Monthly Archives: May 2012

Flying Colours

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Sometimes when I have to give a talk in a strange place and I don’t know anyone I get terribly anxious. Last week, having already gotten lost in downtown Cape Town, trying to park near the place I was to give a talk in, I got into a bit of a tizzy. Then I discovered my host was unable to make it due to sudden personal circumstances.

As I sorted out my cables, computer and connectors I took a deep breath and looked momentarily towards the ceiling of the room. There high above was a life-sized Desmond Tutu, in his signature crimson frock coat, flying across the room, hanging from a swinging chandelier. Such surreal moments don’t happen that often and I did a double take. I am sure my state of mind made it seem even more bizarre. But it worked magic. It made me chuckle and forget to fret.

How did the artist come up with such an idea and then execute the work to make it work so well? It was ingenious. The former archbishop was very life-like and even his cross dangled as it should – if he was really flying. His facial expression offset by his glasses was also very realistic. As I moved towards him I had a slight uncanny valley moment. The chandelier had also been created to be at an angle as if swinging with his weight – but all was perfectly still.

Throughout my talk I looked up at Desmond for an occasional inspirational moment. I am not sure if that was the intention of the artist but it worked well for me. Mostly, we give talks in classrooms, seminar rooms, hotel rooms or convention centres that are usually stark and devoid of any humour. Life without such quirkiness would be very dull, indeed. Funnily, though, I was not sure how many of the audience actually noticed him!

Flight Encounters

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I’ve just returned from an epic journey, travelling from Austin, Texas to Cape Town. We left about 3.00p.m Thursday and arrived back home at 9.00a.m Saturday. It involved long periods in airport lounges, and two whole nights stuck on planes, where many hours were spent sleeping next to and talking with complete strangers. During such times, one is forced to endure considerable discomfort but one can also entertain other possibilities. I often wonder which way I will turn: will I stay locked in a digital media bubble, watching endless videos on the headrest of the person in front, or will I start talking to my fellow passenger. The decision can be fickle.

My first night in the skies was on an American Airlines 767 flight from Dallas to London, in economy class. It was literally a case of sardines in a vacuum tin. Shortly after squeezing into our seats I got talking with my Texan neighbour, who was tattooed from head to foot. I’ve always been intrigued by those who go the whole hog and so somewhat brashly asked him about his tattoos. He told me he had been painting his body from the age of 17 and had finished his complete bodywork, a couple of years ago, in his early 40s. Not an inch of his exposed skin was left un-inked – except his face – but he’d made up for sparing that part by covering all his extremities, including feet, toes, soles, fingers and palms. I asked him how it felt now he no longer had the joy of thinking about what and where next to have a new tattoo. He just stared sideways at me with droopy eyes and a big moustache twitching slightly. Then in a measured Texas drool simply said that he was very content now that he had completed his whole body and that instead what he enjoyed was tattooing other people’s bodies with their latest designs and whims.

His tattoos, I am afraid to say, were not very striking or beautiful, except for a big colourful mallard duck on his neck – which was kind of cute. He told me he had a thing about ducks and that he had more of them on other parts of his body. At that point I had this terrible urge to go “quack quack” and could feel the words coming up through my larynx, but thankfully was able to swallow them (where do such childish impulses come from?). The rest of his designs were the usual medley of symbols, scantily dressed women, names of significant family members and other stuff meaningful to him, all mingled together in a way that only real ‘tat’ aficionados can fathom out.

I carried on asking him silly questions, such as what was the most difficult, painful, coloured… He answered me patiently and I began to feel a bit like a phoney Louis Theroux. But there was absolutely no sign of chemistry or connectedness between us – or attempt at reciprocation. The only time he lit up was when he started telling me how he dreads getting on planes that have a 6 in the middle of them. The 767 we were on in his classification, was truly ancient, offering only a bank of 3 pink-tinted shared screens miles ahead of us on the wall for our entertainment system. It made him almost chuckle that we were stuck on a clapped out piece of junk.

Eventually, he tired of regaling his tat stories and fell silent. I, too, tired of tat details. We both then fell asleep within inches of one another. I always find that very strange to be so close to someone locked in an activity that is normally so private and where one is so vulnerable to the other.

When we were both abruptly woken by the bright lights being switched on from above, we remained in our own bubble and did not acknowledge each other’s presence again. I find that also strange, as waking up next to someone in the morning is normally such an intimate thing. Instead we both stared blankly at the plane icon flying over the shuddering map of Britain in the distance, until it hit the outskirts of Heathrow.

We did not even say goodbye or look at each other as we stood up and disembarked. So very different from my encounter with Fabio Capello, a couple of years ago, when I could not stop jabbering for the whole duration of the flight.

The next guy I sat next to en route to Cape Town from London could not have been more different – a very friendly Afrikan guy who was in his mid 50s, very outdoorsy and extremely proud of his sons. This time, he initiated the conversation, by asking me questions about where I had been, what I was doing in South Africa and the usual polite chit-chat stuff. I reciprocated in my questions, and he told me how wonderful his country was, etc. It was a very agreeable conversation. He seemed such a content and positive chap, telling me all about his passion for fishing, hunting and hiking in the deserts of deepest Africa.

But then out of the blue, he started telling me about how he and his family had been robbed by a gang of six black men, who had entered their house one evening, armed with knifes. His story of what happened next was scary and gruesome. His voice changed and he stared ahead. His son had left a door open within their compound to let his new puppy go walk about. The gang had been watching for a while and pounced on the momentary slip-up. The gang went straight for the jugular, taking all his guns and then his wife’s worldly goods.

He then said very softly that his family all had counseling afterwards. And how his son still suffers. And now how his home is like Fort Knox. Scarred and scared for life. Then it was time for lights out and the eye patch on.

Next morning he asked me how well I had slept. The ensuing conversation was very polite and pleasant. Then as the plane began to disembark we shook hands, said our farewells and exchanged business cards.

One of my lasting memories of South Africa is how kind, interested and gentle the people are who live here.

The cartoon image at the top is from Cindy’s blog which provides a list of annoying things you can do on a boring plane ride. The photo on the left I took from a shopping mall car park north of Cape Town. You see Table Mountain popping up everywhere but sometims it pops up in the most unlikely places. I particularly liked this juxtaposition as the backdrop to an urban landscape.

Special Ones

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“Knowledge is when you know a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is when you don’t put it in the fruit salad”.

Debre, an interaction designer here in Cape Town, emailed me this last week – which her brother had passed onto her. I thought it captured the difference between the two very succinctly. But what does it take to know how to have and impart wisdom? The more I read about wisdom and the more creative people I meet, the more I realize that it is about being special in some way, knowing that and knowing how to share that.

How do you know when someone is special?

The first person I met on my dream fellowship, when I set off to New York in early February, was Jerry Bruner, who is now a sprightly 96 year old, brimming with wisdom and love. He is very special, having spent his life acquiring wisdom and sharing it. I flew especially to New York to see him – it had been several years since I last saw him. He invited me over for lunch to his enormous loft apartment in Manhatten. As I walked in, I heard myself chirping away from his wee computer. He’d started playing the YouTube video of my dream fellowship, sometime before I arrived, but because the bandwidth for his network connection was so slow it had not downloaded properly. It was still streaming like treacle through a funnel, intermittently playing for 3 to 4 seconds, and then stalling for several minutes before stuttering a few more words. 7 minutes was being stretched into 3 hours!

Jerry sat down in front of his computer and invited me to sit opposite him in a chair. I obliged but it felt surreal to be in doppelganger mode. As we chatted, I found myself being echoed from his computer. Switching from the here and now to the now and here was disconcerting for me. Jerry, on the other hand, found it quite funny. Eventually (we were about 3 minutes into the video and an hour into our conversation) we moved over to the dining area of his vast open plan place. Thankfully, the digital me started to fade. The real me helped prepare a simple lunch of salad, cheese and berries. We then opened a bottle of sparkling water. As we ate and drank the simple fare, we talked and talked. Much was shared; personal, political interspaced with reminiscing and playfulness.

I finally left late afternoon with much to savour. I walked slowly back to my hotel in Washington Square, a few blocks away, looking at the splendid high rise buildings surrounding me, reflecting on Jerry’s words of wisdom. It was not in the telling of what I must do, read or see in life, but in the giving to me of something special. It is hard to put a finger on exactly what it was. The pearls came through the conversation, not through any worldly advice.

I had been in the presence of a special one.

José Mourinho, Real Madrid’s coach, is known for being special but for very different reasons. He has just won La Liga, knocking the seemingly invincible Barcelona off their perch, having previously won the league title in Portugal, England and Italy. When he joined Chelsea in 2004 he said at his inaugural press conference, “Please don’t call me arrogant, but I’m European champion and I think I’m a special one.”

A stroke of genius, I thought at the time – and the name “The Special One” has stuck ever since; 8 years later it remains his moniker and rightly so. Besides being incredibly handsome, which makes most of us female supporters go weak at the knees, the Special One has that look, know how and ability to work out how to play the beautiful game in ways other managers (with the exception of Fabio and Alex) can only dream about. He is foremost a brilliant strategist, always 5 games ahead and 10 moves along – like a chess master – knowing how to position, psyche and play his team while unnerving his opponents. He meticulously does his homework each waking moment for his master plan using his wisdom and the knowledge. But he also uses technology very astutely to extend his thinking. For example, he externalises his plans far into the future, drawing and interacting with clever software that enables multiple tactical positions to be simulated for each game. And during each game, he scribbles down on-the-fly tactics, challenges and changes using a scruffy note pad that helps him make crucial decisions, when under immense pressure.

In the last couple of weeks, I have been working with an artist from the University of Cape Town, Johann van der Schijff, helping him interview local school kids and teachers about their experiences of being part of his latest art project called Community Punching Bags. It has been for him a very long, extensive and collaborative project, involving many children, teachers, leather makers, photographers and more.

I joined him late on in his project and curiosity has gotten the better of me. We’ve had several probing conversations about what it means for an artist to collaborate with others and to curate something that would not be possible without their participation. For many of us, the idea of collaborating with an artist usually conjures up producing or creating an artifact that the artist wants, such as Anthony Gormley’s ‘Field for the British Isle’ where he recruited lots of kids and their extended families from schools in Liverpool to help him make 40,000 cute terracotta clay figures as part of his immense installation. For Johann, the collaborative process entails asking specific people to do different things that they are skilled at or will push them beyond their comfort zones, that then becomes a central part of his curation – coming up with new designs, running workshops or cutting and stitching leather punching bags.

One comment that he made which struck me was how he can immediately see in the people he recruits who is special and who he wants to work with and push more. Being special to him involves being able to pick up quickly on what has to be done, having self discipline, listening and taking on board what other’s say, and then working it out on your own. In addition, there is always a look, a big smile and a sense of knowing. But to see specialness in others needs developing a level of self-awareness about one’s own specialness.

“People who are wise can interrupt, take a step back, and reframe … a lot of wisdom probably has to do with looking at a situation differently and reframing.”

I just read this in a book on Wisdom by the award-winning science writer, Stephen S. Hall, which is based on a phone call he had with another Stephen (Kosslyn) in 2008.

Special people know that. And anyone can become special provided that they …