Before You Get Too Excited
A Short Sharp Shock
I KNOW …. two issues in as many days … what is going on? Bear with me.
First … do you read The Red Hand Files?
If like me, you find yourself disappearing down the rabbit holes of global conflict, global warming, the surveillance economy, the changing nature of work, divisive politics, the next pandemic or human trafficking … you might stop and look around and …
You may ask yourself
What is that beautiful house?
You may ask yourself
Where does that highway go to?
And you may ask yourself
Am I right? Am I wrong?
And you may say yourself
"My God! What have I done?”~ David Byrne
Byrne is one of a small group of people that sit in my ‘canon of great music artists’. To be a member requires said artist to be a great songwriter and someone who doesn’t sit on their laurels and crosses over to other mediums and has longevity and sometimes doesn’t ‘get it right’ and a host of other criteria that I won’t bore you with here.
Byrne is also behind one of my favourite feed sources ‘Reasons to be Cheerful’ .. which is a truly wonderful place to visit to counter that list of issues that I opened up this newsletter with.
David Byrne is the founder and in-house headline writer of Reasons to be Cheerful, and the founder of the Arbutus Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to re-imagining the world through projects that inspire and educate. Reasons to be Cheerful is the Arbutus Foundation’s first project.
Another artist in that group is the inimitable Nick Cave. You probably know who Byrne is, but I don’t think Nick is as widely recognized. That said, you almost certainly know one of his songs …
Highlighting Nick because like Byrne, he too has a ‘go to’ web site that provides another counterbalance to the world’s ills … The Red Hand Files.
So Where Is This Going?
A post from Nick last week came in response to a reader who wrote and asked if he was ok - because there had been a pause in the posts. Nick answered …
…. I’ve been on tour for three months and although I read all the questions that come in, I just can’t get it together to write a response. A Red Hand File requires not so much an emotional resilience as a certain amount of energy and the capacity to think.
It resonated. Me too. This is the second newsletter in two days - as I seek to catch up on the backlog of what I have in my head. OK - I’m not on tour, and there is no question that my writing clearly does not extract my energy as much as The Red Hand Files does to Nick - but it still takes energy.
When I launched the Short Sharp Shock, my intent was to reduce the weight of expectancy on delivering something each and every week, the theory being that shorter is easier than longer. It isn’t. And meanwhile, time continues to march on - no matter what.
All this to say ‘sorry’ for missing last week’s issue and hope we are now caught up!
Meanwhile
Sharing v Shareholder economy?
Yes - more to come in a future newsletter, but before I send that one …
