dabbled in a recording career, and made her own customised clothes and jewellery to sell on a stall on the King’s Road. On her nineteenth birthday she saw the Sex Pistols perform on Hastings Pier. She decided there and then to form a punk band, and promptly put an ad in the Melody Maker for ‘young punx who want to stick it together.’

And so X-Ray Spex was born. Mari chose her stage name, Poly Styrene, from the Yellow Pages. It suggested ‘something around today - something plastic and synthetic.’

In 1977 X-Ray Spex released their first single. The song begins with a gently spoken intro:

'Some people say little girls should be seen and not heard. But I think ...

Poly’s voice suddenly becomes irate:

‘Oh bondage up yours! 1-2-3-4!’

‘Oh Bondage Up Yours!’ was inspired by Vivienne Westwood’s Seditionaries outfits, by the Suffragettes and David Bowie, by rage against ubiquitous sexism, racism and consumerism. It was banned by the BBC and was not a hit. But it became a seminal punk single. 

‘I discovered a new-found sense of freedom….I had an innate desire to be free – to be free from unwanted desires seemed desirable.’

The X-Ray Spex sound was built on a base of buzzsaw guitar. A robust saxophone added melody and mystique. And over the top of it all Poly shrieked, chanted and sang with raw power and intensity.

'A lovely girl with a voice that could punch a hole in a steel plate.’
Johnny Rotten

Poly Styrene in 1991. Photograph: Ian Dickson/Redferns

Lyrically Poly was particularly concerned with the omnipresence of plastics and synthetics; with a culture that was becoming increasingly disposable and fake. 

'I know your antiseptic,
Your deodorant smells nice.
I'd like to get to know you.
You're deep frozen like the ice.
She's a germ free adolescent,
Cleanliness is her obsession.
Cleans her teeth ten times a day,
Scrub away, scrub away, scrub away,
The SR way.’
‘Germfree Adolescents'

Poly recognised that, on the one hand, this modern consumer society dumbed down and desensitized; but, on the other hand, it had seductive charms. And she found this paradox fascinating.

‘The weird thing about all the plastic is that people don’t actually like it. But, in order to cope with it, they develop a perverse kind of fondness for it.’

There were few women in pop and rock at that time, and they were often forced by the industry into highly sexualised presentations of themselves. Poly was determined to be different. 

Here’s Poly in her signature dental braces; in DIY day-glo and brilliant bri-nylon. Poly in an army hat and scarlet military jacket; in home-made creations, jumble sale discoveries, ornamented with enamel badges. Here’s Poly in leggings, pink socks and court shoes; in huge white woolly cardigan. Poly in granny prints; in emerald tank dress with orange tights. Poly in a pale blue trouser suit with lemon-and-lime head dress. Poly with red and blue pom-poms in her hair. She was a magnificently inventive dresser.

‘Clothes are never really you. That’s why people wear them. Cos you can just create an image with clothes. They’re just part of a façade, which is good fun to play sometimes.’

On stage Poly performed with righteous anger and joyous pride. She skipped, strutted, danced and did a playful hand jive. You can’t take your eyes off her. 

Given her experiences growing up, Poly was keen not to be defined by demographics, gender, ethnicity or style tribe.

‘Identity. That’s one of the current problems at the moment is identity. Everyone’s looking desperately to identify themselves with one thing, instead of themselves.’

She elegantly articulated these sentiments in song.

'Identity
Is the crisis,
Can't you see?
When you look in the mirror,
Do you see yourself?
Do you see yourself
On the TV screen?
Do you see yourself
In the magazine?
When you see yourself,
Does it make you scream?’
‘Identity'

I have always found this a compelling provocation. When we look in the mirror, do we see categories and classifications? Do we see other people’s standards and stereotypes - their expectations of who we are? Or do we see a unique individual, liberated from definitions and divisions?

X-Ray Spex did not hang around for too long. They only released five singles and one album, 1978’s ‘Germfree Adolescents.’ They performed in all the classic punk venues: The Roxy, the Man in the Moon, the Hope and Anchor, New York's CBGB's. And they featured in the famous 1978 Rock Against Racism gig at Victoria Park. 

But then in 1979, exhausted by touring, Poly left the band. She was misdiagnosed with schizophrenia and sectioned. Only many years later was her condition recognised as bipolar disorder. 

‘It isn’t normal for people to be surrounded by people telling them that they’re great.’

Poly pursued a solo career, developing a more jazz-based sound, and in 1983 she joined the Hare Krishna movement. She died of breast cancer in 2011. She was only 53.

Poly Styrene teaches us that creativity is, at heart, an articulation of your own personal tastes, your individual feelings, your particular perspectives – unconstrained by custom, consensus and convention. Creativity is an expression of self.

The B-side of X-Ray Spex’ first single was ‘I Am a Cliché’ and featured the song title being repeated over and over again. Of course, Poly Styrene was anything but.

'I drove my polypropylene car on wheels of sponge,
Then pulled into a Wimpy bar to have a rubber bun,
And watched the world turn day-glo. 
You know, you know,
The world turned day-glo.’
X-Ray Spex, ‘The World Turned Day-Glo’

No. 330

A Visit to the Skincare Institute: Do We Have to Live a Brand to Think It?

Sir Oswald Birley (1880-1952), The Nurse (Margaret Elizabeth Barrett) 1921

'I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.'
Carl Jung

Our Clients were planning to extend their male toiletries range into skincare. It seemed reasonable enough. Men the world over were becoming body-conscious and were adopting more sophisticated grooming regimes. They might finally be prepared to pay for smooth, soft, healthy skin.

In order to get the Agency team into the right frame of mind, it was arranged for us all, while on a trip to Germany, to visit the local Skincare Institute for a facial.

I confess I’m not the most tactile person. I’m not the first in the queue for an emotional embrace, a corporate cuddle or a muscular man-hug. Am I innately awkward? Did I miss out on physical affection when I was a child? Am I emotionally crippled? I don’t know. Suffice to say that, while I have enormous respect for saunas and spas, hot tubs and health clubs - they’re not my natural habitat. 

Nonetheless, I put my reservations to one side and joined the small group climbing aboard the company minibus. It was all in a day’s work.

The Skincare Institute struck me as a rather forbidding place. All white walls, polished floors and framed photos of winter landscapes. It reeked of clinical excellence and joyless professionalism. We’d arrived as a group, but were soon separated. A tall fraulein with plaited hair and starched uniform called my name and led me to a studio full of glass cabinets, steel trolleys and fluffy towels. At its centre was a padded massage table at which she busied herself as if preparing for a medical operation.

I stood nervously awaiting instruction.

At length, she glanced over her shoulder and issued a businesslike command.

‘Now, take all of your clothes off.’

Somewhat taken aback, and concerned that something had been lost in translation, I made dramatic gesticulations around my face.

‘It’s only for my face. It’s just a facial.’

The fraulein was not impressed.

‘Ya, of course. It will help you relax.’

‘It won’t help me relax,’ I complained under my breath. 

But I did what I was told and folded my clothes into neat piles on a nearby chair. She seemed the type of person who would brook no argument.

I lay face up on the cushioned massage table, with only a fluffy towel covering my dignity. The fraulein set about her business with grim concentration: pressing and patting my face and shoulders; rubbing and kneading my chin, cheeks and forehead; smearing and smoothing her fragrant unguents deep into my pores.

It was all very awkward. But I maintained a carefree grin to reassure her.

I suspect my masseuse was somewhat taken aback by my epidermal condition. As she reached for another handful of moisturiser from a capacious tub at her side, she exclaimed:

‘Your skin is drinking my products!’ 

Eventually the procedure reached its conclusion. I sprung to my feet, hurriedly pulled on my clothes and scampered for the exit.

‘Excellent. Thank you. Thoroughly relaxing. Really enjoyable. Must do that again some time.’ 

It certainly helps a Planner to taste and see a brand, to feel and touch a product in the market, on the shelf, in situ; to experience a service as a consumer would. 

And yet I don’t subscribe to total immersion – to the belief that one should demonstrate passion for a product in order to justify working on it. I’ve never felt I need to live a brand in order to think it.

I’m no car enthusiast, but I’ve given good advice on cars. I’m no fashion expert, but I’ve helped create fashion advertising. I’m not the world’s biggest fast food fan, but I have an opinion about fried chicken.

Come to think of it, if I were only to work on brands that are genuinely integral to my life, I’d be restricted to the likes of Bic biros, Tunnock’s biscuits and Guinness stout. A slim portfolio.

We never did get round to launching the mass-market male moisturiser. I guess the numbers didn’t quite stack up. A shame really, as I always thought the fraulein’s words would have worked rather well in an advertising campaign:

‘Your skin is drinking my products!’

'Hold me, baby, drive me crazy.
Touch me, all night long.
Make me love you, kiss and hug you.
Touch me, all night long.’
Fonda Rae, ‘Tuch Me (All Night Long)’ (G Carmichael, P Adams)

No. 329

Louise Brooks: 'If I Ever Bore You, It’ll Be with a Knife.’

'I never gave away anything without wishing I had kept it; nor kept it without wishing I had given it away.'
Louise Brooks

I recently read ‘Lulu in Hollywood,’ the collected essays of Louise Brooks - legendary silent screen actor, dancer, writer and icon of the Jazz Age.

Brooks defined a naturalistic approach to performance that was years ahead of its time. With her sharp bobbed hair, hedonistic lifestyle and independent spirit, she epitomised 1920s flapper cool. And with her acerbic wit she shone a light on Hollywood’s guilty secrets. 

Let us consider what we can learn from this thoroughly compelling character.

1. You Have to Leave Home to Find Yourself

Mary Louise Brooks was born in Cherryvale, Kansas in 1906. Her father was a virtuous lawyer, and her mother a talented amateur pianist who inspired her with a love of books and music. She grew up in a household without discipline, ‘where truth was never punished.’

When Brooks was 9 she was sexually abused by a neighbour.

‘We were Midwesterners born in the Bible Belt of Anglo-Saxon farmers, who prayed in the parlor and practised incest in the barn.’ 

At 15 Brooks joined the Denishawn School of Dancing, a company that included a young Martha Graham. It provided her with an escape route.

‘I learned to act by watching Martha Graham dance, and I learned to dance by watching Charlie Chaplin act.’

2. ‘Excellence Comes from Ceaseless Concentration’

Brooks toured the United States with the Denishawn Company and spent a season abroad with them in London and Paris. She was reputed to be the first person to dance the Charleston in London. Then, in 1924, she moved to New York, finding employment as a chorus girl in ‘George White's Scandals’ and the ‘Ziegfeld Follies.’

‘The rest of the girls wore smiles as fixed as their towering feather headdresses. I decided right then that onstage I would never smile unless I felt like it.’

Brooks took to New York life with enthusiasm. Dropping her Kansas accent, she stayed at the Algonquin, rode in Central Park West and swam off Long Island Sound. Courted by Wall Street bankers, she dined at 21 and the Colony, and partied on Park Avenue. Hobnobbing with millionaires, she danced at the Ritz, drank cocktails at the El Fey club and slept with Chaplin and Garbo. 

Brooks still found time for her work, which equipped her for subsequent success.

‘Nobody can learn to dance without complete attention and sustained concentration on the disposition of the head, neck, trunk, arms, legs and feet – on the use of every muscle of the body as it moves before the eyes with the speed of motion-picture film… Anyone who has achieved excellence in any form knows that it comes as a result of ceaseless concentration. Paying attention.’

3. It’s Not Just Your Time, It’s Your Life

In 1925, spotted by a Hollywood producer, Brooks was signed on a five-year contract with Paramount. Soon she was playing the female lead in silent light comedies and flapper films. 

'Most beautiful dumb girls think they are smart and get away with it, because other people, on the whole, aren't much smarter.’

On the West Coast Brooks launched herself into a similarly hedonistic world of glamour, gossip, liquor and cocaine; of all-night parties at the beach house and a suite at the Beverly Wilshire; of sexual experimentation and tragic suicides. She was a frequent guest of William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies at Hearst Castle in San Simeon.

‘He was always standing up as he sat down and going out as he came in.’

Perhaps inevitably for someone who was at heart independent, bookish and fiercely truthful, Brooks grew tired of Hollywood.

‘The pettiness of it, the dullness, the monotony, the stupidity - no, no, that is no place for Louise Brooks.’

As the studios switched over to talkies, they took the opportunity to cut contract players’ salaries. When Paramount denied Brooks a promised pay raise, she stood her ground. Eventually she’d had enough and walked out.

‘That’s what we are paying you for – your time.’
‘You mean my life.’

4. Playing Yourself Is the Hardest Thing in the World To Do

Brooks leapt at an offer to travel to Germany and work with Expressionist director GW Pabst. He was casting for his next film ‘Pandora's Box,’ which was based on the plays of Frank Wedekind. He just stopped short of offering the lead to Marlene Dietrich.

Brooks found that for the first time in her acting career she was taken seriously.

‘In Hollywood I was a pretty flibbertigibbet whose charm for the executive department decreased with every increase in my fan mail. In Berlin I stepped onto the station platform to meet Mr Pabst and became an actress.’

At that time film acting still shared many of the characteristics of its stage counterpart. It was all exaggerated body language and pronounced facial expressions. In ‘Pandora’s Box’ Brooks’ gestures, by contrast, were more subtle, her movement was more graceful, her posture less affected.

‘The great art of films does not consist in descriptive movements of face and body, but in the movements of thought and soul transmitted in a kind of intense isolation.’

Brooks was pioneering a more psychologically nuanced, more naturalistic style of acting.

‘I was simply playing myself, which is the hardest thing in the world to do – if you know that it’s hard. I didn’t, so it seemed easy.’

Inevitably perhaps, when audiences and critics first viewed her performance, they were bewildered.

‘Louise Brooks cannot act. She does not suffer. She does nothing.’

Louise Brooks and friends at Joe Zellis Royal Box nightclub in Paris May, 1929

5. They Can Control Your Circumstances, But They Can’t Control Your Soul

‘Pandora’s Box’ (1929) is one of the masterpieces of the silent era. It follows Lulu, a carefree young woman whose raw sexuality and uninhibited nature bring ruin to herself and those who love her. The film is remarkable for its frank treatment of sexual attitudes, including one of the first screen portrayals of a lesbian.

Alwa: Why don't you marry Lulu, Father?
Schön: One doesn't marry such a woman! It would be suicide!

Brooks recognised something of herself in Lulu: spirited, unselfconscious, indifferent to others, living completely in the present.

 ‘Lulu’s story is as near as you’ll get to mine.’

6. ‘Fashion Changes, Style Endures’

In the 1920s, in the wake of World War I and the suffrage movement, women  embraced more emancipated fashions: discarding their corsets, raising their hems and dropping their waist-lines. Brooks was the archetypal flapper. She was short and slender, with big brown eyes and thin, horizontal eyebrows; pale skin and a knowing lip-sticked smile. She wore Mary-Jane shoes, pleated skirts and silk blouses; elegant tank dresses and deep-cut evening gowns with a string of pearls. 

And, of course, Brooks had a dazzling black bob - cropped short to the ears with a little fringe, sometimes concealed under a cloche hat. According to critic Kenneth Tynan she was ‘The Girl in the Black Helmet.’ 

Though indelibly associated with the Jazz Age, Brooks’ look is also timeless. As Coco Chanel observed: ‘Fashion changes, style endures.’

In ‘Pandora’s Box’ we meet Lulu in a diaphanous Jean Patou dress, backless and unstructured. Here’s Lulu in a v-necked white wedding gown with a waterfall hem; Lulu in mourning in a long-sleeved black satin silk ensemble with a veil. Magnificent.

Both Lulu and Brooks gain power from their clothes. Their style makes them more resilient, more confident, more in control.

‘A well-dressed woman, even if her purse is painfully empty, can conquer the world.’

After ‘Pandora's Box’ Pabst cast Brooks again in his fine social drama ‘Diary of a Lost Girl’ (1929) and he tried to persuade her to stay in Europe.

'She belongs to Europe and to Europeans. She has been a sensational hit in her German pictures. I do not have her play silly little cuties. She plays real women, and plays them marvellously.’

7. There Is a Time to Weep

Nonetheless, Brooks returned to the United States and resumed her quarrels with the film industry. 

She refused to go back to Paramount for sound retakes of her most recent American movie. The resentful studio found another actor to overdub her part, placed her on an unofficial blacklist and put out a story that she didn’t have a voice for sound pictures. Columbia offered her a contract, but she wasn’t prepared to pay the price the studio boss was asking. And then, when she was proposed as the female lead alongside James Cagney in ‘The Public Enemy’, she turned it down and the role went to Jean Harlow.

Brooks’ 1930s were marked by poor roles, poor reviews, bit parts and bankruptcy. She began dancing in nightclubs and writing for magazines to earn a living.  

‘The only people who wanted to see me were men who wanted to sleep with me.’

Eventually Brooks retreated to Kansas.

‘I found that the citizens could not decide whether they despised me for having once been a success away from home, or for now being a failure in their midst.’

After an unsuccessful attempt at running a dance studio, Brooks moved back to New York. She took work as a radio actor in soap operas, a gossip columnist, a salesgirl and an escort. Living in poverty in a small apartment, she wrote a tell-all memoir, but destroyed the entire manuscript. She drank heavily, was often  ‘gincoherent’ and considered suicide. 

‘I was navigating, but not seeing.’

8. There Is a Time to Laugh

In 1955 French film historians rediscovered Brooks' work, proclaiming her a neglected cinematic icon. This led to a Louise Brooks Film Festival and the rehabilitation of her reputation in the US. She was persuaded by the curator James Card to move to Rochester, close to the George Eastman House film collection. There she studied cinema and wrote about her career in movie magazines.

Brooks revealed herself to be a talented author, offering frank opinion and lucid observation on cinema, reflecting with sharp wit and total candour on her life.

'I have been taking stock of my 50 years since I left Wichita in 1922 at the age of 15 to become a dancer… How I have existed fills me with horror. For I have failed in everything - spelling, arithmetic, riding, tennis, golf; dancing, singing, acting; wife, mistress, whore, friend. Even cooking. And I do not excuse myself with the usual escape of 'not trying.' I tried with all my heart.’

In 1985 Brooks died of a heart attack. She was 78 years old.

Louise Brooks was an extraordinary woman. Smart, beautiful, funny and stylish. A gifted dancer, actor and writer. In her total immersion in the present, in her relentless quest for truth and good times, in her seeming indifference to the judgement of others, she was thoroughly modern.

'I have a gift for enraging people, but if I ever bore you, it’ll be with a knife.’

Brooks was too intelligent, too thoughtful and questioning, for Hollywood. But thankfully she left us one of the great movies of the silent era and some very witty writing.

In one of her last essays Brooks explained why she had not written her memoir. 

‘I am unwilling to write the sexual truth that would make my life worth reading. I cannot unbuckle the Bible Belt.’

'I wish I knew how
It would feel to be free.
I wish I could break
All the chains holdin’ me.
I wish I could say
All the things that I should say.
Say 'em loud, say 'em clear
For the whole round world to hear.
I wish I could share
All the love that's in my heart,
Remove all the bars
That keep us apart.
I wish you could know
What it means to be me.
Then you'd see and agree
That every man should be free.’

Nina Simone, ‘I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free’ (B Taylor / D Dallas)

No. 328

Merce Cunningham: ‘The Surprise of the Instant’

Gerda Peterich, Merce Cunningham Courtesy of the Barbican

‘Dancing exercises on dancers an insidious attraction that makes them work daily at perfecting an instrument which is really deteriorating from birth.’
Merce Cunningham

I recently watched a fine documentary about the American dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham (‘Cunningham’ by Alla Kovgan).

Cunningham liberated dance from established practice and historic convention. He celebrated the infinite possibilities of human movement. His dance was precise and complex, intensely physical and intellectually rigorous. He collaborated across media and embraced the creative potential of chance, technology and the absurd. He redefined the way people think about dance. And he always resisted definitions.

‘Are you an avant garde choreographer, a maker of modern dance?’
‘Oh, I’m a dancer. That’s sufficient for me.’

Let us consider some of Cunningham’s core principals.

‘Everybody in the audience is different. So they may all dislike it. But they dislike it for different reasons.’

1. ‘The Only Way to Do It Is to Do It.’

Cunningham was born into a family of lawyers in Centralia, Washington in 1919. Having learned tap as a young boy, he studied acting and then dance at the Cornish School in Seattle. In 1939 he moved to New York and danced as a soloist in the Martha Graham Dance Company for six years. In 1944 he presented his first solo show, and in 1953, while teaching at Black Mountain College, North Carolina, he formed the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

‘The only way to do it is to do it.’

Success did not come easy to the company. In the early days they would tour America in a VW Camper Van. On one occasion they arrived at a gas station, piled out of the bus and started limbering up. The attendant enquired:

‘Are you a group of comedians?’
‘No, we’re from New York.’

Gerda Peterich, Merce Cunningham, 1952. Courtesy of Fall for Dance North

2. Expand Your Vocabulary

Cunningham was concerned with all forms of movement. He liked to set up oppositions – between, for example, a slow arm and a rapid foot. His dancers twisted and turned, jerked and juddered; they slid, skipped, squatted and stretched. Their actions were sometimes beautiful and sometimes on the edge of awkward.

‘My idea about movement is that any movement is possible for dancing. That ranges all the way from nothing of course, up to the most extended kind of movement that one might think up.’

3. Broaden Your Perspective

Cunningham was not interested in the conventions associated with ‘putting on a show.’ He distributed his dancers across the whole stage and oriented them at every angle – eschewing the ‘front and centre’ spot and its associated hierarchies, denying the audience a focal point on which to settle their gaze.

'What really made me think about space and begin to think about ways to use it was Einstein's statement that there are no fixed points in space. Everything in the universe is moving all the time.’

Merce Cunningham Dance Company in Cargo X, 1989Photography by Jed Downhill

4. ‘Don’t Interpret. Present’

Cunningham wanted his dance to be autonomous, and so his choreography was ‘non-representational.’ It did not refer to, or interpret, any historical event or mythical story; any particular feeling or idea. 

‘We don’t interpret something. We present something. We do something. And then any kind of interpretation is left to anybody looking at it in the audience.’

5. Don’t Integrate. Liberate

From the outset Cunningham worked with composer John Cage, who became his lifelong partner and frequent collaborator. They determined that music and dance should exist independently within the same performance. The dancers’ movements would no longer be harnessed to the rhythm, mood and structure of the music. 

'I think the thing that we agreed to so many years ago actually, was that the music didn't have to support the dance, nor the dance illustrate the music, but they could be two things going on at the same time.’

6. Assimilate the Flaws

‘You have to allow for every body. Every single person has a possibility.’

While ballet had a tradition of elegant uniformity, Cunningham sought to accommodate individuality of body shape, personality and movement. Although he was incredibly precise and demanding, he saw creative opportunity in human differences and flaws.

‘I think that Merce was interested in what could be considered our flaws as dancers. And he hesitated to correct us unless he just got irritated by what he saw.’
Viola Farber, Dancer

‘He demands that you are first of all yourself as a human being, and from that a dancer.’
Gus Solomons Jnr, Dancer

Martha Graham with Merce Cunningham

7. Renounce Competition

In keeping with his embrace of individuality, Cunningham cultivated an egalitarian ethos within his company.

‘I myself never liked that competitive thing that so much of dancing seemed to have. So I never tried to do that in my own situation. I went on the assumption that each dancer was a person who had certain abilities. I would attempt to let each of the dancers find out for himself how he danced, what kind of person he was in that situation. It’s not politics. It’s dancing.’

8. Accept the Absurd

Cunningham was interested in challenging audiences with the surreal and the absurd. 

‘People have often defended art on the grounds that life was a mess and that therefore we needed art in order to escape from life. I would like to have an art that was so bewildering, complex and illogical that we would return to everyday life with great pleasure.’

And so Cunningham presented a door on wheels and a man with a chair on his back. There was a woman with an illuminated umbrella and a chap struggling to put a sweater on. The stage was filled with silver pillows.

9. Embrace Chance

Recognising that chance is a critical component in ordinary life, Cunningham put it to work as a creative tool. Randomness could be used to break up traditional structures; to challenge conventional notions of narrative – beginning, middle and end. Randomness also freed his imagination from its own assumptions, counterbalancing his habits and rationality with the unplanned and the unexpected.

'The use of chance operations opened out my way of working. The body tends to be habitual. The use of chance allowed us to find new ways to move and to put movements together that would not otherwise have been available to us. It revealed possibilities that were always there, except that my mind hadn't seen them.’

Cunningham would flip coins, roll dice, turn playing cards or consult the I-Ching to determine the order of different steps or the sequence of different passages. Sometimes dancers were given a set of movements that they could execute as they pleased: in any order and with any frequency; exiting and entering at will.

10. Experiment with Technology

Cunningham experimented extensively with television, video and computers; with animation, body sensors and motion capture. Technology enabled him to overcome long-established limits of possibility; to re-imagine the human body and the process of dance creation.

'It expands what we think we can do. I think normally the mind gets in the way and says, 'You can't do that.”

11. Embark on ‘An Adventure in Togetherness.’

‘We have only two things in common: our ideas and our poverty.’
Robert Rauschenberg

Rather than seeking to impose a singular artistic vision, Cunningham enjoyed the alchemy of collaboration. As well as partnering with Cage, he worked with musicians David Tudor and Brian Eno; with fashion designer Rei Kawakubo; and with artists Robert Rauschenberg, Bruce Nauman, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella and Jasper Johns.

For Cunningham these partnerships represented ‘an adventure in togetherness.’

‘One of the most amazing things about our collaboration was sort of a carte blanche trust, where nobody is really responsible, but as a group of people we’re not irresponsible. And I think that creates a wonderful feeling about the possibilities of society.’

Breckyn Drescher and Christian Allen performing “Roaratorio” by Merce Cunningham.Credit: Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

12. ‘Believe in the Surprise of the Instant’

Over a 70 year career Cunningham choreographed some 180 dances and more than 700 site-specific events. He took his company all over the world and performed as a dancer into the early 1990s. In 2009 he presented ‘Nearly Ninety’, a piece that marked his 90th birthday. He died at his home in New York a few months later. 

Cunningham encouraged us to reflect on the fundamentals of our endeavours; to be radical in our ambition and bold in our execution. And he sustained his enduring appetite for dance through ‘a continuous belief in the surprise of the instant.’

‘It is for me a question of faith, and a continuous belief in the surprise of the instant. Put aside fatigue, aches, injuries to the body and psyche. Let the shape and the time of a single or multiple action take its weight and measure. It will be expressive.’

'Soon as I get used to the pain,
Maybe then I'll understand why
Tears fall down like rain. 
Tell me how can love seem so deep 
And leave at the wink of an eye?
Surprise, surprise. Look what's falling out of my eyes.’

Bobby Womack, ‘Surprise, Surprise’ (B Womack, J Ford)

No. 327

The Weeping Businessman: The Pros and Cons of Emotional Contagion

'I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.'
Walt Whitman, 'Song of Myself'

There was a time when my work obliged me to take quite a number of long-haul flights. 

Despite the frequency of these trips, I remained something of an amateur: making the most of the superior meal and movie selection in Business Class; exploring the variety of options enabled by the adjustable seating; availing myself of the ample supplies of oaked chardonnay; and making myself cozy in the grey tracksuit pyjamas that Virgin gave passengers back in the day. Ideal!

Nonetheless, I always admired the professional travellers: the seasoned veterans that eschewed the fuss and finery; rejected the in-flight meal, entertainment and alcohol  - and got straight to work.

I particularly recall being seated next to one such executive on a plane to Boston. He was a lean, suited man, who made no gesture of greeting on arrival. He carried one of those bulky lawyer’s briefcases that suggest seniority and seriousness. 

After take-off he set out his paraphernalia for in-flight comfort, neatly arranging his unguents, earplugs and blindfold on his tray table. He refused food, donned his reading glasses and settled straight into a set of files, reports and spreadsheets, making authoritative notes in the margins.

After a good few hours of focused industry, my neighbour was satisfied. Having secured his documents in the overhead locker, he sat back, switched on a monitor, donned his headphones and poured himself a glass of water. 

He then selected ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’ from the movie menu and proceeded to cry profusely all the way through. Floods of tears poured down his cheeks, and he made no effort to stop them, to hide them or to mop them up. He just focused intently on Grant, MacDowell, Scott Thomas et al, lost in his own melancholy reverie.

Finding this all rather moving, I took another sip of oaked chardonnay and began to cry too. The mood was contagious.

'No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.'
Theodore Roosevelt

The Guardian recently had a piece about Emotional Contagion (24 Jan 2021).

This is the phenomenon whereby humans synchronise their emotions with those of others. Typically, we mimic our friends’ expressions and gestures. If someone smiles at us, we smile back, and the act of smiling improves our mood.

Emotional Contagion is found particularly to occur in people who are empathetic – those who feel a connection, read non-verbal clues and echo behaviour. Indeed, according to a 2011 study by scientists at the University of Southern California and Duke University, people who take a course of Botox are robbed of their ability to understand what others are feeling, because they are physically unable to copy their emotions.

You could argue that, as advertisers, we are in the business of Emotional Contagion. Our communication campaigns are not designed to convert every audience member directly and independently. Rather we create a positive predisposition in the few that becomes, in time, a positive predisposition of the many. We catalyse an emotional response to a brand that others share and distribute. We prompt infectious affection.

It’s one of the reasons mass media are an important part of the advertiser’s armoury.

But we should be wary of the power at our disposal.

A 2014 study by Facebook demonstrated that Emotional Contagion could occur even without personal interaction. Researchers - somewhat controversially - manipulated the emotional content of 700,000 users’ newsfeeds and found that those who had been exposed to negative content tended to share more negative posts with others.

More recently, scientists from the universities of Oxford and Birmingham have concluded that young people are particularly inclined to ‘catch’ moods from each other – and that bad moods spread with greater virulence among them.

The phenomenon of Emotional Contagion reaffirms the need for brands and communication agencies to adhere to ethical practices; to use their power responsibly; to be a force for good in people’s lives.

In this social media age, this Age of Anxiety, we should also encourage mental toughness in our friends, colleagues and consumers; and be mindful that empathetic people require that resilience more than most.

When the flight landed in Boston, my neighbour and I went our separate ways without exchanging a word or glance. I had assumed at the outset, from his cool demeanour and serious disposition, that we had little in common. But when we parted I felt we had formed an emotional bond – albeit one established around a sentimental Britflick.

'Baby, baby, when I look at you
I get a warm feeling inside.
There's something about the things you do
That keeps me satisfied.
I wouldn't lie to you, baby,
It's mainly a physical thing.
This feeling that I got for you, baby,
It makes me wanna sing.
I feel for you.
I think I love you.’

Chaka Khan, ‘I Feel for You’ (L D Anthony / D Andrea)

No. 326