Oblique Strategies

Honour thy error as a hidden intention

Emptiness. The cursor winks. The fingers twitch, then rest. A book is picked up. A record chosen. The snowfield remains. It seems strange writing about being unable to write. Maybe this is therapy.

It hasn’t been so much that there wasn’t anything to write about, rather that the act of writing has become difficult. Work had been significantly reduced, (no surprise there), but some morsels were being thrown my way. They remain unfinished, or to be more precise guiltily abandoned.

The cursor winks. The gap between the thought and action widens further. Make some tea. Change the record. Walk by the sea.

I’ve been busy enough on research. Made notes, shuffled the increasingly complex tessellations of the next book into place. It’s meant to be about whisky, but is currently looking more like a mash up of Gaelic poetry and bromophenols. Yet the final words wouldn’t come. 

I hasten to add, dear reader, that this is not some cry for help. Nor am I wallowing in self-pity. One thing I have learned at the end of this year is that it’s important to be honest. It’s been a shit year. Good days outnumber the bad, but the latter exist. 

A year of blankness. Pages, screens, streets, skies, bars, emotion. A blank generation. We exist in a limbo world, a state of stasis. I can’t go on, I’ll go on. 

TURN IT UPSIDE DOWN

My world is one of communication, not bartending. Can’t mix a drink to save my life. I do however like passing information on, finding ways to connect. That’s changed. 

Distillers were already moving away from the old models of advertising which kept things like magazines and websites going. They look at new ways of getting their message out there - and controlling it. 

Why risk potentially tricky questions or a lukewarm response if an influencer posing with a bottle has a more immediate effect? Why spend money on an ad financing a wide range of articles which weren’t about your brand? Why accept constructive criticism over blind adulation?

The platform has changed. Get on the next train, Dave.  

ARE THERE SECTIONS? CONSIDER TRANSITION

The chime tells me the next Zoom meeting is about to start. Apparently the moderator can see me. Get ready, you might be on-line at any point. Start to smile, get ready to project. I can’t write, but I can talk. How I can talk. 

At the end, get ready for the weird comedown. Have I just been speaking to my reflection for the past ninety minutes?

When you are unable to read the room, all you can do is fling things out there and hope they connect. I’m aware however that because of the limitations of tech we’ve reverted to the old ‘pick up the glass, let me tell you what you are tasting’ lecture just at the time when those old ways were being gently set to one side and the nature of engagement was changing.

Instead of engagement there is passivity. We talk, we listen, we switch off. We can all smile for an hour. It’s the easiest pace to hide.

The lack of touch, the masked faces, the inability to read faces/body language/the room creates a dehumanising effect. We are left with these looping, interminable monologues; wanting to care, trying to care, reaching out, but being unable to touch physically, or emotionally. We do it because there is no alternative. 

It was already underway. We exist within a fractured world where a life in thrall to social media had replaced communities with individuals. The pandemic has metastasised this process.

The return - which will happen - will be to a changed world, one where people’s minds and habits have been altered. Brains rewired; neural pathways damaged.

WHAT FRAME WOULD MAKE THIS LOOK RIGHT?

And yet, the word still needs to get out. If the scenario has changed, if the rules are different, then there is no point in moaning and sitting still. Instead, a new way has to be found. Where are the opportunities, how the narrative be changed?

Maybe the silence is a chance for self-examination. Perhaps the lockdowns and isolation have forced on us a requirement to clarify things and concentrate on what aspects are the most important. 

A changed world needs new thinking, different modes of communication, and delivery.

At times like these I reach for the black box containing Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt’s ‘Oblique Strategies’. These cards were originally created to help musicians “when a dilemma occurs in a working situation”. 

They act as ways to unblock the flow of creativity, or maybe just divert it in a new direction. The Zen clack on the side of the head. 

I even used them on an agave-seeking trip through Mexico where, by the end of the third week, every decision was taken by interpreting the, by now oracular, instructions. You can go too far.

SIMPLE SUBSTRACTION

Do we accept this, the pandemic-accelerated societal change or take this chance to change things around? Altering the linear thinking which has governed our old habits is important. Communication has to change.

The world of Zoom (other platforms are available) is not going to disappear. So look to see how can it be used effectively and creatively? By understanding its limitations, its - untapped - possibilities start to reveal themselves. 

Why is everything like a radio lecture when it could be more like a TV magazine programme? If an hour is draining for presenter and viewer, then break it up. At the moment, the form and content ignore the medium. Instead, the medium should dictate the form & content. The same process, I’d argue, will be required in the changed world of hospitality.

GARDENING, NOT ARCHITECTURE

The question is how to take the enforced requirement of the stripping back and make something new (and compelling) out of it all. Simplification doesn’t mean being retrogressive - as has been happening in communication - but radical and creative within that simplicity. Clarity is vital.

The important element is to try and offer an alternative to the increasing individualisation of society.

The saddest irony of all of this is that, just at the time when community and communities need to be strengthened and reformed, the places where it could happen - bars - have been the ones most badly affected. Yet, when the end comes, hospitality can offer a radical alternative to the echo chambers of social media. We can’t go back, because that world has ceased to exist. 

The Great Pause we have been existing in might just be an opportunity. 

The cursor still blinks. But the page is now full. 

[all the crossheads are cards plucked at random from the Oblique Strategies box. They helped dictate the piece]