#222: A director, two poets and a short story…

Dear friends
 
Let’s get to it…
 
/strategy

I love interviews. The dialogue between a skilled questioner and an intriguing guest is a wonderful format for revealing insight. My favourites are The Paris Review’s Art of Fiction which are often months and multiple conversations in the making (for a short form thrill I love the FT’s Lunch With – it’s also a great way to pick up wine and restaurant recommendations).

George Stevens’ Conversations with the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood’s Golden Age is a similar gem, a compilation of interviews of master moviemakers sourced from the American Film Institute’s Harold Lloyd Master Seminars.

Orson Welles once described Jean Renoir as ‘the greatest of all directors’. Son of impressionist painter genius, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, he was interviewed by Stevens on April 14, 1970.

Stevens opens the conversation with a simple question, “How do you start a film?”

Renoir starts his answer “I’m probably not the right person to ask such a question, because in the field of motion pictures I’m a director who has spent his life suggesting stories that nobody wanted. It’s still going on. But I’m used to it and I’m not complaining, because the ideas which were forced on me were often better than my own ideas”.

First strategy lesson, just because it was someone else’s idea doesn’t mean we can’t make it great.
Renoir continues, “Even if you have to work on a story you don’t like very much, you can always do a personal picture, one which will be the expression of your personality. The ideas inside you don’t give up, and in the final result it’s your picture and not someone else’s”.

At some stage, most of us will work in jobs we didn’t design and, unfortunately, at least once, we might even have a job we don’t like very much. Renoir’s second strategy lesson is we can always shape it to be an expression of ourselves and our values. There is always room to meld what we find, with what we care about. Indeed, that is when happiness happens.

He illustrates, “I might start with this cup of coffee. Is this coffee? It’s probably very good. Allow me to try. [He drinks the coffee.] No, your coffee is not excellent. But from such a cup of coffee you can start a story, a wonderful story.”


We might not have the start we dream of, and still, from there, we can, indeed have to, start.

//self

Last week was South Africa’s Heritage Day. The day took me back to The Broken String, a poem first recited by Dia!kwain in 1875, to lament the killing of his friend Shaman, magician and rainmaker !Nuing-/kuiiteng.

It speaks both to his friend’s killing and colonialism’s killing of a way of life. It ends,

 ‘everything feels as if it stood open before me
empty, and I hear no sound
for they have broken the bow’s string for me
and the old places are not sweet any more
for what they did.’

You can watch poets Antjie Krog and Nunke Kadimo’s recitation here.

Kadimo speaks in Kwedam, Krog translates into English. They move into other equally beautiful poems, reminding us that we are connected to all around us, generally in ways we can’t comprehend, and that if we pause, listen and watch, the eternal, the transcendental, makes itself known.

///soul

For those of you who love booklists, it is literary award season (I welcome all gifts 😉).

At the beginning of September, South Africa’s Sunday Times Literary Awards released their shortlist (I was happy to see Caster Semenya’s Race to be Myself and Justice Malala’s The Plot Save South Africa which I wrote about here and here, on the list). The National Book Awards longlist, the Financial Times Business Book of the Year shortlist and the Booker Prize shortlist were all published.

In amongst this list avalanche, South African Nadia Davids won the Caine Prize for African Writing for her short story, Bridling. Her’s was one of 320 submissions from 28 African countries. You can read Bridling here.

It starts, “He doesn’t lock the mask every rehearsal. There are some days I say, ‘I can’t, not today, not for all those hours’”.

The story weaves through a play’s rehearsals. They begin with twelve women chosen from hundreds of hopefuls. By the play’s opening night only five women remain.

While waiting for auditions to begin, one comments “‘Twelve? I see his Messiah complex is still in full swing,’ and then, preening, ‘But do I want to be a disciple?’” She doesn’t make the cut.

Bridling’s power rests in all it doesn’t say. We feel the threat, we know the many ways this power expresses itself; we fear the moment that never comes, at least not in predictable ways. It leaves us knowing that abuse does not always leave a mark, that it is often not a moment but a silent system.

It’s a chilling tale, but one we must know if we’re to protect our own and others’ souls. And, like Renoir’s cup of coffee, it reminds us of the many ways we can begin to claim our lives.
 
All the best
 
Karl

PS: If you’re a child of South Africa’s 1970s or 80s, you’ll love Davids’ An Imperfect Blessing. You can read more here.
PPS: At the beginning of September, I was lucky enough to attend Africa In the World, 2024. It is a gathering of business builders, artists, philosophers, scientists and activists united by the desire to build a better Africa. You can read my reflections here.