We had a good chat about the military and leadership and how businesses want to learn what people in the military have learned but can’t really be seen as taking consulting or help from the military.
We think of it as so – well, military – as somehow martial.
I, too, have a gut response that says, “Oh, no. Not military influence!” But I’ve spent enough time with military people to know how gracious they can be, how intelligent, how full of the idea of service. Those who learn to lead, really learn to LEAD. I mean, if you’re going to lead someone to their death, you have to be really good at leading in the end.
So there are things to learn, of course. I’m not interested in the hierarchy but the leadership and camaraderie, I’d be very happy to have those at my command.
Against some part of Poland.
The day after the Brexit vote, I visited with several friends, all of whom were immigrants to London and all of whom felt devastated and nervous about the vote. I went and met one of them at the Polish Cultural Centre where she had a rehearsal and we chatted about many things, not just the vote. She did, though, share with me that everyone there was very anxious about what might happen to them. Much of the anti-immigration sentiment in recent years had been directed at Polish people so they could only begin to imagine what might be ahead. Especially considering their history. My friend had fled Poland after WW2. She escaped a place depleted by the Holocaust and found a home in London. She was nervous about the future.
Two days later, I read that the centre had been vandalized with horrible anti-Polish graffiti on the very doors I had only just gone through days before. And I read that someone had pushed hateful messages in both English and Polish through the doors of an elementary school. The trouble that that hateful person took to do it is the thing that disturbs me the most. He must have found a Polish translation of his hateful message and then he laminated the cards. They were laminated! Laminated hate. Against Poland. Or the idea of Poland. Or Polish people. Or the IDEA of Polish people. It is shocking in its mundanity. I cannot help but picture him in the printing shop, standing by the laminator, waiting for his message to emerge. Or, worse, maybe he works in a school. Somewhere with a laminator in the office and he used the school’s resources to print out his hateful message and then, what the heck! Laminate it. Perhaps while some small child stood by and watched and learned to hate.
How purposed, sir, I pray you?
On the Paris Metro, two missionaries tried to enroll me in their church. They are good at their jobs, if not actually successful with me. It’s funny, too, how they seemed to be having a normal conversation and then suddenly flipped into their story of how moving it is to be with someone who is saying their first prayer – and then they start asking questions – at first they were relatively harmless. Where are you from? How long are you here? Where’d you get those shoes? And then after they’d asked me what my religion was, if I ever wondered why we’re here and I’d not given them anything they could work with, they tried. “What’s your main purpose in life?”
And while I have a very clear answer to this one – to make good art – I didn’t particularly want to share it with them. And FINALLY FINALLY, my stop arrived.
They are of Norway, sir.
I have a friend from Norway. Before I met her I had no particular interest in going there but since I adore her, I assume I must adore her native land. This logic does not hold however. I’m not sure I am the perfect representative of my native land, for example. And if one were to judge my native land by Donald Trump, for example, I’m sure no one would want to go there.
But I suppose meeting someone from a land you’ve never thought of is a good way to begin the investigation and then you find out for yourself if the person is representative.
Good sir, whose powers are these?
Streaming out of the clear pyramid of the Louvre were 6 men in fatigues, carrying rifles. They then stood guard at the traffic circle, seemingly directing people away. I assume they were French soldiers but I can’t be sure as I don’t generally recognize one brand of military from another.
I can’t imagine going up to one of them and asking a question like this. They create such a strong air of unapproachability.
But if I DID make such an inquiry, I quite like this way of doing it…seeing soldiers as someone’s (or somewhere’s) powers. As if they had the ability to turn invisible or something. But of course having a whole flock of soldiers at your disposal is probably very like having a super power. A dark one, surely. But a super power, none the less.
Go softly on.
My English theatre friend was a little embarrassed by the filmmaker’s brassy enthusiasm for her work. She and her theatre colleagues felt a little uncomfortable about the filmmaker’s puffing up.
This is why I love theatremakers in the UK. These three are not alone in their quiet, gentle, modest creation of their work. They are not in the habit of self promotion. They speak quietly. This feels like the theatre way to them. This is not the case in my native land.
Where I come from, most theatre folk are brassy and loud and very much in the habit of puffing up both themselves and others. To my eye, this filmmaker was doing what I’ve seen nearly every American theatre maker do at some point or another. For me, it was normal. Not MY way…but still, normal. But could I be the odd ball in the theatre? In a way, this filmmaker was the odd one in the bunch by being brassy and loud. I can be the odd ball by being soft and go softly on.
I will do’t, my lord.
I am going to be away for a rehearsal I was supposed to run and I found myself struggling with what to call the person I wanted to be in charge while I was gone. I searched and searched but in the end what felt most satisfactory was a military term. I went with Lieutenant. I felt like the lieu in it had a nice correlation with something being in lieu of something else. Also – the nice thing about military roles is that they are still imbued with authority. If someone is my lieutenant, they may be under me in authority but they still have quite palpable authority to those s/he’s leading.
What’s hilarious, though, about this preference for a military title, is how un-hierarchacal, un-regimented, un-authoritarian I actually want my processes to be. But maybe that’s why it’s funny. Because you never saw a less militaristic group ever.
Captain wouldn’t be as useful a word. Because without a military context, it could be the big big boss, the top banana. A lieutenant’s authority is both clearly subject to a higher authority and incredibly authoritative.
And let him know so.
Ooooooh. That’s some bold kinging Fortinbras! You better tell him! Let him know so! It’s even more zingy with that rhyme there, too.
This is one of those phrases that is super fun to say, actually – even though it’s pretty simple. It’s so happily rhythmic.
If that his majesty would aught with us, We shall express our duty in his eye.
Is their duty, their sperm?
I mean..there’s kind of a shooting off quality to this language.
It could be some other kind of threat, of course. They could be threatening a punch in the eye or a spit in the eye.
It could, of course, not be a threat at all. But aught is rather vague…
If the king would aught… is like… if the king starts something…and in one case, doing something in his eye is just doing it in his view..but I’m skeptical. The language feels a little too punchy for that.
You know the rendezvous.
If you’d asked me before, I’d have said, “No, Rendezvous does not appear in Shakespeare. It is clearly a very modern word.”
And I would have been very very wrong obviously.
Despite knowing this play pretty well – having read it multiple times, heard it many more – it still didn’t register that “rendezvous” is used in such a quotidian manner. When did this word become common parlance in English? Have English speakers been rendezvousing for centuries even further back than Shakespeare’s?
The Hamlet Project 