Dispatch Nº3: Faith, Hope, And Carnage
Down the 2023 rabbit hole with the book of the year.
Well, that was... fun?
2023 was a strange one. A true arc - with some highs and lows. An ordinary year, with seismic shocks along the way.
But this is no main character moment. (I don't have the patience to turn mundanity into an epic, capcut-driven video). I wanted to look at this year through a different lens. From what I read and what it gave me, I hope it gives you, too.
A year ago, I, like many others, wrote a post ringing in the New Year. It's a post full of rightful truth bombs and bluster that has become some calling card. Specifically, railing against ‘mid’. Manifesting my external monologuing and love of language, R-rated or not, into some level of 'distinctive asset.'’
That post was a call to arms, but in retrospect, it was a shield. A way to wade off the demons of complacency and average that I could see looming over my shoulder. Because, well, to put it plainly, I was stuck and scared.
The next eight months tested resiliency, hope, and belief.
As Winter turned into Spring - the leaving of my old job bled into a new consulting world. Old friends reconnected, and new connections occurred. I got to meet some extraordinary people at Kizik.1 defining and building what is a defendable territory and idea for that brand. It helped defy the tide of mid and the withering grip of mediocrity.
Through this working/not working period, I used the time as best I could. I wrote (a lot)2, I moved (once), and rediscovered a love of Central Park (hundreds of times). And in that park, I read.
And I read.
And that's really what I want to write about.
These books were transformative in their ideas, their process, and a faith in ideas and a nose for creativity.
'The McCartney Legacy' was maniacally detailed. It helped me completely rediscover and recontextualize Macca's solo work.3 This book also inspired one of my favorite LinkedIn posts of the year, inspired by a 1971 session for RAM. "Let's explore the accident, not fix the mistake."
American Prometheus was THE essential primer to 'Oppenheimer'’ It helped make the choices in that film much clearer. As well as inspiring my own musing on Barbenhemier.
'The Method' untangled the complex origins, egos, and manifestations of the 20th Century's definitive acting school. Its lessons on obsessiveness, ego, and bloody-mindedness were compelling.4
And in an ongoing quest to avoid business ‘self-help’ books, I gravitated to ‘4000 Weeks - Time Management For Mortals’. I adored this book. With it's liberation in finitude and the opportunity that gives us. The to-do list is never done. These optimizations of modern life are self-made prisons. The fact that, on average, you only get 4000 weeks on this planet isn’t just a TikTok voiceover that you put over the top of your hyper-stylized video of Positano. It’s a clarifying concept that, in retrospect, shaped a narrative of my year. Acting as the 'amuse bouche' thematically to the second half of the year.
Defiance.
Defiance of settling.
Defiance of average.
Defiance paid off for me; I got to do what I’ve wanted to do for years.
Defiance also courses through the book that truly floored me this year. A late entry - finished mere weeks before the closing bell of 2023. It shapes my thinking and belief in the hopeful brilliance of 2024.
Faith, Hope & Carnage.
Journalist Seán O’Hagan and the multi-talented Nick Cave collaborated on Faith, Hope, and Carnage. It is not so much a 'book' as a series of conversations. Conversations that began deep in the pandemic's heart. They became more free-flowing, dynamic, thought-provoking, and emotional as they progressed. With each chapter, they soared higher and higher in their ability to challenge and inspire.
The central arc of the book deals with Nick Cave grappling with the grief of the death of his 15-year-old son Arthur in 2015. I'm sure this would be too much to handle for many. Its words FAITH, HOPE, and CARNAGE are not exactly subtle. They are loaded with power and an explosive quality. They are things we tend not to think about. Or don't want to think about it. Grief and its shockwaves are motifs that fuel the conversations and the arc of the book. Fuelling the album GHOSTEEN, among others from this period.5
But this is what makes this book so essential. So moving and uplifting. It has observations on creativity, life, and living that are transformative.6 For work, for simply existing.
They wrapped up my feelings of the unbound joy and intensity the second half of the year has given me and the optimism I feel going into 2024 - against all odds of the wider cultural moment.
Some of that was rooted in how much I loved Faith Hope and Carnage's total rejection of timidity and artifice. Cave’s fierce ability and observations on what it means to “live within something, not knowing all the answers.”
Not being scared that there isn't the answer was liberating to hear described in such vivid detail. An example below:
“You have to operate, at least some of the time, in the world of mystery, beneath that great and terrifying cloud of artistic unknowing”.
These little fragments, bound up in this grand arc, make this book, its ideas, and its thoughts feel fresh and enlightening. It saw the world as brutal and beautiful. It saw life as part of that same dynamic. It luxuriated in muscular, avuncular language. A heavy metal heart that looked up and saw hope. Its ability to revel in mystery, especially around creative processes, where we crave clarity and certainty more than ever, is a lightening bolt. Because you can feel how more and more we flatten out the gray areas and the mysteries in work, life, and culture. Replaced by binaries and dogma. By data and calculations. By endless algorithms.7
In some ways, it feels trite to see 'lessons' in such a stunning read that we can take into 2024. Certainly, lessons that we can apply to our work. And I don't want to diminish the grief that underpins this book. The passages where he talks about the day his son died are about as moving and as powerful as you will read or hear. But, as we slink back to offices and laptops next week, there are behaviors and beliefs that we must defend, much like Cave I believe in. Assaulted by architects of false certainty in messy worlds.
As Nick himself says;
“Hope is optimism with a broken heart”.
So here’s my pean for creativity, flair, and mischief to return on display and with full gusto at the dying embers of 2023. Ready to be renewed and almost certainly brokenhearted again. The joy of it is the promise of creative ideas that move in 2024. They are resonant, not because of their ‘contextual adjacencies’. Because this book reminded me why being associated with something exciting and liberating is so special. Which is what the second half of the year felt like.
At Esprit, my last five months have been like a rocket ship. New ideas, new people, new systems, new ways to create. new has never felt so exciting and terrifying. But we’re doing it. We’re not talking. We’re executing, deeper into the mystery. Seeing where opportunity, creativity, storytelling takes us. Logic and instinct. Cerebral and commercial.
In 2024 - we're taking that even further. We're trying to define a space where fun and mischief are lubricant to something extraordinary. A space with real cultural resonance, desire, and reach.
We’re doing that in 2024 against a backdrop of a year where urgency and pressure will be turned up. But, as Cave suggests, the incredible intensity of time acts as a pressure that can be harnessed. My best ideas are accidents within a controlled context. You could call them informed about accidents.
And as the metaphorical meat grinder of the year cranks ever tighter, (you know what I’m talking about..) There will be a need for release, a space for the pressure to be off, and an escape. That’s what I hope for: our ideas and our work - fun, mischief, and escape, where maximalism is our secret sauce. Little connection points come together as a whole. Playing into one of Nick Cave's most vivid ideas and making it come to life.
“The luminous and shocking beauty of the every day is something I try to remain alert to if only as an antidote to the chronic cynicism and disenchantment that seems to surround everything these days. It tells me that, despite how debased or corrupt we are told humanity is and how degraded the world has become, it just keeps on being beautiful. It can’t help it.”
It's a big, maybe foolish goal to have a brand live up to this. Maybe it’s that’s Janury 1st energy. But, we need to take these ideas and this fragility and channel them into things, ideas, creations, and actions. Making life more fun and mischievous. I want to focus on that, from defying mid and embracing chaos to making things that turn life and our brand into a fun, mischievous world.
It isn’t a bad place to start in 2024.
Thank you, Nick Cave, for helping light the way.
This incredible brand, partly owned by Nike, has developed ‘hands-free’ footwear. Lots of lessons in how to scale and grow brands through paid here. As they said, they wanted to drive ‘fame’ first to fill up the bucket and then pull through the funnel. I have my issues with performance marketing at large, but the application of Kizik’s funnel is not without its merits for other brands.
I started (and then sort of stopped?) my Substack. A promise to myself is to post at least once a month here on ideas, brands and movements that are compelling).
The Guitar Solo from ‘My Love' is a masterclass, and this song ended up being my number 1 song on my Spotify Wrapped. I’m not sure how I feel about that.
Easy to forget, but Lee Strasberg was Hyman Roth in ‘The Godfather Part II’
I was never a Nick Cave and Bad Seeds/Grinderman fan before reading this book. ‘Ghosteen’, was an extraordinary listen.
I would recommend the audiobook over the written form. It features O’Hagan and Cave reading their conversation. For a sample of what that feels like, then please watch these videos of the book tour from 2022.)
There’s been much talk at the end of the year of how ‘the internet has become unsuable’ and not built for knowledge. I agree with a lot of that thinking and observe it in the larger cultural malaise.