Ending the constraints of written expression - aka free form jazz
Now I have pellacor up and running; and slowly begin to develop the style and voice here: offline I have been experimenting with different forms of written expression trying to find ways to free up the written language from the tight constraints of syntax.
On a couple of occasions this has been sitting up in front of my laptop after I had been out drinking, lit solely by the light of the display, and as a jazz musician hammering words out like deep rumbling plucks of a double base broken with short shouts from a rambling horn. I was free from sentence structure, feeling the letters that tumbled effortlessly from my fingers were how it should always be.
But the morning hangover and bright sunshine had burnt away the intense emotion of the night
Mandan daran isisisiskkkk – garam bistu busto boto – HEIGHT – asss thee gulooomm – psst – psst
Doooodeedodeoidei basssuromk shhhhhhhhhhhhiiiooooooooffffff ananaananananan
Sfjhorgu
Manient
Ddeerrrooooo
Fh;eu
Weifhj garrotobu bintine binner sin
All I had left was random hard to read sounds, that without the subjective experience of the night before are completely meaningless. It wasn’t really the Nobel Prize winning written expression I was so sure I had captured and I was left feeling undone.
The hangover passed, in the slow manner it does now I am thirty, and my resolve to find a way to free up written expression returned. Another week past and after another night drinking I was again in front of my laptop with emotion swirling around me like smoke; my soul capturing the feelings and searching for a way to express it despite my incapacity to form sentences. The jazz returned.
This time I was compelled not just to express sounds but words interspersed with keyboard crashes that in the night sounded like hits from a full symphonic orchestra.
Life ‘oh[suohgd shared ;dfuaasidshu now sduo;fhf ever present fsfsgh questions ;sdf;gf meaning in everything f;udg;suh or nothing lsdfbeu;fh alone together alone lsdhufglseifulsfdfu;sh life
The cold morning again reminded me the feeling behind the expression wasn’t apparent at all and I needed a new approach.
In my cerebral way, I began to think about the issue. Expressing an idea in writing requires a precision of mind that constrains expression. Writing is imprisoned like pre-impressionist painting in a rigid form of realism, syntax and tense. I want to aspirate this form to explore expressions with words in other ways, to try to distil down principles of written communication.
Words are shadows of ideas, when we create sentences we have objects and subjects and verbs, we blend sounds, shifting shallow symphonies of assonance and alliteration. I want to destroy these relationships. I want to break the bonds of sentences. I want to be free.
Then it hit me.
Written language is a way of describing ideas, of thoughts, and the internet has opened up myriad of ways of describing this very same thing. Indeed this post on pellacor is described by its tags.
My new form of expression is a combination of poetry and tags, I call it tagetry.
A tagem about tagetry
Short, simple, sense, self, words, writing, free
Meaning, meta, myriad, morning, glow, pride, people
Liquid, changing, waving, wonder, never, none, all, even
Needing, frank, forever, stopping, exquisite, ideal, idea, identity
Glue, path, vision, vixen, parish, harbour, haven
Ending, broken, bramble, colour, complete
They sent us Playboy, they gave us Bob Hope
It is a big mistake to lump all social media together as if it were a single entity, or in fact even remotely similar, like network television, or metropolitan newspapers.
The fact is that social media is as diverse as the people you have walked past this morning on your way to the office; each and everyone of of them a unique and special individual who has a right to love and understanding.
Coincidentally there have been a few unique and special individuals in Wellington over the weekend for the Rock2WGTN gig; and as a Wellingon 6011 resident I would welcome the return of our black clad bogan brothers and sisters again next year.
I was reminded of this point yesterday in relation to the diversity of social media when a fellow mefite bartrandom had his Metafilter YouTube comment mashup posted on the gray.
Comparing the latest comments on Metafilter with comments in the most popular YouTube videos really does highlight the diversity of social media.
Its like raaaaiiiin on your wedding day
The newspaper industry underwent a period of massive consolidation during the latter part of the 20th Century. This was a result of new digital technologies that predated the rise of the internet but facilitated the sharing of articles from a single newsroom across different newspaper titles within a single company. This meant newspaper owners achieved economies of scale if they owned multiple newspapers titles and media owners such as Kerry Packer and Rupert Murdoch amassed large fortunes on this principle.
The internet first promised and then delivered these same digital technologies to everyone else and the large newspaper conglomerates are finding it hard to adjust to the dynamic digital environment they are now forced to operate in. A common strategy for coping is to continue consolidation.
It is interesting to highlight that the same enabling technology that generated the economies of scale in the newspaper business when democratised have negatively impacted newspaper revenue.
But hindsight is always 20-20.
Government department misses the point
When you have such great internationally recognised advice, how does this happen?
Am I missing the social media tie in? Is this supported by national media campaigns?
It feels like tv on the web, and as such it will fail.
How easy it would be to show me how you feel
I have exactly three posts on the go and in between work and life and the ramshackle way I think about things; none of it is ready “for print”
For this, I am sorry.
In my working world of subs and editors, or even peer review - pellacor feels very naked.
So instead of REAL content from a REAL person, this has tickled me forever for its modern insolence and I hope endearing sarcasm, it is a poem by Rudyard Kipling and I have highlighted parts where I have gained insight.
Take up the White Man’s burden–
Send forth the best ye breed–
Go, bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait, in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild–
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.
Take up the White Man’s burden–
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain,
To seek another’s profit
And work another’s gain.
Take up the White Man’s burden–
The savage wars of peace–
Fill full the mouth of Famine,
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
(The end for others sought)
Watch sloth and heathen folly
Bring all your hope to nought.
Take up the White Man’s burden–
No iron rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper–
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go, make them with your living
And mark them with your dead.
Take up the White Man’s burden,
And reap his old reward–
The blame of those ye better
The hate of those ye guard–
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:–
“Why brought ye us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?”
Take up the White Man’s burden–
Ye dare not stoop to less–
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloak your weariness.
By all ye will or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent sullen peoples
Shall weigh your God and you.
Take up the White Man’s burden!
Have done with childish days–
The lightly-proffered laurel,
The easy ungrudged praise:
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years,
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers.
I see this poem as a metaphor for traditional media’s engagement of the web, and the colonial attitude, with which they hope to monetise their cheaply paid content. By assuming the mantle of authority, they are missing the point of it. The news brands will break, if they haven’t already.
The king is dead. Long live the kings.
Being but men
Being but men, we walked into the trees
Afraid, letting our syllables be soft
For fear of waking the rooks,
For fear of coming
Noiselessly into a world of wings and cries.
If we were children we might climb,
Catch the rooks sleeping, and break no twig,
And, afert the soft ascent,
Thrust out our heads above the branches
To wonder at the unfailing stars.
Out of confusion, as the way is,
And the wonder, that man knows,
Out of the chaos would come bliss.
That, then, is loveliness, we said,
Children in wonder watching the stars,
Is the aim and the end.
Being but men, we walked into the trees.
by Dylan Thomas 1932
Foot in mouth
I had a conversation last week with the New Zealand Olympic Committee about the possibility of supplying some content onto their site for the games in Beijing. They said they would be open to it in the future, but had hired their own writer for the Olympics. I kinda suggested that maybe content from us would be a bit more authoritative than some freelance hack (without obviously being that blunt).
What I should have done is ask who they had hired; because today I found out it is Joseph Romanos.
Petty and spiteful car parking building episode
I was so far into a post about a bad customer experience I have had today at Lombard Car Parking Building when I realised, there is no point ranting - I can express myself within google.
So here goes guys:
Lombard Car Parking Building is the worst car parking building in New Zealand.
It is going to take time until the index comes through again - but I have time, in fact this page is going to be here forever.
If you want to help me in this: set up a link on your blog with the URL below with the key words in the a tags and the title element “the worst car parking building in new zealand” and we will see who laughs last.
http://www.tournament.co.nz/content/car_park.aspx?cpid=37
(asp page: fucking amateurs…)
Crying cockles and mussels alive, alive, oh
To some people sales and selling can be dirty words, inspiring images of real estate agents and car salesman using unscrupulous tactics, pressure and feelings of loss. But selling is the foundation of commerce and we all earn money that had been generated through sales at some point.
On an abstract level, selling is obtaining an agreement to do something for someone in exchange for payment, and there are different sales strategies used for the sale of different things.
Imagine a horizontal line of sales strategies all lined up next to one another. The kind of strategy employed by a second hand car salesman will be on the left hand side; this strategy is all about emotion. The salesman will try to engage a prospective customer emotionally with the car sales process, and once emotionally invested it becomes harder for the customer to say no to the sale.
This kind of emotional sales strategy can leave customers with an icky feeling of being had, and does not encourage repeat business.
On the opposite end of the line of sales strategies are those used by corporate consultants, it is called solutions based selling, consultative sales or business development. This process adhered to ethically, uses no emotion and creates win-win business relationships that can last for decades and represent millions of dollars of revenue and the priceless prosperity of good will.
The process of solution selling is very simple and involves three general stages
Strong foundations
At the core of a sale is a promise to give something, goods or service, in exchange for money and if your potential customer does not trust you to do what you say you will, there will be no sale. Building the foundations for a sale is first about establishing capability, to demonstrate you are capable of doing what you say you are going to do and then about building trust.
Establishing capability is as easy as discussing how you have helped other organisations in the past, and building trust could be just openly discussing issues you have experienced with other clients, what the problems were and how they were resolved. You are trying to form long term relationships with people, and the quickest way to find out how good a supplier is when something goes wrong.
Be honest, be open, adhere to your personal values and most of all listen to your client, because the only way you can figure out what they need is by hearing and understanding their problems.
Finding and exploring the gap
Once you have a client who trusts you they will begin to open up a little about their business, and talk about things that are difficult or are causing problems. Next time you are in a meeting with a consultant listen for questions like “So what are your greatest challenges?” and “What sort of problems do you encounter”. These questions are designed to identify areas of your organisation that are causing problems or explore opportunities for improvement or efficiencies.
Once you have identified the problem area, you need to find out why it is a problem, imagine it like feeling out a tiny cave you can’t see inside with your hand and then drawing the shape of the inside of the cave from touch alone. This exploration of issues is the most important step as you need to undeerstand the problem to fix it.
Bridging the gap
Bridging the gap is about filling the need or the cave you have identified in the finding and exploring the gap phase earlier and once you have a full and detailed picture of the client’s issue you can now use your special consultant powers to conjure up a solution. This is usually pretty easy as nothing helps to tackle a problem like perspective and as an external agency you have an outside in view of your client’s business.
Once the solution has been detailed in a proposal the client can look at their problem, understand your solution and decide whether it is worth the cost you have indicated. If you have done the finding, exploring and bridging process properly the deal itself should fall into place.
Emotion in the mix
Some people will still use an emotional component in the consultative sales process that I find personally a little underhand; but it is taught in some texts by some highly respected operators so I will add it here for completeness.
Between the finding and exploring the gap and the bridging the gap phase you can wedge the problem wider, at least in the minds of the perspective clients by using emotion. This is done by asking negative questions like “What would happen if you don’t fix this problem” or “Are you worried your competitors are already adopting this technology” or “What would your manager say if this system broke”.
These reverse negative questions turn the problem inside out and increase the percentage of sales by increasing the visibility by the client of the issue you have identified and that you are going to propose a solution for.
Love is not a victory march; it’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah
We all experience this life apart; and that separation wrenches a hole in our subjective which can never be completely filled. In a perfect world we would be able to share our sorrows and joys; we would be able to see through the night, by knowing the morning sun fills us again.
This is why communication is so important and why the modern internet age promises so much.
The webs empower everybody to share instantly, globally and unedited the subjective experience of life and allows us to take comfort in understanding: we are not alone.
The more we appreciate how we interact as colleagues, clients, suppliers, friends, family and strangers; the more able we are to deal with the separate existence of each other.