I had a germ of an idea for a column, so I brought it up to my friend Tony, another retired journalist: What if the Mona Lisa had to go through a focus group? “It’s so drab.” “What’s with the hair! Shouldn’t she wear a beret or something?” “What does that smile mean anyway?”
We eventually agreed that it was more of a germ than an idea, so the subject was quickly dropped. A couple of weeks later, though, Tony saw this on the internet (it’s an ad, but very low key):
Two consultants are helping Vincent van Gogh sell a painting, but their potential buyer was balking. The client came up with a great “solve.”
“Can you make it a sunny day?” male consultant asks.
“The title of the painting is Starry Night,” van Gogh replies.
“And they love the title,” female consultant says. “Don’t change that.”
“Don’t change the title,” male adds, “change the painting.”
I’m sure that right about then, this calendar page would have been comforting to our fictional version of van Gogh.
Fictional Frida Kahlo underwent the same sort of exasperation in another part of the ad. And, in a lot of ways, I bet even the least artistic among us has, just with a different sort of brushstrokes. Such as:
Anyone with a friend or relative who can’t be deterred from sharing their political views.
Even though you have far more experience, some people will insist they’re the experts on a particular subject. (We’ll call them “men.”)
A writer whose editor changes the piece to mimic the editor’s voice, not the writer’s.
An interior designer whose client’s niece’s boyfriend has some strong feelings about the strategic use of polka dots.
Maybe the greatest career advice is also the most obvious: Surround yourself with smart people. But it doesn’t stop there. Surround yourself with smart people and learn from them. Too many bosses recruit the best and the brightest, then overrule them at every turn.
If you’re the employee or potential employee, look for red flags. Is the boss hunting for people who complement one another — or compliment the boss?
The PBS documentary “Hamilton’s America” has a nice scene of Lin-Manuel Miranda massaging some of his potential songs with director Thomas Kail and musical arranger Alex Lacamoire, then turning it over to choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler to bring it to life. Miranda is a genius composer, but he’s also smart enough to know that his words could be echoing around empty theaters if he teams up with the wrong people or tries to do it all on his own.
Even among peers, try to spread the workload so people are using their strengths — maybe one’s the better writer, one’s more detail oriented, one’s a better researcher, whatever. People have to adjust to make their talents mesh, even if they’re Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein, where the division of labor is obvious (one writes lyrics, the other music).
Someone way smarter than me suggested we ask this question of any child or other loved one who seems upset: Do you want to be helped, heard or hugged?
Take the principle even further and it can help you with so many of life’s struggles. Like the child who just wants to be heard and the unsolicited political spouters, some people are desperate for an audience, but don’t really need — or want — your advice.
Biting our tongues is hard for some of us (or maybe all of us), but it’s great if you can take a step back and ask, can I really help? What do I know that they don’t? Do I have some experience or relationship that would help them? Or am I just being a tin-eared editor?
Take our fictional van Gogh. He wanted to be heard, of course, in the sense of Starry Night speaking to people, but he wanted help only in a very narrow area: Sell my damn painting.
You know what else van Gogh probably could have used? A hug.
Not from one of those marketers — god no — but maybe from a friend and fellow artist like Paul Gauguin, someone who knows how hard it is to create something, how painful it is to get rejected, how vulnerable you feel when you give a part of yourself.
Maybe this was sticking in my mind because of another story involving my friend Tony, this one from five years ago this week. I hadn’t written a column in eons, but I had a personal story involving a 21-year-old female intern that I thought was worth telling, so I shared a draft with him, feeling more professionally vulnerable than I had in decades.
I trusted his judgment and figured he’d be honest if he thought I was full of crap — calling friends on their bullshit might be the most noble form of help one can offer. He also had two daughters in their 20s, so he might be able to notice a red flag that I’d overlooked.
You can have all the intelligence and empathy in the world and you’ll still never be able to know what someone else is going through, which is why listening is so important.
I have several young friends, but I’ll never know what it’s like to be a parent the way Tony does. I’ll never really know what it’s like to be Black or a woman or LGBTQIA or an art marketer, and I sure as hell won’t know what it’s like to be a Dutch painter in the 19th century.
But I do know what it’s like to need a hug. And sometimes that’s the only thing worth focusing on.
Murphy Slaw
Something old: Just a strange bit of trivia that I love.
Something new: A jarring story from CNN: More than 1 billion meals are wasted across the world each day, according to a United Nations report.
Something borrowed: Screw politics. Well, that’s not exactly what I mean, but maybe this will explain.
Something blue: Nobody wants to be diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, of course, but now it can at be spotted sooner with a skin biopsy, which can at least help patients be treated faster, potentially slowing the disease’s growth, the Wall Street Journal reports.