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Pure Leadership

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Miscellany

Published: 17 January 2012

Hits: 1674

Walking with the boy through Kensington we pass a shop, or ground level office space, the window decorated with a logo of a naked man surrounded by rays of what presumably are light, or enlightenment, above is text advertising "Pure Leadership", beneath it the word "Homoluminous".

"Use that in conversation 5 times today" I tell the boy. It's the challenge.

We peer through the window, I've walked past this shop before. It's an office space, computers, desks, the floor covered in file folders and stray papers, on the desk beside the apple-branded computers are large rock crystals, geodes, there's a magic carpet carelessly knotted underneath the castors of the desk chair, a globe upon another desk, and I find myself wondering who on earth buys this bollocks. Really. I mean, what are they teaching leadership skills for? Getting people to drink the kool-aid? Who in their right mind walks into their office and looks at the mess of new age paraphernalia scattered across the desks and floor and decides that these people have something to teach them?

"Without seeming prejudiced" I tell him "It's pure bullshit".  

Picasso at the Lapin Agile

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Theatre

Published: 16 January 2012

Hits: 1625

The Sunday entertainment with the boy. Now I like Steve Martin, appreciate his brilliance, and I like the idea of Einstein meeting Picasso at a cafe in Paris, what conversations would ensue? How much potential is there in that?

Exactly.

There is, by the way, but we had rush tickets, as we seat ourselves I can't help but notice the audience much resembles another audience for a recent Noel Coward production we both saw. A bad omen.

The first 50 minutes of the play go fine, OK, some moments even good, but as the end appears to be drawing nearer and I'm stretching my legs Steve Martin begins introducing more and more characters, and more and more preposterous comedic events, he's not letting it end naturally. It's as if he's feeling obliged to give us a full 90 minutes of play for our money, regardless of how he does it, and the comedy grows increasingly strained.

And it goes from being not bad to not good in a hurry.

Enter Elvis.

Now it seems this is a plot device used by quite a few other playwrights as of late (think Jubilation's) the reasoning I can only imagine must go like this: "No play starring Elvis has ever lost money", or some other like-minded thespian superstition, because his presence, well, it lent nothing. In fact the boy and I have a shared joke that whenever Elvis enters the theatre it's probably time to get up and go, we couldn't as we were too tightly wedged in with the wheelchairs and seniors, but to leave would have been the kindest thing.

Elvis, Picasso and Einstein all have their moment. Load of bollocks. End play.  Amusing in that sort of dark-joke's on you sort of way, we laughed a fair bit after the play, but seldom inside it. No bananas.

Kinder reviews here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picasso_at_the_Lapin_Agile, YouTube version here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ep1WKTAfa0k&feature=related. If you like the YouTube clip you might enjoy it, it's all a matter of taste after all.

Sobriety

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Miscellany

Published: 16 January 2012

Hits: 1836

Now it's been a couple of months - before the Christmas rush, since I've been well and truly sober, by which I mean neither drunk, hungover, or looking forward or immediately back at either of the two. It was a long Christmas, and the parties and late nights were the only way of coping with an otherwise untenable schedule.

And having noticed that it was becoming far more habit than occasion I put a slight brake on it over the weekend, drinking, yes, but in far more moderate quantities, a reasonable bedtime and absolutely no hangovers.

The weekends are too short, I'm flawed enough without adding more vices to my list, I'm sure the boy would appreciate a less-hungover father...

Some observations, then:

#1. The job I do is almost impossible without some alcohol or chemical anesthesia. I marvel that I do it, and frequently find reason to prematurely throw in the towel, I haven't the patience. 4 more months, I suck it up, breathe deep, find the patience, I oscillate, I stand outside the kitchen having a cigarette, listening to the cursing in the kitchen, the thrown pots and pans, I haven't the patience, need the patience, the owner on his tirades, customers with preposterous requests, or reasonable requests in preposterous quantities, it's all trying me to the limit.

#2. I work in the realm of great drinkers. Customers who can down a bottle, 2, 3 of Amarone over a lunch hour and still find the legs to return to work. And while I've practiced, gotten the knack of it as it were, I'm not yet able to get back to work, and there's a lot of work to be done. A bit of a shame that my lifes work begins when I finish paying the rent, and having to work around that can be a bit of a pain, but for the moment it's the way it is. So it goes.

#3. Sobriety is over rated. Greatly. Nothing feels better, true, than the day after hangover day when you awaken fresh and well rested and ready to take on the world - to address that three day or three week old list of chores and errands, but that greatness is quickly destroyed by the realization that one must change and return to work. One solution would be to make post-hangover day a national holiday, in the line of Christmas and Easter, but I don't think it's going to happen. On it's own sober is merely sober, in line with the other vices, as a day in a timeshare with the rest of the demons it becomes an altered state all to itself. Mind a few days sober and the novelty quickly evaporates, the routine of the job becomes a sort of numbing anesthesia to any of the greater joys in life.
Still, there's #4...

#4. Dreams come back, nighttime, each morning with the quickly evaporating shreds - "I'll remember that" I tell myself as the coffee percolates, by the time I've returned the dream has gone. And ideas, stray ideas or flying in formation like some winged migration, not always with a pen in hand to jot them down, but they're obvious, now, like a flock of geese in the winter, obvious, because for the past couple of months they've been absent, vanished, south for the winter, now they cut a line into the sky....

And there are the remembered plans and ambitions, waylaid, the recognition of a thousand things that must be done before going up North, only now in the heightened light of temperance they acquire an urgency that was somewhere postponed or forgotten....

***
These are only the initial observations, curious, Sobriety exercising it's rather limited appeal, G swore on with me, then waited until I'd left on Friday night to reunite with his demons, Saturday, a little annoyed that I was left out, but to see his face, recall that feeling of working misery - well, I can do without that as well. 4 months and counting.