Learnings from a Welsh goalkeeper

A top flight goal keeper and (1) Learning from failure (2) the primary voice of stories not told (3) Mixing (mingle!) with people and views you otherwise would not.

This profile of former top flight Everton goalkeeper, Neville Southall, touches upon the 3 above ideas I am interested in. (It's also a good argument for why when I have time, I flick and read through all sections of a newspaper from News to Arts to Sport...)

On (1) he notes goal keepers often fail but it is how they react to that failure which will mark them out. He still remembers some painful goals scored against him and reflects on the Liverpool goal keeper's mistakes in the recent Champions League Final.

My Mum is a big Liverpool fan, my Dad supported Arsenal - I’ve always been fascinated about what sport and teams and fans tells us about what it means to be human.

This is currently also of note as my work team recently failed in two big pitches / proposals. How we improve from failure will be a mark of how good (or not) our processes and culture are. I hear a lot of talk about learning from failure but it is hard. It is also difficult to teach to children. What makes one child pick themselves up and throw themselves at a problem again and another to shy away....

On (2) Neville Southall talks about giving a platform to unheard voices and genuinely listen to what they say - I like this for several reasons  (i) I like to rely more on more on primary source voices not filtered too many times by tropes or media reporters - the primary voices are often more nuanced, complex and fascinating than the filtered reflection of such voices. Good journalism can bring those voices out (but the medium and long form art of that is under pressure)

This increasingly is how I do company research as well, constructive skepticism is practiced by all good business and company analysts - but how do you research what is really happening ? The famous fund manager Peter Lynch suggested you could learn a lot by observing the world. I concur but would also add speaking to people - experts or customers - can also add insights.

It intersects with a primary force behind why some are involved in theatre - to tell the stories / listen to the stories from the voices that are not often heard. And listening to those primary voices is important.

It is an important thread for why I share autistic voice narratives (see here for E Price and here for Naoki Higashida). It’s important to hear from the people themselves.

Finally this idea that twitter is a place where you can meet people you would not usually meet - while I think that’s true of social media I do believe that bringing it to a real life mingle is also useful. Hence the mingle event idea.


A thoughtful read you can find here

The current Arts blog, cross-over, the current Investing blog.  Cross fertilise, some thoughts on autism.  Discover what the last arts/business mingle was all about (sign up for invites to the next event in the list below).

My Op-Ed in the Financial Times  (My Financial Times opinion article) about asking long-term questions surrounding sustainability and ESG.

Some popular posts:   the commencement address;  by Nassim Taleb (Black Swan author, risk management philosopher),  Neil Gaiman on making wonderful, fabulous, brilliant mistakes;  JK Rowling on the benefits of failure.  Charlie Munger on always inverting;  Sheryl Sandberg on grief, resilience and gratitude.

How to live a life, well lived. Thoughts from a dying man. On play and playing games.

A provoking read on how to raise a feminist child.

Theatre Critics. Lyn Gardner axed from Guardian.

Lyn Gardner, the second theatre critic at the Guardian, known for seeing off-mainstream work, is not having her contract renewed. Michael Billington remains. The Guardian claim it will be looking for fresh new voices.

Andy Field, an off-mainstream theatre maker, provides an impassioned defence of her role as a critic in the theatre eco-system - particularly the off-mainstream ecology.

I note that minority theatre makers such as black british practitioners, LGBQT and other off-mainstream artists discuss about the lack of a strong black critic (/other critic) that can engage with work on a sophisticated level but also with empathy and understanding. Similar arguments are made in the world of curating.

There is also a tradition of critics being writer themselves. Perhaps most famously Bernard Shaw, although modern critics have also written and been performed.

I'm not going to add further opinion but comment in remembrance.

In 2003,  Lyn Gardner gave one of my first performed plays, LOST IN PERU, 2 stars a poor review but with the parting hopeful words of "But, goodness, it is great to see a young writer reaching out beyond his own experience." I did meet my future wife at the play, so there's that (and why else write except to find life mates?)

In 2007, Lyn Gardner described my version of NAKAMITSU as "small but exquisitely formed" and 3 stars and a rather good review.

I'm sure she will continue reviewing somewhere and somehow (she does write still for the Stage). Perhaps, I will have a play on again and see if I can continue to increase my star count over 10 years later.

More thoughts: My Financial Times opinion article on long-term investing and how to engage with companies.

How to live a life, well lived. Thoughts from a dying man. On play and playing games.

If you'd like to feel inspired by commencement addresses and life lessons try:  Neil Gaiman on making wonderful, fabulous, brilliant mistakes; or Nassim Taleb's commencement address; or JK Rowling on the benefits of failure.  Or Charlie Munger on always inverting;  Sheryl Sandberg on grief, resilience and gratitude.

A provoking read on how to raise a feminist child.

Cross fertilise. Read about the autistic mind here.

Kwame Kwei-Armah new season at Young Vic

I think – as I blogged about earlier – that bringing Kwame Kwei-Armah as the  Artistic Director of the Young vic is going to be important for London theatre and perhaps the wider arts.

(Behind a pay wall but) his recent interview in the FT is a good read on his vision for his first season:  

“I lived through the Brixton riots, the Southall riots, the Tottenham riots, the Wood Green riots. So I wasn’t spooked by it. What I knew through them, however, was that art can be made irrelevant during times of social upheaval, unless it engages with the pain that happens.”   

 And

“I think this season shows the direction of travel,” says Kwei-Armah. “With Danai and The Convert, the message is that young people of colour, women of colour, the main stage is going to be for you. Twelfth Night is about joy, the love of life. Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train is a signal that I’m going to be doing great revivals of modern classics. And I wanted to bring a little bit of what I’ve learnt from America to this first season: it’s in the middle of a renaissance of new writers for theatre.”

Power of silence. Gun control advocate.

 Emma González, a survivor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, delivered the speech to the March For Our Lies rally on Saturday in Washington, USA. 

I cried.  The Power of silence.  Truncated sentences. Caesura.  Emma Gonzalez used the truncated “would never” and the gaps we had to fill in to lay a moving tribute to her friends.


Extending this further into over 4 minutes of silence, she held a powerful testimony.


The grief and anger is too much for words.

Imagine this time.  Place yourself there.

The timing of 6 minutes 20 seconds also the timing of the shooting. 

...in that it reminds me of Carly Churchill in the truncated loss of words (Here We Go, Blue Kettle, and a silence more complex, sad and defiant than what I’ve seen theatre with Pinter or Beckett. ... a crowd of hundreds of thousands would do that.... 

Michael Moore, Twitter

Michael Moore, Twitter


EMMA GONZALEZ: Six minutes and about 20 seconds. In a little over six minutes, 17 of our friends were taken from us. Fifteen were injured. And everyone - absolutely everyone - in the Douglas Community was forever altered. Everyone who was there understands. Everyone who has been touched by the cold grip of gun violence understands.

Six minutes and 20 seconds with an AR-15, and my friend Carmen would never complain to me about piano practice. Aaron Feis would never call Kyra, Miss Sunshine. Alex Schachter would never walk into school with his brother Ryan. Scott Beigel would never joke around with Cameron at camp. Helena Ramsay would never hang out after school with Max. Gina Montalto would never wave to her friend Liam at lunch. Joaquin Oliver would never play basketball with Sam or Dylan. Alaina Petty would never. Cara Loughran would never. Chris Hixon would never. Luke Hoyer would never. Martin Duque Anguiano would never. Peter Wang would never. Alyssa Alhadeff would never. Jamie Guttenberg would never. Meadow Pollack would never.

[Silence.  4 minutes]  

GONZALEZ: Since the time that I came out here, it has been six minutes and 20 seconds. The shooter has ceased shooting and will soon abandon his rifle, blend in with the students as they escape and walk free for an hour before arrest. Fight for your lives before it's someone else's job.

 

Never a wrong time to do the right thing. Free Speech.

There is never a wrong time to do the right thing.  If you think you’ve made the wrong decision, but you are very much in the public eye then reversing it can be a hard thing to do.  The Royal Court led by Vicky Featherstone have reversed such a decision.  Regardless of one's own opinion, listening and responding is a mark of a considered leadership and should be congratulated.

 

“Written when Andrea Dunbar was just eighteen, Rita, Sue and Bob Too was presented as part of the Young Writers Festival 1982, in a double bill with Bows and Arrows by Lenka Janiurek. The play caused a sensation with its frank look at teenage sexuality and became notorious for its opening scene where two schoolgirl babysitters take it in turns to have sex with their employer in the back of his car. In 1986, the play was adapted into a film of the same name, and attracted a cult following.”

 

The RC at first thought it was too difficult to stage the play at the RC putting more weight on keeping the RC a safe space and the conflictual overtones of having  a director (accused of multiple harassment incidents) previously involved with the production.  

 

Yet the RC puts the writer’s voice at the heart of its work. Not directors not actors.  So, as writers might say, silencing a working class female voice because of who the original director was, would be untrue to the RC mission.

 

A wider ranging examination of the difficulties of separating art from artist is looked at here by  Claire Dederer in The Paris Review.   Can we look at Ezra Pound’s work as separate from his poetry or even harder can we take out what we know of Woody Allen from his masterwork that is Manhattan as discussed in the article.

 

“....They did or said something awful, and made something great. The awful thing disrupts the great work; we can’t watch or listen to or read the great work without remembering the awful thing. Flooded with knowledge of the maker’s monstrousness, we turn away, overcome by disgust. Or … we don’t. We continue watching, separating or trying to separate the artist from the art. Either way: disruption. They are monster geniuses, and I don’t know what to do about them….Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, Bill Cosby, William Burroughs, Richard Wagner, Sid Vicious, V. S. Naipaul, John Galliano, Norman Mailer, Ezra Pound, Caravaggio, Floyd Mayweather, though if we start listing athletes we’ll never stop….”

 

Those of a libertarian angle or fierce defenders of speech freedom will mostly conclude that primacy of voice and freedom of speech comes first and anything else would be censorship and censorship is mostly or even always unwelcome.

 

If you'd like to feel inspired by commencement addresses and life lessons try:  Neil Gaiman on making wonderful, fabulous, brilliant mistakes; or Nassim Taleb's commencement address; or JK Rowling on the benefits of failure.  Or Charlie Munger on always inverting;  Sheryl Sandberg on grief, resilience and gratitude or investor Ray Dalio on  on Principles.

Cross fertilise. Read about the autistic mind here.