#114: Angélique Kidjo, Ed Catmull, John McPhee And Skin

Mindfulness practitioners guide us to smell the smells, see the shapes and feel the textures of the world. Writers tell us that writing helps them see the world differently. They’re constantly hearing fragments of dialogue that they sometimes steal and then smuggle into their prose. Musicians say the same. They hear things the rest of us don’t.

Leonardo da Vinci carried a notebook in which he captured thoughts as they occurred to him. Thoughts such as “describe the tongue of the woodpecker and jaw of a crocodile”. Thoughts that fuelled his artistry and engineering.

Leon Gorman, grandson of L.L.  Bean and later chairman of the company bearing the same name, carried a notebook in which he jotted down ideas to improve the company. He had more than four hundred when he took operational control.

The point is ultimately the same. Paying attention makes your life richer. Paying attention unlocks serendipity. Paying attention allows you to connect the seemingly unconnected.

I am not certain how today’s letter was born. Perhaps it started when I saw Penni Setti, proprietor of one of my favourite Cape Town wine bars Penny Noire, post a picture of her Zambian passport as she headed to Austrian wine show, Vie Vinum. Or perhaps the fact that I intended to write about Brooklyn-based Beninese superstar, Angélique Kidjo, who has famously woven together the music of Africa, the Caribbean, and Brazil, meant that I noticed that the creator of one of Cape Town’s gems was born in Zambia.

I am no longer sure.

What I do know is that this is the creative, expansive Pan-African spirit that Nkrumah, Sobukwe, and Biko called us to embrace. I know that today’s letter has been a fun exercise in joining the dots. I hope that you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

/STRATEGY

Co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios, Ed Catmull’s comment that “For all the care that you put into artistry, visual polish frequently doesn’t matter if you are getting the story right” provoked today’s strategy thoughts.

He was explaining his surprise at the audience’s reaction to the screening of Wally B, the first computerised character animation ever shown at SIGGRAPH, an annual computer graphic conference. The film was rough, unfinished. It included sections that were simple wireframes, incomplete black and white mock-ups. The team was mortified and expected the worst, but Catmull says that the audience “were so caught up in the emotion of the story that they hadn’t noticed its flaws.”

My brain immediately bounced Catmull’s comment off Pulitzer Prize winner John McPhee’s mantra, “A Thousand Details Add Up to One Impression”. He explains in his book Draft No.4 that “Its implication is that few (if any) details are individually essential, while the details collectively are absolutely essential.”

I sat in silence holding these two seemingly contradictory thoughts. Which is it? Does story trump detail? Does attention to detail not matter?

Catmull himself provides us with somewhat of an answer saying that “In any given Pixar film every line of dialogue, every beam of light or patch of shade, every sound effect is there because it contributes to the greater whole…a movie is not one idea, it is a multitude of them. And behind these ideas are people. This is true of products in general; the iPhone, for example, is not a singular idea – there is a mind-boggling depth to the hardware and software that supports it. Yet, too often, we see a single object and think of it as an island that exists apart and unto itself.”

So, yes, the detail matters. As important, are the connections between the details and the spirit that weaves them together. Perhaps the best way to explain it is in the negative. All the polish in the world means nothing without soul. In the language of strategy, it is both powerful purpose and excellent execution that makes for greatness.

/SELF

Five times Grammy-award-winning artist, Angélique Kidjo, is the embodiment of soulful story, of creative connection, and of meticulously detailed execution. Julian Lucas’ New Yorker interview with her is a delight.

He reminds us that when covering a Jimi Hendrix track, she’d said, “Who could better claim to be a ‘Voodoo Child’ than me?” A wry reference to her homeland’s vodun religion. Like Hendrix reclaimed rock from Dylan, Kidjo brought Hendrix back to Africa, back to the roots of rock.

Throughout Lucas’ interview, her warmth and humour shine through.

Although Kidjo is one of those souls who always knew what she would do, her path to success wasn’t given or easy.

Her family took a loan to finance the recording of her first album. She flew to Paris, went into studio at eight in the evening, worked until five the next morning, and flew back to Benin. It was all they could afford. A few years later, as the then dictatorial regime strictly controlled travel, she had to smuggle herself out of the country, hiding under an airplane seat.

Kidjo describes choosing between maintaining her long hair or paying rent. She cut it. Lucas asks if it wasn’t perhaps also a statement. She responds, “I just didn’t care.”

Her comment took me across the channel to that other genre-busting diva, Skin of Skunk Anansie, who said after she shaved her hair off “I’d found myself. Once I’d shaved my head people would look at me, so I had to be confident, to let go of my shyness, and a bold new me emerged.” It reminded me how absolutely idiosyncratic we all are. For Kidjo, short hair meant rent paid. For Skin, it was a symbol of emergence. We can never assume intent from what we see. We have to listen to know.

Studying in Paris she confronted racism, including pressure to change her sound, with people telling her that her music wasn’t African enough. She says that Salif Keita’s album ‘Soro’ showed her that she was on ‘the right path by mixing everything up’. It struck me that you can never know how your actions might open possibility for another, but they can, and they do.

Once you start looking, you’ll see that our connections are everywhere. As Kidjo recorded her tribute to the Talking Heads, she discovered that they were influenced by Fela Kuti’s “Afrodisiac”. She says that she thought “Well, let’s take this back home”. She closed the circle. Or, perhaps, created another spiral in the pattern of life. Her work is the weaving of together thousands of influences with a heartbeat that was birthed in Benin.

/ SOUL

Kidjo speaks and sings in multiple languages. Lucas asks her how she decides which to choose. She replies, “It’s a matter of inspiration. Sometimes you try one language, and it doesn’t work. If a song has to be rhythmic, really tense, it has to be Fon, because it’s the language of the Amazons. Yoruba—or Mina, from Ghana and Togo—has melody in it. But I can’t sit here and tell you that it’s done on purpose.”

As Kidjo said that she reminded me of scriptwriter-director Robert Rodriguez’s comment to Tim Ferriss, “Get your ego out of it. It’s not you, anyway. The sooner you shut up, the sooner it will come through. Get out of the way, let the pen glide where it needs to go and it will be there, and you’ll be amazed and you’ll be going, how did I do that? The creative spirit will be like: ‘bastard, taking credit for it again’.”

If you get out of the way, if you pay attention to what flows, then maybe, just maybe, the dots will join themselves.

I hope you have a wonderful week!

Karl

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