by tashmcgill | Oct 12, 2018 | thedaily500
I remember talking out loud when I was young, in imaginary and practice conversations. I still do that, practice talking to the people who matter or the stories that are important to tell. I remember talking to God at five years old and I distinctly remember not talking to God for a while when I was eleven.
The first onstage performance I can remember, I was about 6 or 7 and all I had to do was deliver three simple lines. But I walked onto the stage and the microphone set up for me to speak them into was about a foot over my head. That was my first break into comedy.
I remember singing, no – I can’t remember ever not singing. And talking. I remember debating politics age eleven on the phone to my friend Sarah. We were both planning to be journalists; she wanted to write about sport and I wanted to write about politics and how to change the world. Sometimes I got confused as to whether I wanted to write about changing the country or just change the country.
I remember the warm hum of a microphone and the precise, obnoxious sibilance they bring to every word. I remember my voice in that microphone through a headset on my first radio show and then my second. I remember the sound of my voice on cassette tape as I listened to air check tapes. It requires stoicism to learn to appreciate your own voice instead of hearing everything that falters.
I remember the first time I read an advertisement and nailed it in two read-throughs and when the audio engineer said ‘can you give me something a little sexier?’, and I realised, listening back to the take, that I could. I could read it sexy or funny or smart. I remember the first time and the last time I walked onstage to a crowd of 5000 people and caught their attention with my words and how to still a room using timbre and tone.
It’s not the notes alone but the silences between the notes that make the music. I remember the first time I felt silenced and unheard. I can picture the look on his face when I saw my words fly past his ears. I remember the feeling of words flying but mine being powerless. How it felt as my voice shrank inside me. For a while, I didn’t have words for conversations between friends or even a phone call. I couldn’t read it sexy or smart or even half-alive for a while there.
It felt like a tearing and stretching burn when I started to use it again. It was like my trachea was still recovering from how searing my words had been the last time I spoke up. My tongue was heavy and soft, it had lost all it’s sharpness and dexterity. Like learning to walk again, it hurt at first.
Eventually someone asked and I walked up to the microphone again. I said yes out of muscle memory but I wasn’t sure muscle memory was going to be enough to get me through. But they liked it, the sound I made and the words I gave were hopeful, they said. Sharp but bright and hopeful. It sounded good to them. So I did it again, then one more time and another time after that. Until I was back to myself and perhaps better than that.
It’s my voice, you see. The sound I’ve been listening to my whole life. It doesn’t make sense when it goes away or if I shut it down. It can be sexy and sad and smart and funny and brave. And that’s the soundtrack of my life, the one I’m getting ready to turn up.
by tashmcgill | Oct 11, 2018 | thedaily500
So I’m a couple of days behind in #thedaily500. Some life happened that required my attention. Because most of what I’ve been writing for these vignettes has been accumulated experience, it’s been challenging to create enough distance in the last few days to make sense of what is happening right now and what I might learn from it in the coming weeks and years. Sometimes the liminal space is just a matter of the words I do write and the words I don’t. It’s kind of fitting, given that I’ve spent the last year in creative hibernation rebuilding from one of the last learning experiences of my life. So today’s topic is something that changed me forever – but it also includes a unique tradition and a recent good read.
I’ve made a practice recently, of sharing good books on Instagram and Twitter. It seems appropriate somehow to capture it there, sharing the bloody good reads. I consume books like oxygen. I have rules that help me here – on domestic flights, I read. No listening to music or watching anything. I absorb a lot of fiction this way. Lots of it is average but I try to help myself out by engaging a little strategy. I buy books from the bestseller lists, not from the bargain boxes and I buy them at the airport. I avoid pulp fiction where possible and tend to purchase based on my mood at the time. It means I read a wide variety of books. The first unique tradition I have is buying these books and then gifting to them to other travellers or to the people I met wherever I land. I have given away books in airports, rental car centers, in the offices of clients and to the shelves of friends. But there is a book I carry with me around the world (mostly because there is no Kindle edition). The book is by Henri Nouwen and it’s called “The Inner Voice of Love.”
It’s not a self-help book or a workbook or a textbook by any ordinary measure. It’s the journal of a wise and compassionate man who at a time of deep disappointment, elf-realisation and heartbreak – wrote letters to himself and to his soul, to remind him of what was true while he was living in the midst of the Fog.
You know the Fog. It’s what descends on us (or sometimes we walk right into it) as we find ourselves somehow having to walk into a deeper reality of who we truly are. We spend our whole lives becoming; it’s what we become that is a matter of choice. We can either walk closer towards integration of our full selves, finding peace in bringing our disparate pieces together – or we try and walk away from ourselves and find peace what is external to us.
The Fog can look like clear skies on a crisp day, until the clouds roll in. Even on a blue sky day when we think we see the horizon clearly, it’s amazing how a storm can roll in form the distant West and reveal something we didn’t see before. Rain and mist rises and what seemed like the way is suddenly not the way.
Here’s my unique tradition: I go back to the same book and the same journals I’ve written and I remind myself of the path I took to here and what reality is. And most of the time, making my way through the Fog means incorporating some new truth to my reality. It’s not the truth that changes, but how much I see of it. So I return to the signposts that are trustworthy.
Nouwen writes about navigating pain and loss and hope and frailty; reminding me of what I need to remember about myself from all the times I’ve walked this path before. This book is my Leaning Tower of Pisa. When you walk up the tower, you actually climb a circular staircase and this strange triangulation of physics creates an optical illusion. The first 16 or so flights create such a microscope change in angle that the view of Duomo de Pisa (the Cathedral beside the Tower) appears unchanged. But by the 20th time you circle the tower staircase, you can begin to perceive the difference. This is the beauty of exponential equations.
Which brings me to the subject of today – something that has changed you; or me, forever. In my case, there is a long list of breathtaking experiences and a longer list of circumstances in which I let myself down, let others down or was disappointed in someone else. There are circumstances too; simple calamities of timing and misalignment that created havoc – but in those stories, there is no one, not even myself to blame and they are far less interesting for it. It is when people are involved that things become the most interesting after all. I could choose any one of them about tell you how it changed me. I write journals and collect data on myself and others. I’ve been doing it for years and therefore could tell you how the lessons I learned from a single interaction 20 years ago are still changing me today. But those stories are just a smaller example of the bigger idea.
Exponentiality is what changed my life. It’s a made-up variation of a word. I made it up myself – to express the principle of what happens when you apply an exponential equation to the human experience. By the time this essay is finished, it will feel like a real word and concept that you understand. And that is the power of exponentiality.
The common human experience is to want more now; to get the most reward as soon as you can. It’s really a question of momentum – that moving through Now quicker will get you to Then, which is assumed to be better than Now because in the Western world we are also driven by forward progression. (There are about 1000 layers or more underneath forward progression as a principle in life. I’ll happily unpack them with you sometime.)
Exponentiality dispels the necessity of forward momentum and focuses on overall outcome or reward. It’s a percentages game. We have a tendency to assume that a greater percentage gain faster leads to the greater potential percentage gain overall. Exponentiality is a focus on the overall percentage gain regardless of momentum.
In a $1000 dollar investment, 5% return per annum over 5 years garners greater overall gain than the same investment that gives a 10% return in the first year and decreasing returns each year after.
It’s the same way with lessons. Apply the lesson once and you might gain a quick 10% return. But apply the lesson over and over at a consistent rate and over time you’ll see greater overall impact. In other words, don’t rush too fast over your lessons and you’ll experience greater transformation as a result.
Exponentiality has taught me not to rush through what is uncomfortable or less than ideal in the first instance but allowing consistency to create exponential growth.
I re-read Nouwen over and over because I learn lessons from him and my own experiences that are worth checking in on, to ensure I’m still reaping the benefit of that investment and time. And finally, by the 16th time around the Leaning Tower of Pisa, I start to see that yes, I really am much higher than I was before. The perspective and the view is different. Mostly that lesson is about learning to listen and live into my truest self. Becoming is the hardest work of my life and is frequently tested.
Without exponentiality, the temptation is to run from one experience to the next without allowing that lesson to take hold and bring maximum impact to life. Sometimes lessons are painful and despite my ability to live in the shadow side of life, no one really likes to dwell there for long. It’s far too tempting to give lip service to change than to actually change. Or we try to shortcut our way through. Here’s a tip: quick 10% gains will often fail to compound over time if we don’t consolidate. Most of the really important stuff we ought to be learning and double down our investment in actually needs a little more time and attention. In other words, don’t try to run up the Tower of Pisa. Take your time. Walk. It will be better for you in the end.
So I recently re-read an old favourite book, because when something painful and familiar comes along it’s become my tradition to double-down and ensure I’m rising above it and gaining more perspective. The view will eventually change altogether. That’s exponentiality at work – compounding lessons and interest on the investment.
And this has changed my life forever – not the first circumstance that brought me to this self-reflection or even the second. It wasn’t any one person (myself or anyone else) that let me down that created catalyst for change in my life – it has been and will always be the investment in learning from those circumstances and remembering to check my view each time I climb another floor in the Tower.
So that’s where I was for a couple of days – checking the view and checking in on my investments. Something to read, something to repeat and something that has changed me forever.
by tashmcgill | Oct 8, 2018 | thedaily500
I spent seven years living in a small cottage at the back of a friend’s farmhouse. It had a corrugated iron roof and a lining of builders paper between that and the vaulted wooden ceiling. It might sound grand but I could walk from one side to the next in ten steps. While I have always loved the sound of rain, winters in that cottage were particularly brutal. Fog would rise up through the uninsulated floorboards in the mornings and some of the windows didn’t ever close. In that little haven at the end of the world, I breathed sound.
I would wake up to the song of tui birds in the olive and orange trees outside my windows, then slowly listen to the far-off hum of distant traffic building. Except on Saturdays. On Saturdays, I listened to the silence of grass blowing in the breeze and dew evaporating in early morning sun. I listened to the swoosh of cotton sheets cocooning me for one last luxurious swipe of the snooze button.
Sometimes if I was lucky enough, I would wake to the thunderous rhythm of rain pinging off the glass windowpanes, falling on the roof and sliding to the ground in fat, wet drops. I listened to the rain hitting the leaves of the trees and dripping into puddles.
When you live in a small house at the end of the road, at the edge of the city, at the bottom of the world – that kind of rain makes a little bubble that you don’t want to leave. I would wake up and make coffee, light the fire and then throw another blanket around my toes. In summer, it feels like relief when the rain brings the heat down from the sky and gives you a cool shower but in winter it’s just the opposite. Rain makes you feel cosy.
There is only one thing better than rain in the morning, with its easy to match, slow rhythm. It’s rain at the end of the day when you just make it from the car in the driveway to the doorway of your house. You push open the door and realise you can hear the crackle of the fireplace and the sound of Jakob Dylan on the stereo. In the same moment you smell the early embers of the fire, you also see an open bottle of red wine. Then there’s the unmistakeable sound another person makes when you share thirty square metres. Then the rain comes and they hand you a glass of wine they poured after hitting play on the stereo and lighting the fire; in the house they don’t live in but feel at home.
That is still my favourite sound in the world; the sound of home when the rain starts to fall outside and you have permission to stay and enjoy it for a while. I haven’t heard that song in a long time. I may not hear again for a long time. I don’t have a fireplace and I’m hard to pin down. But I haven’t lost my hearing. I haven’t stopped listening for it.
by tashmcgill | Oct 7, 2018 | thedaily500
I am a dream catcher.
If, while slipping through my fingers or sliding behind my eyeballs, an idea sparks electricity in my blood, my hand follows that neural pathway of light with arm outstretched until I grasp hold of it. Once I take hold of a dream, of an idea – it is only a matter of time before it becomes a reality.
Let me give you an example. The first dream I remember is that of flying. Not like a bird, but on wings of steel and jet fuel. I had flown with my sister to visit family friends in Christchurch before I turned ten years old. On that flight, I fell in love with flying. I remember spending Sunday afternoons visiting the airport to watch planes land with my dad, always fascinated by the way they achieved lift. By the time I was fifteen years old, I had watched Top Gun countless times and had spent weekend afternoons out at the airfield with my mother and stepfather, watching vintage planes take off and land. Sometimes we were lucky enough to be on board. And then, one afternoon I was lucky enough to sit in the cockpit and it was my hands on the controls for just long enough to feel like I was flying.
A dream became reality, once even taking off in a Harvard and seeing the sky wrapped around me through the glass canopy. I dreamed of flying and I flew.
I had other dreams alongside this one – I dreamed of recording studios and making music, being backstage and enjoying rolling jam sessions whenever the mood struck. And I dreamed of being a writer, making words into meaning and telling stories that mattered. I opened books to smell the fresh newsprint, not just to devour the words and imagined the day I would hold my own words in printed and bound form. I have been in print more times than I can count and I’m working on the first book that is entirely my own now. I dreamed of writing and I write.
Later, I dreamed of being a radio announcer and producer, being nationally broadcast up and down New Zealand. In my last year of high school, I was late for school every day while I cut radio teeth as a producer and assistant on the breakfast show of a new alternative rock format. By 22, I had been a Sunday night talkback producer, breakfast show, drive and night show host on a national network. I dreamed of what my voice could do, what it could mean for people – and I became a voice.
I have stretched out my hand for a dozen smaller dreams in this life and had them come true. I dreamed of a life in America, of taking trains across the great continents, of meeting inspiring and wondrous people. Every single one has come to pass and so I keep dreaming and filling up the list with something new.
I’m not lucky and nor do I work too hard. It’s that when I dream, I’ve learned to recognise the ones that matter most and they get all my attention. I don’t focus on how they will come to pass, instead I lean into expectation of ‘this will be, somehow’ and enjoy the wondrous ways that life delivers dreams.
Sometimes that means waiting and hoping and living anyway. You can lean in to a dream and keep living anyway, you know. All my dreams these days are not the dreams of childhood but adulthood. I dream of meaning, of outcomes, of adventures. Still, there is one dream of childhood left, one possibility that hangs in the corners of my mind.
‘Darling.’
by tashmcgill | Oct 6, 2018 | thedaily500
There are three types of debris floating in the ocean; flotsam, jetsam and trash. I grew up in a place where if you saw trash on the beach, washed up by the tide – you picked it up. We prize our beaches and natural environments. We’re taught to care for the world we live in, the places we occupy and for what we leave behind.
I don’t understand what it takes in a person to throw trash on the side of the road or over the back of a boat. It seems like the most simple of basic behaviours to demonstrate conscientious choices, intentional decision making.
There are three types of debris when friendship goes wrong. Flotsam is anything that accidentally and unintentionally ends up overboard because of a shipwreck or emergency. It comes from the French word ‘floter’, which means ‘to float’. Anything that floats has buoyancy – it contains hope.
Jetsam is slightly different. The root of the word is found in the word ‘jettison’; when something is thrown deliberately overboard. In a crisis or moment of emergency, you make an intentional choice about what you throw away, what you are prepared to sacrifice in order to stay afloat. It’s a way of trying to create stability.
Trash is simply what you throw away without concern, trusting the tide to take it away from you and bearing no mind for where what’s no longer useful to you ends up or what impact that choice has on the environment around you.
Sometimes how you lose something matters – while flotsam and jetsam are both expected to float or to create buoyancy, trash is meant to disappear. If you throw something overboard intentionally, you divest yourself of any claim to it. Finders keepers, regardless of the value. But if you lose something by accident, if your friendship ends up shipwrecked through crisis or disaster – you’re entitled to make a claim on flotsam that belongs to you.
See, belonging is the hard part of friendship. At our best, like Kahlil Gibran says – our friend is our needs met but if you don’t care for the balance, it can all turn to shit. We decide what we are prepared to throw overboard or we encounter the grief of accidental loss. Typically however, the one who accidentally loses is rarely as wounded as the one is accidentally lost. We hope that we belong to each other but in the moments of crisis, we learn whether we are flotsam, jetsam or trash. We learn what we are capable of, when we’ll do anything to stay afloat ourselves, at any cost.
There is usually some truth or a distortion of truth that disrupts the necessary equanimity of friendship. It usually happens when someone is trying to usurp the balance of power, because they want to keep the distortion or avoid the truth. Friendship and love (one is dependent on the other) both require equanimity. Loss of it is your ship beginning to sink. When friendship goes wrong, it doesn’t matter whether you’re flotsam or jetsam – what matters is finding your float and getting your equanimity back.
