Telling Stories
I took my teenage daughter to the Hollywood Bowl this past Thursday evening to see Lana Del Rey perform. After buying her merchandise (poster, t-shirt, tote bag, teal halter top, and a dark blue Dickie jacket with a patch emblazoned with “F*ck it, I Love You” but without the “*”) and purchasing a sackful of vegan food, snacks and drinks, we settled into our seats. Ms. Del Rey was fashionably late, hitting the stage at 9pm instead of the scheduled 7:30 pm timeslot. The crowd was mellow, which just made my daughter’s enthusiastic screaming that much more apparent between songs. I was impressed with the performance, especially as she shared the stage with special guests: Chris Isaak, Sean Lennon, Adam Cohen and Jesse Rutherford (of The Weekend). The show was a David Lynch soundtrack; if this were the 90’s, the brilliant director surely would have incorporated her music into Twin Peaks.
The show ended appropriately and unexpectedly with an impressive fireworks show that went on longer than you’d expect. The glow of reds, yellows, and white played across my daughter’s face. She shrieked in delight, her voice now hoarse and raspy from the evening.
On the drive home, passing a three-car wreck framed by orange cones and illuminated by flares on the southbound side of Pacific Coast Highway, my daughter put on Del Rey’s latest album, Norman F*cking Rockwell, singing along to melancholic songs about love and loss and Los Angeles, the women of the canyon (Laurel and Topanga), Venice, longing and alcohol, as the warm wind blew through the open windows. I went to sleep that night with ringing in my ears; songs echoing of the fading of summer, bleached polaroid memories, tomorrow never coming, playing guitar in a barn, smoldering cigarettes and nicotine kisses.
I woke up to the acrid barbeque scent of smoke wafting on the Santa Ana winds through the open door at my bedside. I asked my wife if she smelled it as well and she quietly said, Oh no. We turned on the news and there it was: the Saddleridge Fire, near Porter Ranch, north of us. Only the day before, my wife had sent me a video she shot from our backyard of helicopters knocking down a small fire in Topanga, so my spidey-sense was already up. I decided to work from home, just in case we had to evacuate again. Last year we evacuated as the Woolsey Fire tore through Malibu and the year prior we had to evacuate as well. For us October and November equate to infernos; the fire season has become longer and more intense year after year.
As I write this in my backyard, the Saddleridge Fire has burned over 7500 acres is only 19% contained and even though the air is clearer, I can still smell the smoke. Thankfully the Santa Ana winds have died down.
I wrote about the fires in real-time last year for my upcoming book The Art of Creative Rebellion (publish date, January 21st, 2020) and how, at one point while we were packing, my wife and I had to look at each other and ask if we would be okay if we lost it all. And we agreed that as long as the three of us were unscathed, that we could rebuild our lives. I took (and continue to take) that as a lesson in being in the moment and being truly grateful for what we have, rather than always coveting what we don’t have and what we lack. The fires, for me, are metaphorically charged -- on one hand they herald the reality of climate change and our negligence to the veracity of scientific fact as we hew towards unthinking allegiance to political polemic and religious doctrine. This trend is unredeemable and destructive. On the other hand, what gives me hope, is that after the fire, mother nature has a spectacular ability to heal herself through regrowth. And humans are capable of the extraordinary if we allow ourselves to move beyond reactionary and fear-based motivations towards the strategic and passion-based mindset. Again, metaphorically speaking, if we burn down our own preconceptions and attachments, we can allow new growth to occur.
I recently came across former Talking Head’s frontman, David Byrne’s Reasons To Be Cheerful website. As he mentions in this video, he’s not just posting optimistic anecdotes but stories of real positive change. This may be one of the most impactful creative efforts he’s launched.
If the narrative that the media spouts at us (both Fox News on the right and MSNBC on the left) is primarily fear-based then we need to counter the fear with stories that appeal to our higher selves. Stories that address solutions and inspire people to action. Fear generally makes people apathetic or angry – neither state lends itself to constructive change. Or growth.
Think about the stories you’re consuming and the stories you’re telling yourself about yourself and the world. Are they enriching your life? I know that I often tell myself stories that limit my capabilities and views. And if I’m limiting myself, then as a leader in my day job, I’m passing on those limitations to my team and as a father and husband, I’m also potentially restricting myself artificially to internal narratives that don’t make sense anymore; they probably never did.
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.”
-- Kurt Vonnegut
A good friend of mine, Michael Margolis, just published a book called Story 10x: Turning the Impossible into the Inevitable in which he discusses how to more effectively communicate within a company or organization. Michael led a series of workshops for my design team that helped them learn how to not only communicate design thinking to non-designers and the leadership team but perhaps more importantly, he taught the designers how to tell their own story. The story techniques he discusses in the book are numerous and amazing but a couple really stood out to me. He encouraged us to really understand our own stories – what truly determined who we are: our birthplace, our parents, our environment and then what it is, at the core, that drives us. As they say in screenwriting, What does the character want? We are, after all, the protagonist in the story of life. The second technique was to open any presentation with a future state – the positive vision of where we will end. This allows for the presenter to disarm and appeal to the deepest, emotional part of our brains, and, in turn, this opens up the viewer to accept the perhaps less engaging, data-driven aspects of the presentation. And if you can intertwine aspects of your own story into the speech, then all the better. I’m butchering the more nuanced and eloquent manner in which Michael writes about this but what I took away was the transformative power of a story well-told.
Finally, the story of Lana Del Rey is fascinating. She transformed herself from Lizzy Grant to Lana Del Rey and debuted on SNL with “Video Games.” I remember watching that episode and while she seemed stiff (and nothing like her performance at the Hollywood Bowl), I felt that the Internet backlash against her was extreme. The Internet made her a star with her homemade music video and then proceeded to tear her down viciously after she “made it” on network TV, But she continued on with her own story, causing the usual micro-storms of controversy as the years went by but in the end she weathered it and her story stands.
From a New York Times article:
“Lana Del Rey was never supposed to make it this far.
An early sacrifice to the music-blog gods and a bloodthirsty thing called social media, the singer and songwriter born Elizabeth Grant could have been a footnote after loaded speculation about her artifice and upbringing collided with a shaky “Saturday Night Live” debut in early 2012.
Instead of self-immolating, Del Rey exploded into one of the most consistent album artists and world-builders of this decade, aesthetically presaging pop music’s — and the world’s — turn toward opiates and apocalypse.”
In the end, it takes massive courage to put yourself out there in public for criticism and ridicule. And for that reason, I admire almost anyone who has taken a chance and put their art or design or book or dance or brand new company out there.
The fact that you can define your personal narrative is definitely a reason to be cheerful.
What’s your story?
John
What I’m watching:
The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot – Sam Elliot is brilliant as always in this surprisingly touching movie about an elderly man confronting his past. The title is accurate but it’s much more than that.
The Amazing Johnathan Documentary – Crazy, meta-story that turns in on itself right through to the end. I was annoyed initially at the rudeness of the dying magician but found myself rooting for the director, as the story is as much about him as it is about The Amazing Johnanthan.
The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley – Elizabeth Holmes. Wow. Just wow. Lies, lies and greed. And a weirdly affected, deep voice.