Two Singalongs, Two Sentiments: Some People Lack Confidence, Others Lack Contrition

Jan van Eyck - The Ghent Altarpiece - Singing Angels (detail)

I attended a couple of gigs recently. 

The first featured a progressive young jazz act. Abstract melodies, elusive rhythms and virtuoso playing. Very impressive all round.

As the concert drew to a close, the bandleader addressed the audience from behind his keyboards.

‘I’d just like to thank you all for joining us on our journey this evening. I know we’ve been through some hard times together.’

He paused and played a couple of chords in a minor key.

‘These last few years have been tough. And we owe it to ourselves to engage in a little self-care.‘

This thought met with nodding approval from the people sitting near me.

‘So for this final number I want everyone to put their hands in the air and sing along with us: ‘I love myself.’’

The audience duly complied and the whole hall swayed to the euphoric conclusion to the set.

‘I love myself! I love myself! I love myself!’

I confess I didn’t join in. I’m old and not inclined to participation.

I turned to my companion:

‘When I was growing up, this would have been considered a sin.’

The second gig featured Lee Fields, a veteran R&B singer. Born in North Carolina in 1950, Fields is one of the last soul survivors, a representative of an era of soaring vocals, sweet harmonies and deeply felt emotions. A diminutive figure with a sparkly blue jacket and a winning smile, he channelled Stax and gospel; James Brown, Percy Sledge and Bobby Womack. He begged and beseeched, sobbed and swooned, and occasionally performed a dramatic spin on the spot.

Lee Fields

Fields’ exercise in audience participation came with his song ‘What Did I Do?’  - a sorrowful confession of a man’s responsibility for the demise of a relationship.

'I took all the love that you gave to me,
Then I took all my things and set you free.
What did I do?
Baby, baby, baby, what did I do?
You were all the world to me,
But I didn't give you nothing but misery.
What did I do?’
Lee Fields, ‘What Did I Do?'

At Fields’ invitation, the crowd joined him in a mournful repetition of the key refrain. He had the whole of Koko’s Camden swaying in unison with arms held aloft.

‘What did I do? What did I do? What did I do?’ 

Raised as a Catholic, I’ve always been comfortable with doubt, guilt and regret. And so I too joined in.

‘What did I do? What did I do? What did I do?’ 

Afterwards I was quite struck by the difference in sentiment between the singalongs at these two gigs: one was an exhortation to self-confidence; the other an act of contrition.

Both sentiments are relevant in life and work. Some occasions and some people need support, encouragement and reassurance. Other times and individuals require humility, introspection and self-examination.

One of the challenges for a leader is to distinguish between these two modes and to apply them appropriately.

You’ll find colleagues with low self-worth who constantly need to be boosted and buoyed up. But you’ll also encounter colleagues who are too conscious of their own talent and too disrespectful of the contribution of others. They need to be taken down a peg or two; to be exposed to a little proportion and perspective.

This requires some skill. Get it wrong and you’ll destroy the confidence of the humble, whilst enhancing the self-esteem of the arrogant.

 
'I may not be the richest man,
But I'm gonna give you everything I can.
I always try to do my best.
When I fall short, I let love do the rest.
It rains love when I'm with you.
It rains love when I'm with you.
You're my sun when the clouds roll through.
It rains love when I'm with you.’

Lee Fields, ‘It Rains Love’

No. 410

Living in a Lorem Ipsum World: Sometimes We Need to Talk Less and Say More

Bust of Marcus Tullius Cicero

'The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.'
Hans Hofmann

When I first entered advertising, I was quite taken with the employment in typesetting of ‘lorem ipsum’: dummy text that acted as a placeholder in layouts until the proper copy was written.

'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat….’

In developing press ads we would establish the headline, image and art direction first, and leave the precise copy for a later date.

‘Just ‘lorem ipsum’ it for now.’

‘Lorem ipsum’ has been in use in the printing world since the 1500s. Nowadays you’ll see it in web-build and digital publishing. It is often referred to as Latin gibberish. But in fact the standard text derives, albeit in corrupted form, from a treatise on ethics by the ancient Roman lawyer, politician and writer Marcus Tullius Cicero.

‘Lorem ipsum’ starts mid-way through a sentence:

‘Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem.’

These lines have been translated as follows:

‘Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure.’

This passage suggests that first century BC writers could be as prolix as their twenty-first century equivalents. Cicero should perhaps have limited himself to a simpler sentiment:‘No pain, no gain.’

'Writing is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent elimination.’
Louise Brooks

I spent nearly all of my time in advertising at BBH, an agency whose creative output was led by an art director. As a result it had a very particular relationship with words. We liked a precise, provocative headline; an insightful, memorable endline. But we were consistently cautious around long copy. Many’s the time I sat in a script review with co-founder John Hegarty when he would approve the overall idea, but ask for the dialogue to be stripped back, or erased completely.

‘I’m not sure we really need all those words, do we?’

Sometimes nowadays it feels like we live in a ‘lorem ipsum’ world. Everywhere we look - in business meetings and in the media; amongst clients and colleagues, politicians, and journalists - there seems an incredible capacity for producing dummy text. People trot out cliches and platitudes, sound-bites and slogans. They just drone on - without hesitation or deviation, but with a good deal of repetition - until they are interrupted or muted. They’re ‘talking loud and saying nothing.'

'Be sincere, Be brief, Be seated.'
Franklin Delano Roosevelt

The ability to speak continuously with confidence is a talent of sorts. But, over the course of my working life, I found that the colleagues who had the most impact on meetings, and whose careers advanced with the greatest velocity, were those who restricted themselves to fewer and better statements; more concise and memorable observations; more thoughtful and provocative ripostes.

Perhaps we should all learn to talk less and say more.

'Don't tell me
How to do my thing,
When you can't, 
Can't do your own.
You're like a dull knife,
Just ain't cutting.
You're just talking loud
And saying nothing.’

James Brown, 'Talkin' Loud and Sayin’ Nothing’ (B Byrd / J Brown)

No. 399

Punk Entrepreneurism: ‘Open Up the Door, I’ll Get It Myself.’

It’s October 1977. Some young punks are being interviewed about the closure of the Electric Circus nightclub in Manchester. We see a gaggle of teenagers wearing cheap plastic sunglasses and safety pins in their ears; girls with thick black eyeliner; one lad with a bike chain round his neck. They explain their commitment to the cause:

‘I wanted to do something for me. Look at me now. I’m nothing.’
‘That’s what punk is.’

That was indeed the essence of punk. It was a short-lived musical movement that punctured the pomposity at the heart of the ‘70s British rock scene. It demolished the distance between performers and their audience. It gave music back to ordinary young people. Punk was speed, anger and urgency. It was Joe Strummer’s revolutionary zeal, Siouxsie’s swagger and John Lydon’s sneer. It was New Rose, Germfree Adolescent, Alternative Ulster. It was ‘a voice crying in the wilderness.’

I was only 12 when punk arrived, unannounced and unkempt, and shocked Britain out of its concrete slumber. And within a few short years ‘the filth and the fury’ was gone. But the movement cast a long shadow over British youth culture. It re-set the clock, and 1976 became a kind of Year Zero after which everything would be different.

I recently attended a small exhibition at the British Library celebrating forty years since the birth of punk in Britain. (Some have observed that you can’t get anything less punk than an exhibition at the British Library, but it was interesting nonetheless. It runs until 2 October.) The exhibition begins by highlighting the intellectual roots of the movement. Punk emerged from a rich brew of rebellious street fashion, avant-garde American rock and art school anarchism. A modish punk t-shirt of the time quoted a French Situationist slogan:

‘Be reasonable, demand the impossible.’

But punk also had its own more populist libertarian spirit. Punk musicians taught themselves to play, wrote their own songs, performed on their own terms; they worked with independent record companies, producers and managers, designed their own artwork. Punk is often represented as an entirely destructive force, but it was also constructive, empowering and enabling.  It was about doing it yourself; doing it for yourself.

I was thrilled to find at the exhibition an original copy of a call-to-arms that appeared in a small London fanzine, Sideburns, in 1977. Over the years I’d seen many reproductions of this graphic, but had not come across an original.

‘This is a chord (A). This is another (E). This is a third (G). Now form a band.’

I remember at the time thinking what an exciting exhortation this was. Hitherto we’d imagined rock’n’roll as an arcane pursuit for the gifted elite; for those with a head start and a healthy bank balance. Music was an industry, rock was a career, an album was a concept. But punk reduced pop to its fundamentals, demystified it and encouraged everyone to have a go.

There was some debate at the time as to whether punk’s spirit of self-sufficiency and enterprise was in some respects Thatcherite. But this rebellious libertarian instinct was part of a long tradition amongst the oppressed and the disadvantaged, the bored and the unfulfilled.  In 1969 James Brown sang:

‘I don’t want nobody
To give me nothing.
Open up the door,
I’ll get it myself.’

Of course in business we may recognise this as the entrepreneurial urge: the instinct to cast off corporate shackles and company conventions; to break off, break out and break away; to make one’s own mark on the world.  The entrepreneurial spirit is rare, bold and admirable. We should treasure, protect and encourage it.

Moreover, in the Age of Technology it seems more possible than ever to ‘open up the door and get it yourself.’ As the world becomes more connected, there are infinite opportunities for both fusion and fission; for corporate aggregation and, at the same time, independent disengagement. So there’s never been a better time to go your own way. Have code - will travel. It’s exhilarating. It's punk entrepreneurism.

I should say that, whilst I have always admired the entrepreneurial spirit in others, I’m not sure I ever had it myself. I didn’t call up my mates in the late ‘70s to start a band. And I didn’t email my colleagues in the late ‘90s to start an agency. I was a company guy, a ‘salaryman.’ And there’s no shame in that. Leaders need followers. Entrepreneurs need executors.

Perhaps, ultimately, that’s what punk taught us: everyone can, but not everyone does.

‘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 is the crisis.
Can’t you see?
Identity, Identity.’

X-Ray Spex- Identity

No. 96