A rare outing for that t shirt

Nirankar rocks

Simon, Conrad, Carlos rapt

 

Gary joins in

A few weeks back I threw a party at my home for the book (and my birthday). I felt I should, after all the people who live in Arenas have, knowingly or not, been companions along the way, they have seen (and put up with) my swinging mood, sudden disappearances or constant distractions.

The thing is, that most of them don’t understand (or read) English any too well. Which made the whole thing rather more inventive than it might otherwise have been. Food, music, games and stories were all improvised and the bits of the house that feature in the book bore witness and were pointed out - much to the delighted embarrassment of its creators, who were amongst the very varied crew that turned up to play. There was much to savour, from Fidel’s curried prawns, to the expression on Simon’s face in one of the more sublime moments of musical improvisation conjured out of thin air by Sergio Fulqueris and Nirankar Khalsa - who had only just met. But most of all, what I loved about it was that it seemed so perfectly planned, when in actual fact, very little had been planned at all. Not for the first time I was told “you sure know how to throw a party”. If so, it seems to me that remarkably little is required and that the art is simply to let things happen.

Whilst we were recording a podcast this morning Mark Earls brought to my attention this morning an article in yesterday’s Observer that likens Western Management to centrally planned Soviet style economies. As Simon Caulkin puts in that article: “The truth is that much conventional management is central planning in western disguise. This is why most companies are zombie-like in their structural and strategic similarity. This is why, too, they are unable to learn.”

This reminds me of Igor, the Franciscan Monk/fighter pilot turned ad man (from Vilnius Agency Garage 4×4, now Not Perfect) who referred to himself as ‘homo sovieticus’. The point I make in the chapter named for Igor (”Homo Sovieticus and other control freaks”) is that we are all more addicted to control on this micro scale than we realise, or care to admit - a theme Mark, Johnnie Moore and I explored in our conversation this morning. And there is a great asymmetry here - we like to control others it seems, as long as no-one controls us. Hence the CEO’s who want to be free from any government ‘interference’ but in firm, manly control of all who work for them.

Improvisers, by contrast, set up simple structures that introduce an element of constraint, rather than try to control things. Otherwise they allow themselves a high degree of freedom. Thus they can create a scene which is funny and engaging even whilst obliging themselves to begin each speech with the next letter of the alphabet. And by doing so they demonstrate an exceptional ability to create learning and action for their audience. Improvisers would clearly make ineffectual dictators or “hero CEO’s”. But isn’t that a good thing?

How many words of a second language do you need to know before it becomes useful?   Very few I suspect.  It follows that if, as I suggest in Chapter 15 of ‘Everything’s an Offer’ the improv practise can be regarded as a second language, then you don’t have to become brilliant at it, or even fluent.  As a complement to the dominant way of thinking and acting, even pidgin improv could make quite a difference…..