A Brief for Planners: Outsiders Who Want to Belong

Richard Hamilton, 'Swingeing London 67 (f)’. 1968–9

‘Oi, Boris!

I kept my head down and quickened the pace.

‘Oi, Boris!’ the stranger shouted after me again. It was a young lad with a group of his mates, all laughing heartily.

‘Boris, get back to work!’

I pretended not to hear and hurried down the street. I crossed the road and blended in with the commuter crowds, losing myself in a fog of self-doubt.

I get this once a week.

‘Alright, Boris?’

‘Hey Boris, are you off to a party?’

Why Boris? I ask myself. Why not Clooney or Beckham or Pitt?

I’ve looked in the mirror many times, assessing my resemblance to the UK Prime Minister. Yes, I have messy hair - but it’s grey, not blond. Yes, I have a heavy frame - but surely not that robust. And there the likeness ends. I have stubble and big ears and wear artisanal jackets… 

I have concluded that it’s more a reflection of Boris’ celebrity than of our similarity. A few years ago I spotted Jeremy Corbyn on every street corner. He was often hanging around in shopping centres or waiting at the bus stop, carrying a plastic bag and looking a bit bored and angry. Now I don’t notice him at all.

'Why fit in when you were born to stand out?’
Dr Seuss

When I was at school I always wanted to belong. I tried to engage and participate - to be in with in-crowd. I aspired to be every Tom, Dick or Harry, every average Joe. Anyone in fact but Jim. I imagined that if one were anonymous, unremarkable, invisible, it would be incredibly liberating.

And yet at the same time I consistently felt a little different – just slightly adjacent, eccentric and offbeat. I laughed at the wrong time, wore the wrong clothes, said the wrong thing. I was one step removed.

'Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.'
John F Kennedy

This I suspect is the curse of all Planners. They tend to be outsiders: people who regard the world from a distance, with a critical eye and a sense of objectivity. And yet at the same time they yearn to fit in. They strive to understand and imagine what others might be thinking or feeling. They want to be normal.

I have come to believe that it is this combination of empathy and objectivity that qualifies Planners to do their job. At their best they feel what others feel and see what others fail to see. They are outsiders who want to belong.

'Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.'
Bernard M Baruch

When I was a kid my mother gave me a crew cut - like a US Marine. And when I was a student I had my hair slicked back with coconut oil - like a Kray twin. Neither of these looks was particularly mainstream, but I’ve considered reverting to them in an effort to break the association with the Prime Minister. Indeed my barber Simon has recently offered to ‘de-Boris’ me.

Of course, I’ll probably still end up looking a bit weird. But where’s the shame in that?

'It's weird not to be weird.'
John Lennon

'Strange, I've seen that face before,
Seen him hanging 'round my door.
Like a hawk stealing for the prey,
Like the night waiting for the day.
Strange, he shadows me back home,
Footsteps echo on the stones.
Rainy nights, on Haussmann Boulevard,
Parisian music drifting from the bars.’

Grace Jones, ‘I’ve Seen That Face Before (Libertango)’(B Reynolds / A Piazzolla / D Wilkey / N Delon)

Wishing everyone a Happy New Year and a thoughtful 2022.
Look after yourselves. 

No. 352

Chaplin’s City Lights: You Only Know Me When You’re Drunk

‘City Lights’ is a 1931 romantic comedy written, produced, directed by, and starring Charlie Chaplin. 

Chaplin had created his character the Little Tramp in 1914, and by the end of the 1920s he was famous the world over. With his neat toothbrush moustache, curly black hair, bushy eyebrows and awkward waddle, the Tramp was instantly recognisable. His bowler hat and cane, wing collar and waistcoat suggested that he had once been a man of distinction. But now his clothes were tatty, he was homeless and friendless, and all he had to sustain him were his resilience, sharp wits and good humour.

As the opening title card of Chaplin’s 1921 film ‘The Kid’ announced, audiences could expect:

'A picture with a smile - and perhaps, a tear.'

Chaplin started developing the script for ‘City Lights’ in 1928. Since the success of 1927’s ‘The Jazz Singer,’ Hollywood had been investing in ‘talkies,’ and he came under some pressure to make the Tramp speak for the first time. But Chaplin felt that the character’s charm resided in his silence. And so he determined to use just occasional sound effects and also, for the first time, he composed the score. 

Filming started in December 1928, but was not completed until September 1930. The unusually lengthy production was in part down to Chaplin’s fastidiousness. He constructed elaborate sets. He experimented with casting. He re-shot a critical opening scene 342 times. But he also suspended the shoot for substantial periods while he worried about the sound issue. 

'In the past my work had usually stimulated interest among producers. But now they were too preoccupied with the success of the talkies, and as time went on I began to feel outside of things; I guess I had been spoiled.'

‘City Lights’ is full of elegantly choreographed comic set-pieces. The Tramp narrowly escapes falling down a sidewalk elevator. He mistakes a party streamer for spaghetti. He replaces his foreman’s cheese with soap. And when he swallows a whistle, he inadvertently hails a taxi and attracts a pack of stray dogs. 

The movie is also graced with a compelling plot.

As he wanders the busy streets of downtown Los Angeles, the Tramp meets a beautiful blind Flower Seller (Virginia Cherrill – cast because she had very poor eyesight). He is beguiled by her sweet nature and walks away a man in love.

That evening the Tramp saves a drunken Millionaire (Harry Myers) who was intent on committing suicide since his wife has left him. The new friends go back to his mansion for drinks and then hit the town to celebrate. As dawn breaks, the Millionaire takes the Tramp home in his Rolls Royce.

The Tramp: Be careful how you're driving.
Millionaire: Am I driving?

From this point on the Tramp oscillates between pursuing his romance with the Flower Seller and enjoying adventures with the Millionaire. The two plot strands interact with each other, but the Flower Seller and Millionaire never meet.

When, later that same morning, the Tramp chances upon the Flower Seller on the street, he buys her whole basket of blooms with money borrowed from the Millionaire, and he drives her home in his friend’s Rolls. Naturally she assumes the Tramp is wealthy, but she is also quite taken with his charm and gallantry.

Sadly the girl is soon confined to her bed with a fever. She falls behind in the rent and is threatened with eviction. To help her out the Tramp takes a job as a street sweeper and gets himself a slot on a boxing bout for a $50 purse. 

In a classic scene the Tramp prepares for the contest with smelling salts, rabbits’ feet and horseshoes. He endeavours to persuade his opponent to fix the fight - to no avail - and takes to the ring in his bowler hat. Once the bout begins, he hides behind the referee and dances around the Prizefighter. He hugs his opponent, hugs the referee and hugs the corner post. He takes a running jump at the Prizefighter, rings the bell to end the round early and gets himself tied up in the bell rope. Eventually our hero is left sprawled on the canvas and counted out.

The Tramp is incredibly unfortunate and accident-prone. He can be both cowardly and foolhardy. But he is also resourceful, generous and good-natured. And, above all, he has a heart.

A running gag through ‘City Lights,’ and indeed one of the primary plot mechanics, is that the Millionaire only recognises the Tramp when he is drunk. When he wakes up each morning with a hangover, he swears he’s never seen his new friend before and has him ejected.

This resonated with me. I suspect we all have friends and colleagues who seek us out when they need something, or when they’re just looking for company. But the test of true friendship, and indeed fellowship at work, is whether you stick around through the tough times, when there’s nothing you can gain, no purpose to be served, no larks to be had.

At length the drunken Millionaire is persuaded to pay for an operation to cure the Flower Seller’s blindness. But the Tramp is mistakenly thought to have stolen the money and is put in prison.

When, months later, the Tramp is released, he can’t find the Flower Seller at her usual spot and so roams the streets, dishevelled and disconsolate.

In fact the Flower Seller, her sight restored, now runs her own successful shop and has been waiting in hope of one day meeting her benefactor again.

Then, by chance, the Tramp stoops to pick up a flower discarded in the gutter outside the Flower Seller’s shop. He turns and sees her, and breaks into a grin. Not knowing who he is, she is nonetheless amused.

‘I've made a conquest!’

In pity, she offers the Tramp a fresh flower and a coin. He makes to leave, but she insists. And then, when she presses the coin into his hand, she suddenly recognizes his touch. 

‘You?’

 The Tramp nods.

‘You can see now?’
‘Yes, I can see now.’

She continues to hold his hand. The Tramp smiles back. The End.

Despite being released well into the sound era, ‘City Lights’ was the highest-grossing film of 1931. Chaplin invited Albert Einstein to join him at the premier in LA. When the house lights came up, the scientist was in tears. 

Time for a festive break.
Have a restful Christmas. 
Next post will be on Thursday 6 January 2022.
See you on the other side, I hope.

'Maybe I'll sleep real late.
Maybe I'll lose some weight.
Maybe I'll clear my junk.
Maybe I'll just get drunk on apple wine.
Me, I'll be just fine and dandy.
Lord, it's like a hard candy Christmas.
I'm barely getting through tomorrow,
But still I won't let
Sorrow bring me way down.’

Dolly Parton, ‘Hard Candy Christmas’ (C Hall)

No. 351

Frans Hals and the 27 Shades of Black: Learning to Change Your Mind

Portrait of a Man. Frans Hals , early 1650s: Photograph: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

'If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.'
Laozi, ancient Chinese philosopher

I recently attended an exhibition of portraits by 17th century Dutch painter Frans Hals. (‘Frans Hals: The Male Portrait’ is at the Wallace Collection, London until 30 January 2022.)

I confess I have had only a moderate opinion of Hals. My impressions were formed many years ago from seeing cheap reproductions of his most celebrated work, The Laughing Cavalier. I didn’t take to this fellow’s arrogant sideways stare, his absurd upturned moustache, his supercilious grin. And over the years, in various galleries across Europe, I’ve occasionally bumped into other smirking Hals portraits. They’ve served to confirm my reservations about the artist. 

As we enter the exhibition The Laughing Cavalier regards us from the end of a long purple-walled room. The accompanying commentary points out that he is neither laughing, nor a cavalier. Rather he sports a knowing smile. And though we don’t know the sitter’s identity, his carefully groomed hair and fashionable attire suggest a wealthy young man, possibly a cloth merchant.

On closer inspection I found myself admiring the Cavalier’s dashing wide-brimmed hat and richly embroidered doublet - bees, arrows, flames and flowers painted in gold, red and yellow - slashed to reveal an immaculate white linen shirt. I liked the elegance of his soft, lace-trimmed ruff, tied with a black ribbon to match his substantial sash. I was even charmed by that glint in his eyes.

The Laughing Cavalier. Frans Hals (c.1581–1585–1666). The Wallace Collection

The gallery commentary tells us that such flamboyant outfits were de rigueur amongst the young bachelors of Haarlem, the town where Hals was based nearly his whole life. And there are a few other similarly confident, carefree, clean-shaven young men in the exhibition. But once married, the gentlemen of Haarlem would don more sombre apparel, in line with their Calvinist faith, and many of Hals’ sitters were Men in Black.

Such conformity may have represented a challenge for an ordinary portrait painter. But Hals managed to render this single colour in an infinite variety of tones, tints and textures. As Van Gogh later observed:

‘Frans Hals must have had twenty-seven shades of black.’

As we wander round the room we encounter a procession of Haarlem’s military men, councillors, drapers and brewers. The sitters look self-assured, poised, relaxed. Often they place an arm on one hip. Sometimes they regard us over the top of a chair. And despite their formal attire, their individuality shines through.

Tieleman Rossterman has flushed cheeks, a pointed beard and an upturned moustache. With his extravagant lace collar, cambric cuff and gold-trimmed leather glove, he exudes an aura of hard-earned status and authority. Pieter van den Broecke, a Dutch admiral with tousled hair and a weathered visage, sports a long gold chain over his shoulder and rests his gnarled hand on a baton of office. Further along there’s a dignified middle-aged man, whose tightly buttoned black jacket implies restraint. But coloured silks peer out from below and, together with his elegant white cuffs, suggest swagger beneath the surface.

As Hals aged, his brushwork became looser and more fluid, his colour palette more restrained. Critics at the time complained that his paintings looked unfinished. And some subsequently inferred that he had led a dissolute life. These same qualities later appealed to the Impressionists, and he was much admired by Manet and Van Gogh.

Pieter van den Broecke (1585–1640). Frans Hals (c.1581–1585–1666).Photo Credit: English Heritage, Kenwood

I walked away from the exhibition full of respect for Hals. He had ushered in a more natural style of portraiture. He had distilled real characters in oils, conveyed true personalities with vigour and vitality. His work was animated and immediate.

I reflected with some sadness that it’s not often that I change my mind. And rarer still that I admit it. As we age, our views calcify. We repeat the same familiar lines, recite the same righteous wisdoms - with tedious regularity and without giving them fresh thought. We become prisoners of our own opinions.

And yet when we change our minds we demonstrate that we are alert to new information and different circumstances; that we are learning and progressing; that we are alive. Perhaps I should do it more often.

'Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.'
George Bernard Shaw

'Sure I understand.
Of course, I'll be fine.
You had to change your plans.
Oh well, I'll just change mine.
But if it turns out bad,
And if your nights get long,
And if she makes you sad,
No need to be strong.
And if you ever change your mind,
And find you miss those feelings that you left behind,
We can give it one more try,
Some magic place in time,
If you ever change your mind.’

Crystal Gayle, ‘If You Ever Change Your Mind’ (P McGee, B Gundry)

No. 350

Excellent Experiments: What I Learned from Galloping Round the Coffee Table

Joseph Wright of Derby, ‘An Experiment on a Bird in the Air-Pump’

'Negative results are just what I want. They’re just as valuable to me as positive results. I can never find the thing that does the job best until I find the ones that don’t.'
Thomas Edison

My father’s idea of a great Saturday afternoon was watching seamless sport on TV. With an Embassy on the go and a mug of black Nescafe at his side, he’d transition from athletics to speedway to rugby league with equal attentiveness. 

Though not a betting man, Dad spent a good deal of time watching horse racing. This made quite an impression on me as a young child. I developed a solitary game that involved running endless rings round the living room coffee table. I’d gallop in circles at great speed, with an occasional sharp slap to one hip, commentating as I went in an approximation of the patrician tones of Peter O’Sullevan. 

My game was pretty rudimentary. But there was not a lot going on in the 1970s. 

Sadly my child jockey phase came to a disastrous end. On one particular race day I determined to gallop at an even greater than usual tempo. Round and round the coffee table I went, hollering encouragement and instruction to myself at the top of my voice. All of a sudden I became so dizzy that I saw stars, fell over and incurred a gruesome gash on my forehead. 

When later that day I returned from Oldchurch Hospital in bandages, my father called me to one side. Having ruined his afternoon of TV sport, I thought I was in trouble. But I did not receive the expected rebuke. Instead he just asked:

‘What did you learn from all this, Jim?’

In our youth we are instinctively experimental. We engage in all manner of diverse activities - the random and inappropriate, the silly and superficial, the ill-conceived and misguided. But if we manage to emerge from our trials in one piece, they can contribute to our understanding of life.

When I played rugby at school, I learned how to overcome physical fear. When I took mad dog Dillon for a walk, I learned about social anxiety. When I attended heavy metal gigs at the Hammersmith Odeon, I learned that double denim is not a good look. And when I drank whisky with Caz and Thommo, I learned to avoid dark spirits.

Experimentation is similarly valuable in the world of work.

When I had a job cold calling, I learned that polite prevarication doesn’t sell. When I was hired to do filing, I learned that someone needed to invent cloud computing. When I was a focus group moderator, I learned how to direct conversation. And when I was employed on a building site, I learned that The Guardian isn’t welcome in every setting.

'Observation is a passive science, experimentation an active science.'
Claude Bernard

I read in The Guardian recently (I wasn’t on a building site at the time) about a study carried out by Professor Dashun Wang, with colleagues at Northwestern University, into the ‘hot streaks’ experienced by artists and scientists at the peaks of their careers: periods when they found themselves ‘on a roll’ in terms of innovation and output. (12 September, 2021, ‘Scientists identify key conditions to set up a creative ‘hot streak’’) 

First the researchers identified the purple patches experienced by thousands of leading painters, film directors and scientists by reviewing auction prices, IMDb ratings and research citations.

Then they used Artificial Intelligence to assess the diversity of the individuals’ work at different points in their careers. Their algorithms reviewed the variety of the artists’ brush strokes and subject matter; of the directors’ plots and casts; and of the scientists’ research topics.

The team found that all three career types engaged in more diverse output immediately before they hit a 'hot streak.' And then the ‘hot streak’ itself was characterised by a narrower, more focused working style.

‘There’s experimentation, and then there’s implementation based on what you have learned through experimentation.’ 
Prof Dashun Wang (writing in the journal Nature Communications)

The Guardian article cited the example of the film director Peter Jackson:

‘His hugely successful Lord of the Rings trilogy came after an eclectic range of movies such as the sci-fi comedy horror Bad Taste, the puppet film Meet the Feebles and the drama Heavenly Creatures.'

There’s a lesson here for us all in the business world. Of course, we should recognise and reward ‘hot streaks’: those magnificent spells when an individual or team is creating output of consistent quality at high velocity. But we should also understand that these fertile and productive periods can only occur if we allow preceding time and space for experimentation. Incomparable implementation proceeds from excellent experimentation.

'No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.'
Albert Einstein

I can’t quite remember how I replied to my father’s question. What had I learned from my bloody tumble? I guess, reflecting on it now, I discovered that if you spend too much time running round in circles, you end up falling over.

'I fall to pieces
Each time I see you again.
I fall to pieces.
How can I be just your friend?
You want me to act like we've never kissed.
You want me to forget,
Pretend we've never met. 
And I've tried and I've tried
But I haven't yet.
You walk by and I fall to pieces.’
Patsy Cline,'I Fall To Pieces' (H Cochran / H Howard)

No. 349

‘Sweet Smell of Success’: Are We In a Prison of Our Own Making?

'Don't do anything I wouldn't do! That gives you a lot of leeway…'
Sidney Falco, ‘Sweet Smell of Success.’

I recently re-watched one of my favourite films: Alexander Mackendrick’s 1957 reflection on the New York gossip industry, ‘Sweet Smell of Success.’ Based on a short story by Ernest Lehman, caustically scripted by playwright Clifford Odets, shot in moody black and white by James Wong Howe, and set to a swooning jazz score by Elmer Bernstein, it’s a noir classic. 

'Harvey, I often wish I were deaf and wore a hearing aid. With a simple flick of a switch, I could shut out the greedy murmur of little men.’

Burt Lancaster plays J J Hunsecker a tyrannical Broadway columnist for the New York Globe. Bespectacled and elegantly attired, he inhabits the late-night clubs of New York’s Mid-Town, dining with powerful Senators, aspirant stars and unctuous managers. He trades in hearsay and half-truths. He is at once charming and condescending, composed and yet with an air of menace.

'You're dead, son. Get yourself buried.’

Tony Curtis plays Sidney Falco, a Press Agent who earns his modest income by placing stories with columnists like Hunsecker. He is vigorous and smooth talking, with youthful good looks. He’s ‘the boy with the ice cream face.’ But he is also cynical, self-interested and completely lacking in scruples. He will stop at nothing to climb the career ladder. 

'J J Hunsecker is the golden ladder to the place I want to get.’

Falco fawns over Hunsecker, who in turn treats him with disdain. Theirs is a relationship of reluctant dependency. The columnist holds his unlit cigarette towards the agent.

'Match me, Sidney.’

The film focuses on Hunsecker’s endeavours to prevent his beloved sister from marrying a jazz musician. (It’s based on the real life columnist Walter Winchell who was similarly protective of his sister.) Hunsecker has commissioned Falco to put an end to the relationship, by any means necessary - so far without success. The columnist is frustrated.

'Sidney, conjugate me a verb. For instance, "to promise.”’

Hunsecker and Falco emerge from the Twenty One Club into the Manhattan night. It’s a bustling world of crowded sidewalks, teeming traffic, crooked cops and gaudy neon. A drunk is thrown brusquely from a nearby nightspot, crashing into a garbage can.

'I love this dirty town.’

Falco pleads for one last chance. He plans to place a smear of the boyfriend in a rival’s gossip column – that way the young couple won’t trace it back to Hunsecker. The piece will suggest that the jazz musician is a communist and a marijuana user.

'The cat's in the bag and the bag's in the river.’

As the plot thickens and the tension ratchets up, Hunsecker offers Falco a candid character assessment.

‘You’re in jail, Sidney. You’re a prisoner of your own fears, your own greed and ambition.’

‘Sweet Smell of Success’ is indeed a tale of ambition, and the damaging effect it has on people. Occasionally we see suggestions that Falco has the residues of a conscience, that he might once have been a decent human being. But his blinkered drive for personal gain, his unquenchable appetite for advancement, has eradicated any qualms and misgivings, any consideration of others.

'I'd hate to take a bite out of you. You're a cookie full of arsenic.’

Now I’m sure none of us could be accused of being quite so amoral as Sidney Falco. But we are all, to varying degrees, driven by ambition. Today ambition is broadly celebrated and encouraged. It’s the urge to get on, to realise our potential, ‘to be the best that we can be.’ It’s a measure of commitment.

But perhaps it’s worth regarding our ambition with a certain amount of circumspection. In historic times this same quality was considered a sin. Ambition is compulsive, corrosive, all consuming. It can eat away at trust and relationships. While driving us upwards and onwards, it can also isolate us. 

In time, compromised by excuses, half-truths and neglect, our friends fall away and our colleagues keep their distance. We become our own gaolers, constrained by walls and fetters we have created ourselves. We are in a prison of our own making.

'The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he's in prison.'
Fyodor Dostoevsky

For a brief moment it seems that Falco’s plans will come to fruition. He withdraws to a bar to celebrate.

'I am tasting my favorite new perfume - success!’

But ultimately his plot is defeated by the integrity of others. As dawn breaks we find him out on Times Square being beaten up by the cops. The lieutenant wipes his hands clean, pigeons flock to the scene and the sound of the brass section swells to a climax.

'Here I am, after so many years,
Hounded by hatred and trapped by fear.
I'm in a box. I've got no place to go.
If I follow my mind, I know I'll slaughter my own.
Help me, I'm the prisoner.
Won't you hear my plea?
I need somebody to listen to me
I beg you, brothers and sisters
I'm counting on you.’
Gil Scott-Heron, ’The Prisoner'

No. 348

Laura Knight: Before the Curtain Rises

The Ballet Girl and the Dressmaker

‘I am just a hard-working woman who longs to pierce the mystery of form and colour.’
Laura Knight

I recently attended an excellent exhibition of the work of English artist Laura Knight. (‘Laura Knight: A Panoramic View’ is at the MK Gallery, Milton Keynes until 20 February 2022.)

'As in the fourteen lines of a sonnet, a few strokes of the pencil can hold immensity.’

Having grown up in modest circumstances, Knight became a much admired and much loved figure in the art establishment. She painted women at work and play; performers on stage and off; troops on duty, machinists on the job and Gypsies on the racecourse. Eschewing modernism, she employed a realistic style of simple lines and vivid colours, revelling in the effects of sunlight; the glow of the footlights; the shimmer of silk and satin.

'One of the greatest moments of Mother's life came when she found that I, a mere baby, was never so content as with pencil and paper; even before I could speak or walk, I drew. There was no question of my purpose in life.'

Laura Johnson was born in Long Eaton, Derbyshire in 1877. Her mother, a single parent of limited means, raised three children and taught part-time at the Nottingham School of Art. She enrolled her youngest daughter to study there when she was just 13.

‘I became aware of my latent power. Daring grew, I would work only in my own way.’

At art school Laura had to deal with rules that restricted her access to life models, and tutors who thought she should develop her ‘feminine side.’ But she also met fellow student Harold Knight. They became friends and married in 1903. 

A Dark Pool

The couple stayed for a time in Staithes, a village on the Yorkshire coast. Knight painted fishing and farming folk going about their working day; women plucking, polishing, peeling and waiting. 

‘Each day she will bid her husband goodbye, not knowing whether she will ever see him again.’

Next Laura and Harold moved to Cornwall, joining the Newlyn artists’ colony. Here Laura painted families enjoying a day on the beach; young women in fashionable bobs walking along the cliff edge, staring out to sea; nude bathers revelling in the summer sun. 

‘How holy is the human body when bare of other than the sun.’

Knight seemed to enjoy capturing women at ease, in reflection, away from the constraints and drudge of daily life.

‘An ebullient vitality made me want to paint the whole world and say how glorious it was to be young and strong.’

The Three Clowns

Knight became intrigued by the tension between outward appearance and inner self. She befriended groups of Gypsies at Epsom and Ascot racecourses, creating portraits from her makeshift studio in the back of an antique Rolls-Royce. Though their clothes were brightly coloured and exotic, their expressions were serious and knowing. 

‘The beauty and remoteness from the world outside gripped me.’

Knight took a particular interest in performers: ballet dancers, circus acts and thespians. She liked to catch them in rehearsal and backstage; before the show and behind the scenes; in stolen moments of rest and recuperation. 

‘Who among the audience could imagine their matchless ballerina hanging on to a curtain in the wings, panting, almost too tired to stand, with a stream of sweat pouring down her neck?’

A ballerina ties her shoes, adjusts her hair and inspects herself in the mirror. A dancer applies her lipstick while her colleague regards us with weary disinterest. A red-costumed acrobat chats with a yellow-hatted bareback rider, as they await the signal for the show to begin. Three clowns in comical outfits are immersed in serious conversation, one cradling his cigar under a ‘No Smoking’ sign. An actor runs a tap in a crowded dressing room, lost in thought. 

‘Tension was tremendous during those last moments before the curtain rose. Then all was private behind; in a second, that thin wall of protection of cloth has disappeared, disclosing a cavern containing what seemed the whole of the rest of the human race.’

Knight was clearly fascinated with the transformation that takes place when a performer steps into the spotlight; when she or he changes from quiet and withdrawn to outgoing and expressive. Here – away from view, before the curtain rises - we see the real person, the true self.

Corporal Elspeth Henderson and Sergeant Helen Turner

Perhaps we are all performers - on occasion and in our own way. We all dial up the energy, turn on the charm, smile and project. Even more so in the social media age. But it would be wrong to think of life and work as a performance. Knight reminds us that genuine reflection, true experiences and real relationships are formed off stage and out of view. We need to protect and preserve the quiet times, the private moments.

Knight was hugely popular in her day. In 1929 she was made a Dame, and in 1936 she became the first woman since 1769 elected to full membership of the Royal Academy. Her work as an official artist during the Second World War sealed her place in the hearts of the nation. 

‘No praise be too high for their staunchness, be they in crowded districts, or in lonely places miles from home.'

Although figurative art fell out of fashion, Knight carried on working into her eighties. She died in 1970, aged 92. 

‘There was beauty in very simple things if one had eyes to see it.’

Knight’s painting was not radical or revolutionary. But it consistently communicated a quiet dignity and understanding. She celebrated hard work and true talent, individuality and difference. She presented us with our better selves.

'Don't you know the skin that you're given was made to be lived in?
You've got a life,
You've got a life worth living.’
Joy Crookes, ‘Skin'

No. 347

My Infectious Ideas: Rosé Wine, Stubble, Neil Young, Mini Cheddars and the Top Button

Jan Vermeer van Delft - Het glas wijn (1658-60)

'Tranquillity is contagious, peace is contagious. One only thinks of the contagiousness of illness, but there is the contagion of serenity and joy.'
Anais Nin

In 2003 I introduced rosé wine to the UK. 

I had attended a work conference in Provence and the light fruity taste of rosé seemed ideal for warm weather and mellow conversation. I liked its informality and optimism, its breezy style and sunny disposition. On my return I began ordering it in pub gardens and at pavement cafes. I took it to summer parties and evening barbecues. I may have attracted some curious glances at first. But soon everyone was drinking it.

A few years later I decided to cultivate an unshaven look. It suggested an appropriately rugged, romantic, Bohemian personality. I spent a night out in the bars and clubs of Hoxton and before too long the local hipsters had adopted my stubble.

What was going on? Why were people copying me?

On reflection I realised this was not a new phenomenon. I was the first person in the UK to listen to Neil Young. Now everyone likes him. I was the one who first selected Mini Cheddars (‘Baked not fried!’) as a pint accompaniment. And periodically I precipitate a fashion amongst young men for wearing their top buttons done up. 

Sometimes it feels like we’re at the vanguard of change; that we’re leading the charge, setting the pace; pioneering new behaviours and attitudes. We feel we’re being original, inventive, individual. When really we’re just another link in the chain of transmission.

'I have often noticed how primate groups in their entirety enter a similar mood. All of a sudden, all of them are playful, hopping around. Or all of them are grumpy. Or all of them are sleepy and settle down. In such cases, the mood contagion serves the function of synchronizing activities.'
Frans de Waal, Primatologist

I read recently (The Guardian, 22 September, 'Mathematicans Discover Music Really Can Be Infectious') about a study carried out by a team from McMaster University in Ontario into the popularity of music downloads.  

The researchers considered the thousand most downloaded songs in Britain between 2007 and 2014, analysing the speed with which they spread and the length of time that they remained popular. They discovered that the pattern of music downloads after their release closely resembled the epidemic curves for infectious disease.

Lead author Dora Rosati explained:

‘With a disease, if you come into contact with someone who is ill, then you have a certain chance of catching that disease. With songs, it looks very similar. The big difference is that for songs, it doesn’t necessarily have to be physical contact – it could be that my friend used this cool new song in their Instagram story, so now I’m going to go and find it.’

The research also established that the rate of reproduction (R number) varied significantly by musical genre. Songs classified as electronica were more than ten times more contagious than rap or hip-hop for example; and heavy metal was not very infectious at all. Which makes complete sense.

We may recognise the phenomenon of contagion in the world of commercial communication where for some years now we have talked about ‘viral marketing.’ Brand ideas are transmitted by personal contact and virtual interaction. At their best they multiply rapidly and exponentially; spread with accelerating speed and thrilling intensity. 

And yet often we judge communication concepts as if they are fixed and stable; statically encountered and passively consumed. Surely the best ideas are kinetic and shifting. They earn attention rather than buying it. 

It is helpful therefore to assess ideas in terms of their capacity for contagion.

What are we doing to make our idea more infectious than those of our competitors?

What is it about our idea that will make consumers copy and mimic it; participate and play with it; adopt and advocate it; adapt and distribute it?

What is our idea’s transmissive power? What is its R number?

'Pure truth cannot be assimilated by the crowd; it must be communicated by contagion.’
Henri-Frederic Amiel

I have in recent years developed a new sartorial variant in the form of a fisherman’s smock. I like its rugged cotton drill, roomy collars, functional pockets and the subtle suggestion of artisanal excellence. And I now have smocks in royal and navy blue and cadmium green. I was expecting my smock to be highly contagious. But curiously this has not so far proved to be the case.

'I'm always a flop at a top-notch affair,
But I've still got my health, so what do I care?
My best ring, alas, is a glass solitaire,
But I still got my health, so what do I care?
By fashion and foppery, I'm never discussed.
Attending the opry, my box would be a bust.
I never shall have that Park Avenue air,
But I'm in such health, why should I care?’
Ethel Merman, 'I've Still Got My Health’ (C Porter)

No. 346

The Useful Human Truth: Nine Lessons from Joni Mitchell

Joel Bernstein www.joelbernstein.com

‘In order to get the right spirit into the music, there’s got to be more than a working relationship. There has to be a sense of passion. There has to be something there for the heart, there has to be something there for the intellect, there has to be something for sensuality and sensation.’
Joni Mitchell

I recently watched a documentary about the singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell (2003’s ‘A Woman of Heart and Mind,’ directed by Susan Lacy).

Since the late 1960s Joni has woven a musical tapestry of tuneful melodies, complex chords and conversational lyrics. She has related her own personal narratives in elegant streams of consciousness. Her songs have been rooted in particular times and places, embellished with rich, imaginative imagery. In crystal clear tones, she has sung about love and independence, the spiritual and the sensual; about illusion and heartbreak, isolation and social justice. She has been honest, articulate and wise; fragile and strong; confessional and allusive. She has been ‘unfettered and alive.’

'I've looked at love from both sides now,
From give and take, and still somehow
It's love's illusions I recall.
I really don't know love at all.’
'Both Sides, Now'

There’s a good deal that we can learn from Joni’s life and work about the craft of creativity.

1. Don’t End Up Kicking the Door Off the Hinges

Roberta Joan ’Joni’ Anderson was born in 1943 in Fort Macleod, Alberta, Canada. Her mother was a teacher, her father an officer in the Royal Canadian Air Force.  On leaving the service, her dad became a grocer and the family settled in Saskatoon.

‘When the war ended my father found us a little house by the highway with a picture window. And I think that set up a permanent longing in me to take off and go somewhere. Things coming and going past that window left an impression upon me. Here they come. Where are they going?’

At age 9 Joni contracted polio, was hospitalized for weeks and spent a lot of time recuperating alone. She struggled academically and her main interest was painting. When she finished high school, she enrolled at the Alberta College of Art.

Joni also taught herself guitar and played folk gigs at her college and local coffeehouses. She determined that music would be her career.

‘My grandmother was a frustrated poet musician and she kicked the door off of the hinges on the farm. I thought of my paternal grandmother who wept for the last time in her life at 14 behind some barn because she wanted a piano… And I thought: maybe I’m the one that got the gene that has to make it happen for these two women…I just thought: I’m gonna end up like my grandmother, kicking the door off the hinges…I better not.’

Jack Robinson/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images

2. Be Grateful for Your Troubles

‘Depression can be the sand that makes the pearl. Most of my best work came out of it… There is a possibility in that mire of an epiphany.’

In 1964 Joni discovered that she was pregnant. Unable to provide for her baby girl, she placed her for adoption. She met American singer Chuck Mitchell, toured the United States with him and soon the couple were married. Joni, 21 and penniless, thought the union would offer a way out of her problems.

‘I was emotionally weak with a lot of things pulling me in all sorts of unattractive directions. And this was a strong pull in a certain direction and somewhat of a solution. So we married each other for all the wrong reasons.’

The marriage didn’t work out. Chuck wasn’t prepared to raise another man’s child. He insisted on Joni performing with him as a duo and on controlling their finances. She felt betrayed. The couple divorced in 1967, and Joni moved to New York, a solo artist once more.

‘I feel every bit of trouble I’m grateful for. Bad fortune changed the course of my destiny. I became a musician.’

'I can't go back there anymore.
You know my keys won't fit the door.
You know my thoughts don't fit the man.
They never can.’
'I Had a King'

3. Develop Your Own ‘Chords of Enquiry’

Joni took to performing in the small clubs and bars of Greenwich Village and touring up and down the East Coast. She also dedicated herself to composing her own songs.

‘I started writing just to develop my own private world.’

Being self-taught, Joni had a distinctive way of playing the guitar. Polio had weakened her left hand, so she devised alternative open tunings to compensate. Some observers remarked on her ‘weird chords.’

‘How can there be weird chords? Chords are depictions of emotions…They feel like my feelings. I call them chords of enquiry. They have a question mark in them. There were so many unresolved things in me that these chords suited me.’

4. Personalise Your Work

While in New York, Joni was greatly impressed by the storytelling quality of Bob Dylan’s songs.

‘His influence was to personalise my work: I feel this - for you, from you, or because of you.’

But Joni also admired old-fashioned crooners, and wanted her songs to be tuneful too. 

‘It was my job to distil a hybrid that allowed for a certain amount of melodic movement and harmonic movement, but with a certain amount of plateau in order to make the longer statement – to be able to say more.’

5. Be Open to Encounter

In 1967 David Crosby of the Byrds saw Joni perform in a club in Florida. Thoroughly impressed, he introduced her to the LA music scene, and she was signed to the Reprise label. Crosby went on to produce her debut album, ‘Song to a Seagull,’ which was released in 1968.

‘How does a person write a song? A lot of it is being open to encounter and in a way in touch with the miraculous.’

Joni settled in Laurel Canyon in LA, embracing the camaraderie, collaboration and counterculture; the spirit of peace and love, art and poetry. With her long, straight, centre-parted, flaxen hair, her fresh face, high cheekbones and toothy smile; with her flowing dresses, knitted shawls and crocheted berets, she was the community’s spiritual leader.

Joni’s subsequent albums, ‘Clouds’ and ‘Ladies of the Canyon,’ earned her increasing critical and commercial success. The latter included the definitive Woodstock anthem, despite the fact that she missed out on the festival.

'We are stardust,
We are golden,
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden.’
'Woodstock'

6. Engage in Crop Rotation

‘Any time I make a record, it’s followed by a painting period. It’s good crop rotation.’

Exhausted by relentless performing and the pressures of fame, depressed by her break-up with singer-songwriter Graham Nash, Joni decided to stop touring for a year and focus on writing and painting.

‘My individual psychological descent coincided ironically with my ascent in the public eye. They were putting me on a pedestal and I was wobbling.’

The songs she wrote at this time appeared on her essential album, ‘Blue.’ Released in 1971, it was an intensely personal work.

‘I was demanding of myself a deeper and greater honesty: more and more revelation in my work in order to give it back to the people.’

'I remember that time you told me,
You said, "Love is touching souls."
Surely you touched mine,
'Cause part of you pours out of me
In these lines from time to time.
Oh, you're in my blood like holy wine.
You taste so bitter and so sweet.
Oh, I could drink a case of you, darling.
And still I'd be on my feet.
I would still be on my feet.’
‘I Could Drink a Case of You'

People were shocked by ‘Blue’. Was Joni revealing too much of herself? Was she being too candid?

'At that period of my life, I had no personal defences. I felt like a cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes.’

Joni had already established that her creativity needed rest and recuperation. She retreated once again, this time to Canada, immersing herself in nature, solitude and reflection. This regeneration led to 1972’s ‘For the Roses.’

‘I isolated myself and made my attempt to get back to the garden.’

7. Stay in Control

Although Joni’s work exposed her vulnerability, she had to be strong willed to succeed and survive in the music business. Throughout her career she demonstrated a steely determination to impose her own independent vision. She wrote her own songs, produced most of her own albums, designed most of her own sleeves. In the early days she even booked her own tours.

‘Creatively she knew where she wanted it to go and what she wanted it to be. She had a vision. She wasn’t looking for input.’
Elliot Roberts, Manager

‘She would not be marketed and she would not let the marketing effect what she was going to do.’
Tom Manoff, Critic

8. Ignore the Lines

As the 1970s progressed, Joni demonstrated a thirst to evolve her sound.

‘The need to innovate, or to be fresh, or to be original is very strong in me.’

To support her 1974 ‘Court and Spark’ album, she embarked on her first tour with backing musicians, enlisting the jazz-fusion band LA Express.

‘I shouldn’t be stereotyped as a magic princess as I got earlier in my career – the sort of ‘twinkle, twinkle, little star’ kind of attitude. I didn’t like that feeling, and I think that the band will only show that there is another side to the music. I think it’s a good expansion.’

Increasingly Joni embraced the world of jazz. She enjoyed working with other artists, exploring the freedom of creation and breaking down traditional genre definitions. This resulted in 1974’s ‘The Hissing of Summer Lawns’ and 1976’s ‘Hejira.’

‘I never really liked lines. Class lines, social structure lines. And I ignored them always.’

'There's no comprehending
Just how close to the bone and the skin and the eyes
And the lips you can get,
And still feel so alone,
And still feel related.’
‘Coyote'

9. Locate Your Useful Human Truth

Through the ‘80s and ‘90s Joni continued collaborating with other musicians and experimenting - with synthesizers, drum machines and sequencers. She had made allusions to her daughter in some of her past compositions (such as 1971’s ‘Little Green’). At last in 1997 they were reunited. 

In recent years Joni has suffered from ill health. We are blessed that she is still with us. She recently celebrated her 78th birthday (7 November).

‘It’s been a very subjective journey, but hopefully universal. That was always my optimism: that if I described my own changes through whatever the decade was throwing at us, that there were others like me. And it turns out that there were.’

We cannot learn to write songs like Joni Mitchell. She is unique, a genius. However we can learn a good deal about the process of creativity. In particular we can better understand the imperative of clarity and honesty, the quest to find ‘the useful human truth.’

'The writing has been an exercise – trying to work my way towards clarity. Get out the pen and face the beast yourself... What’s bothering you? Well, that’s not exactly it... OK, let’s go a little deeper. That’s not exactly it... It’s very hard peeling back the layers of your own onion…This is now useful, because we’ve hit upon a human truth.’

'Everything comes and goes,
Marked by lovers and styles of clothes.
Things that you held high
And told yourself were true
Lost or changing as the days come down to you.

Down to You

No. 345

Cecil Beaton: Preserving the Fleeting Moment

Cecil Beaton by Paul Tanqueray, 1937. National Portrait Gallery, London. © Estate of Paul Tanqueray

‘I exposed thousands of rolls of film, wrote hundreds of thousands of words, in a futile attempt to preserve the fleeting moment.’
Cecil Beaton

I recently watched a splendid film documenting the life and work of the photographer, designer, artist and writer Cecil Beaton: ‘Love, Cecil’ (2017) by Lisa Vreeland.

Beaton recorded the flamboyant lives of the Bright Young Things. He took glamorous photographs of Vogue fashion models, Hollywood movie stars and British royalty. He supported the war effort with touching portraits of people in peril. He designed fabulous costumes and sets for stage and screen. He was an aesthete and a modernist, a dandy and a diarist. He was a man on a relentless quest for beauty.

‘I think that beauty is only static for so long. And then we move on.’

Let us consider what Beaton has to teach us.

1. ‘Wander in the Labyrinth of Choice’

A portrait of Baba Beaton, the photographer’s sister. Photograph: Cecil Beaton/National Portrait Gallery/PA

Cecil Beaton was born in 1904 in Hampstead, England. His father was a timber merchant and he had a comfortable middle-class childhood. From an early age he collected cinema magazines, theatre programmes and postcards of stage performers. At 11 he was given his first camera, a Box-Brownie, and taught how to use it by his nurse Ninnie. He refined his skills by photographing his two sisters, Nancy and Barbara, arranging them in the elegant fashions and poses he’d observed in his magazines.

Beaton did not enjoy school. He was a poor scholar and was bullied - by Evelyn Waugh amongst others. 

‘I learned a lot at school, but nothing to do with the things I should have learned.’

At Cambridge University he dedicated his time to the Amateur Dramatic Club and to his love of the arts. 

‘I set about becoming a rabid aesthete. I took a passionate interest in the Italian renaissance, in Diaghalev’s Russian ballet, and of course in the theatre and in photography.’ 

Beaton left Cambridge without a degree. A brief period in the family timber business didn’t work out, and he was a source of some frustration to his father.

Interviewer: What was it that made it difficult to get on with your father?
Beaton: Well I think it was very difficult for my father to get on with me.

Beaton had many creative interests, but was at a loss what to do with himself.

‘Some people tend to know their vocation instinctively and follow a single path their whole lives. Others wander in the labyrinth of choice.’

 2. ‘Attempt to Preserve the Fleeting Moment’

The Bright Young Things

Interviewer: What were your ambitions at that time?
Beaton: To be able to demonstrate that I was not just an ordinary, anonymous person.

Through his friend Stephen Tennant, the son of a Scottish peer, Beaton gained access to the group of patrician socialites popularly known as the Bright Young Things. 

Beaton photographed this hedonistic set at Bloomsbury costume parties and charity pageants; at country house weekends and on treasure hunts. He photographed them in glittering gowns against sequinned curtains; with feathered fans, beaded skullcaps and strings of pearls; in medieval, regency and nautical fancy dress; against backdrops of flora and fauna, of gypsophila and cellophane. Here’s Rex Whistler playing a wandering minstrel; Tallulah Bankhead with a witch’s ball; Georgia Sitwell with her borzoi; Lady Loughborough under a bell jar. 

‘Our activities were all done with zest and originality. What a rush life had become.’

In his images Beaton created an escapist realm of dreams and fantasy, tinged with surreal strangeness. He sought not to reveal the world as he found it, but as he wished it to be. Above all he endeavoured to capture fleeting moments of beauty.

‘What a marvellous thing great physical beauty is. It’s nothing less than a living miracle. It’s not the result of achievement, skill, patience or endeavour. It’s just a divine happening.’

Beaton’s society photographs helped to build his reputation, and in 1928 he travelled to New York where he got a job with Vogue that sustained him for the next ten years. 

Marlene Dietrich, 1930

Employing the same techniques of artifice and allure that he had applied to the Bright Young Things, Beaton photographed Hepburn, Welles and Dietrich; Gary Cooper, Judy Garland and Douglas Fairbanks Jnr; fashion models surrounded by flowers, masks, hat boxes and hat stands, interacting with newspaper headlines, artists’ illustrations and expressionist shadows; set against polka dots, chiffon and lace.

Buoyed up by his success, in 1930 Beaton leased Ashcombe House in Wiltshire, where he set about entertaining a glittering circle of artists, actors and aristocrats.

 3. ‘Appreciate Beauty in Very Much Wider Fields’

Eileen Dunne in The Hospital for Sick Children, 1940. (detail) by Cecil Beaton

In 1938 Beaton's time with Vogue came to an abrupt end when he inserted a small-but-legible anti-Semitic slur into an illustration for a magazine piece about New York society. The issue was withdrawn. Beaton was forced to publish a statement of apology and then fired. He left New York in disgrace.

Back in England, with the outbreak of the Second World War, Beaton was offered a job at the Ministry of Information. 

‘It was clear that in anything connected with soldiering I would be a real sad sack. But I wanted to be useful.’

Beaton captured compelling images of the City in ruins after the Blitz; a woman welder at a shipyard; a sailor repairing a signal flag; a pilot in the cockpit of a Wellington bomber; an injured child in hospital holding her teddy bear. He travelled to Burma, China and Egypt and photographed troops in gasmasks; soldiers sharing a consoling cigarette; contorted tank wreckage buried in the sand.

‘In the hangers of an aerodrome I found more thrilling sets than in the Hollywood studios.’

Beaton had grown to appreciate that visions of beauty can be found in the ordinary and everyday; in times of crisis and despair.

‘I think with experience, looking around in life, the photographer gets to appreciate beauty in very much wider fields.’

Gradually Beaton rebuilt his reputation. His rehabilitation was further assisted by royal patronage. In 1937 he had taken the wedding pictures of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and in 1939 he was invited to photograph Queen Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother). He went on to record the birth of Prince Charles and the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. In all, he photographed some 30 members of the British royal family.

4. Be Neither Bored Nor Boring

Audrey Hepburn on set for the film of My Fair Lady, 1963

Beaton patched up his relationship with Vogue, and after the War he received a stream of commissions for fashion spreads and celebrity portraits. In 1947 he bought his own home and gardens, Reddish House in Wiltshire.

'All I want is the best of everything and there's very little of that left.'

Beaton turned his attention to designing sets, costumes and lighting for the Broadway stage. His theatre work led to assignments on two Lerner and Loewe film musicals, ‘Gigi’ (1958) and ‘My Fair Lady’ (1964), each of which earned him the Oscar for Best Costume Design. ‘My Fair Lady’ was particularly memorable for the way that it presented an enhanced, contemporised vision of the Edwardian grandeur of his childhood. 

‘The visual really guides my life more than anything.’

Beaton had boundless energy for work and play, a restless visual appetite. Through the ‘60s and ‘70s he continued to seek out new and interesting talent, creating memorable images of Warhol and Hockney; Jagger and Streisand; Twiggy, Jean Shrimpton and Penelope Tree.

‘I have always complimented myself on my stamina, and can wear out even my younger friends when it comes to work or play. I can still think of myself as a rather appealing Bright Young Thing.’

Mick Jagger

Beaton compiled scrapbooks of visual delights and published six volumes of diaries, covering the years 1922–1974. He had affairs with both men and women, and he once proposed to Greta Garbo. But ultimately he was unhappy in love. He was of course a social climber. He could be snobbish, insecure and vindictive, and he was always falling out with people. His list of adversaries included George Cukor, Noel Coward, Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

‘He gathers enemies like other people gather roses.’
Truman Capote

Occasionally, in more reflective moments, Beaton expressed a note of regret.

‘I think perhaps I’ve been much too outspoken on rather trivial subjects.’

In the twilight of his career Beaton’s contribution to photography, theatre, film and fashion was celebrated in exhibitions at the V&A and the National Portrait Gallery, and in 1972 he was knighted. 

Two years later Beaton suffered a stroke. He died in 1980 at home at Reddish House, four days after his 76th birthday.

'Perhaps the world's second worst crime is boredom. The first is being a bore.’

We spend a good deal of time nowadays celebrating authenticity and gritty realism; endeavouring to reflect the world as it truly is. Beaton reminds us that sometimes it is appropriate to suspend disbelief; that there is also merit in artifice and romance, glamour and fantasy, taste and style; that there is value in seeking and preserving beauty in its purest forms.

‘Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.’

'Every duke and earl and peer is here.
Everyone who should be here is here.
What a smashing, positively dashing
Spectacle: the Ascot opening day.

What a frenzied moment that was!
Didn't they maintain an exhausting pace?
'Twas a thrilling, absolutely chilling running of the
Ascot opening race.’

Ascot Gavotte, ‘My Fair Lady’ (A Lerner / F Loewe)

No. 344

‘The Best Way Out Is Always Through’: The Lessons I Learned from Back Pain

Perugino, St Sebastian

Pop!

‘Did you hear that? Let’s see if we can do it again.’

Pop!

My chiropractor bent over me with fierce intent, twisting my arm and thorax into awkward angles. After a time I became concerned that his objective was not to relieve my back pain at all; but rather to prompt an exclamation from my distressed vertebrae. Each crack was greeted with the satisfaction of a child crunching bubble wrap. 

Pop!

‘That’s fantastic. Listen to that!’

He was wearing a white coat, but was he really a medical professional?

My backache had been tormenting me for several weeks now. I was visiting the chiropractor in tandem with an acupuncturist who experimented with incense, warm needles and whale music. Despite my rather old fashioned approach to health matters, I confess I found this all rather soothing. I kept falling asleep with the needles in. 

Nonetheless, once outside the acupuncturist’s studio, the agony continued. Nagging, insistent, ever-present. During the day I found it difficult to concentrate on anything else. At night I lay awake in a fog of self-pity. On a couple of occasions I found I was speaking to myself - promising to make a new start in life, if only the pain would go away.

I spent a good deal of time trying to establish what had caused all this grief. But I could recall no stumble or fall, no gym incident or trouble moving boxes. Why had this torture descended on me all of a sudden? 

A doctor prescribed some specially contoured soles to wear inside my shoes.

‘They probably won’t do you any good, but some people like them.’

I became unnaturally obsessed with chair construction. My wife had purchased a claret-coloured contemporary Italian sofa. It certainly looked good in the living room with its low back, aluminium legs and inverted L shape. But it seemed designed for lolling and lounging, for curling up like a feline; for all manner of relaxation apart from sitting up straight. 

‘Sit up like a Catholic,’ my Dad used to say to me with wearying frequency. If only I could right now.

I measured my hip-to-knee distance and discovered that the horizontal seat length of the claret-coloured contemporary Italian sofa exceeded it by some margin. Perhaps this was the source of my problems. I took a tape measure to Habitat and Heals on a quest for superior hip-to-knee delivery and came back with a recommendation for an Edwardian armchair. This was swiftly rejected.

The backache stayed with me like a malicious companion. Whispering, goading, badgering. 

‘Why me?’ I asked. ‘Why now?’

And then one day the pain was gone. Just like that. It had arrived unannounced and it departed without warning.

'Turn your wounds into wisdom.’
Oprah Winfrey

Once liberated from the agony, I spent a good while reflecting on its origins.

At length I realised that the true cause of my back pain was not physical at all. My malady coincided with a lengthy redundancy process at work. I’d been drawn into extensive conversations about names and numbers; long lists and short lists; factional disputes and interdepartmental negotiations. 

I think I had been suffering from stress.

'And you may ask yourself, "What is that beautiful job?"
And you may ask yourself, "Where does that career go to?"
And you may ask yourself, "Am I right? Am I wrong?"
And you may say to yourself, "My God! What have I done?”'
Paraphrasing Talking Heads,’Once in a Lifetime'

I took three lessons from my prolonged period of back pain. 

The first is that some trials cannot be escaped. They must be endured. We just have to let them run their course. We need patience, resilience and a philosophical nature. The best way out is always through.

'Len says one steady pull more ought to do it.                    
He says the best way out is always through.’
Robert Frost, ‘A Servant to Servants'

Secondly I concluded that too often in life and business we focus on relieving the pain rather than addressing the source of that pain. We treat the symptom, not the cause. Sometimes the origins of an ailment are not obvious. They are hidden, psychological, adjacent.

And thirdly I resolved that wholesale redundancy, however sound commercially and imperative financially, was not something I wanted to get involved with again.

The claret-coloured contemporary Italian sofa still resides in our living room. I’ve grown rather fond of it now. But it still won’t let me sit like a Catholic.

'Broken heart again,
Another lesson learned.
Better know your friends,
Or else you will get burnt.
Gotta count on me,
Cause I can guarantee that I'll be fine.
No more pain.
No more pain.
No drama.
No one's gonna make me hurt again.’
Mary J Blige, ‘No More Drama’ (P Botkin / B De Vorzon / J Harris III / T Lewis)

No. 343