Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 56

“Work under any circumstances.”

Benjamin Robert Haydon was a 19th-century British artist and writer who kept extensive journals throughout his life.

He wrote the following entry in April 1845, when he was 59, and still determined to create art regardless of the many obstacles he faced.

Tragically, just a year later, he would take his own life. His final journal entry ended with this line:

“Stretch me no longer on this rough world. — Lear”

It breaks my heart.

But it’s what he wrote a year earlier that means so much to me:
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27th. A man who defers working because he wants tranquillity of mind will have lost the habit when tranquillity comes. Work under any circumstances—all circumstances. I used to carry my sketch when arrested, and sketch and compose as I sat by the officer’s side. The consequence was I was always ready, never depressed, and returned to my work with a new thought or an additional improvement as if I had been all the time at home.
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When asked how I manage to get so much done, my answers are many. Enough to fill a book, in fact:

Someday Is Today: 22 Simple, Actionable Ways to Propel Your Creative Life

But one of my answers is always:

I don’t waste minutes. I don’t get precious about my work. I don’t require a sunlight room, a bustling coffee shop, a tall, non-fat latte with caramel drizzle, or three uninterrupted hours to write. I don’t insist on a particular pen or a Joan Baez record or a yellow legal pad.

I write in the cracks of my life:

Ten minutes here. Five minutes there. An hour or two in the wee hours of the morning. Four minutes between meetings.

I write at my desk. The dining room table. Waiting rooms. Picnic tables. Backstage before a show. Waiting in my car for my kids to emerge from their Scout meeting.

I write on my laptop. My phone. Notepads. Envelopes. Whatever I can find.

Like Haydon, I write wherever and whenever I have the opportunity. I write in those moments that would have otherwise been wasted on nonsense, ephemera, and wasteful stupidity.

Admittedly, I did not write on the day I was arrested, but I wrote in my journal later that day when I finally exited jail and the courthouse. And had mobile phones existed back then, maybe I would’ve been writing while being processed, fingerprinted, and arranged.

I like to think so, though even that would’ve been a lot for me.

Haydon was clearly a bad-ass.

But if you’re waiting for the right moment to begin your next great creative endeavor, you can probably forget ever making it happen because the right moment will likely never arrive.

Someday is today. Find a crack in the din of your life and get started.

Benjamin Robert Haydon so wisely said:

“Work under any circumstances.”

Here are some of his more famous paintings.

I’m done speaking. At last!

Last night, after more hours than I wish to remember, I finally finished recording the audiobook for “Stories Sell: Storyworthy Strategies to Grow Your Business and Brand.”

This was the third audiobook that I have recorded. Professional narrators record my novels, but I have recorded all my nonfiction. After days spent in recording booths and studios, I can tell you this:

Narrating an audiobook is something you’re happy to have done, but you are never happy while actually doing the job.

It’s a grinding slog that demands precision beyond imagination. Word-for-word accuracy is surprisingly challenging when reading aloud. I often needed to re-record a sentence or paragraph because my belly made a sound that I didn’t hear, but the engineer did. Or I shuffled my foot. Or made a funny sound with my mouth. Or breathed too loudly.

It’s grueling work.

That said, when I was recording “Storyworthy” in Grand Haven, Michigan, back in 2018, I met some professional audiobook narrators who love their job and are astoundingly good at it. At one point, my director invited me to meet a woman named Sarah, who was narrating a book in an adjacent studio. I stood in the control booth, listening to an elderly British woman doing a dozen or so voices with astounding rapidity and clarity, rarely flubbing a line.

By contrast, I flub at least three lines per page and often flub the same line repeatedly.

When Sarah emerged from the booth, I was astounded to discover she was actually a 23-year-old woman with a flat, Midwestern accent. She had been attending college when an audiobook company set up a booth on campus to audition students. She was known amongst her friends and family as someone who could replicate accents and invent voices well, so she auditioned on a whim.

It turned out that she could speak in 19 different foreign accents with remarkable accuracy and had a talent for inventing distinct voices and moving between each with ease. So, she left school, and her career as a narrator was born.

Sarah performs her books standing up with a vision board in front of her, where she places magazine cutouts of the faces she imagines on her characters, along with pictures of settings and key objects. Recording is a physical workout for her, and she loves every minute of it.

I do not.

I’m thrilled to have the opportunity and happy to have done the job, but I do not like the job.

But what I’ve discovered from recording these books is this:

Talking is more complicated than I thought.

I grew up outside of Boston with an exceptionally pronounced Boston accent.

Think Matt Damon from “Good Will Hunting.”

When I watch videos of me from that time in my life, I can barely recognize my own voice. It’s astounding how I once spoke.

Then I moved to Connecticut, and over three decades, that accent went away—mostly. People who hear me speak often—Elysha, my kids, and my students—still hear remnants of the accent from time to time—words and phrases that are still missing the letter R. And when I visit my sister or attend a Patriots game, that accent can often return for a bit, as if it’s never left me but is just lying in wait for a chance to reclaim my body and voice.

But in recording my books, it’s clear that my Boston accent is more present than I ever thought. When reading aloud for hours after hours, I came to understand the unconscious effort it takes to speak words without the Boston accent. For example, a word like “Hartford” is never spoken with ease by me. It requires a purposeful effort to include those tricky R sounds in that word.

The accent has never really left me. I’ve just squashed it down so much that I don’t notice the effort required to keep it squashed anymore.

In fact, when I moved to Connecticut, I went to work for the now-defunct Bank of Hartford. On the first day, I answered the phone, “Bank of HahtFid,” and was told to stop answering the phones.

Though I speak the word “Hartford” without the accent today, it still doesn’t come naturally. Many, many words are not spoken with ease but instead require an almost unconscious effort to insert the R sound into the word – a fact that I didn’t know until I began recording books and paying attention to how I speak and noticing how many words cause me trouble:

Any word containing two or more R sounds, in addition to sentences packed with R-laden words.

It’s remarkable how childhood establishes the code for the rest of your life, both in terms of how you see and deal with the world as well as how you speak.

Those first two decades really do determine, in large part, how the next 50-80 years will be lived.

The audiobook version of “Stories Sell: Storyworthy Strategies to Grow Your Business and Brand” will soon be available for preorder.

Vlad scares the hell out of me

“The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.”

― Vladimir Nabokov

Thanks, Vlad. You’ve found a new and even more terrifying way to frighten me about my already terrifying and ever-present fear of death.

 

The better way to announce a canceled show

Elysha, Clara, Elysha’s father, and I went to Broadway this weekend to see “Little Shop of Horrors.”

Charlie had a play of his own – the last show – and needed to stay behind to operate the spotlight.

One song before the first-act finale, the curtain suddenly dropped, and it was announced that the show was experiencing technical difficulties, so please stand by.

So we waited, assuming that something had gone wrong with Audrey 2, the enormous puppet featured prominently in the show. Though everything had seemed perfectly fine when the curtain dropped, it was hard to understand what else might be wrong.

Ten minutes later, a second announcement was made over the intercom announcing that the show was canceled. Refunds would be made at our point of purchase. Apologies for the inconvenience. Please leave the theater.

The audience was stunned. Everyone remained seated for a moment, absorbing this information, before bursting into applause for all that we had seen and heard before the show was canceled.

It has been a tremendous performance until it wasn’t.

But here was the problem:

The announcement that the show had been canceled came from an intercom system, apparently by an usher or perhaps the theater manager, but it was made hastily, slightly incomprehensibly, and absent any explanation whatsoever.

When audience members did not exit the theater quickly enough, an usher stood at the top of the stairs and shouted that it was time to go. She stressed that it wasn’t an emergency of any kind, but that we needed to leave.

All of this was a mistake.

The audience was seated, staring at a stage, having just spent an hour in the company of great actors. Someone needed to take that stage and make that announcement.

Ideally, a lead member of the cast.

The cast, which amounted to less than ten people, then needed to reappear on the stage and take a bow to an audience that instead applauded an inert curtain.

When things go wrong, and a customer’s expectations are not met, we expect and should demand clear, concise information from the top. In the case of a Broadway theater, the “top” would at least amount to the theater’s manager, but ideally, from a member or members of the cast, and ideally from the stage rather than some unidentified, disembodied voice.

Some audience members cried at the news of the cancelation, and understandably so. My family attends half a dozen or more Broadway shows every year. We live two hours from New York, so attending a show like this isn’t hard. I had already purchased tickets to the same show, in the same seats in May, while driving over to the restaurant for dinner.

Charlie will get to join us this time, so it actually worked out well for him.

For us, this was an inconvenience. Not a lost opportunity.

However, the large school group sitting in the back, waiting for their bus to return and pick them up, may never have a chance to return. Tourists and visitors to the city from far away might never be able to return to this show.

For some, this may have been their first Broadway show. They may have saved for weeks, months, or more to afford the tickets. Even with a refund, some might find returning to the city impossible.

For many, the cancellation of this show halfway through was a big deal. They deserved more than a disembodied intercom announcement absent any explanation or a genuine apology. Had a cast member or members taken the stage and expressed their sincere regret for circumstances beyond their control, the audience would’ve reacted far better. We would’ve felt cared for and appreciated.

If you lack any information, rumors quickly spread. It was pouring rain that day, so many speculated that rain had leaked into the theater and caused a problem with the machinery that operated the puppet. Others posited that the lead actress had suddenly become ill. Others wondered if something had gone wrong on the roof.

I don’t know if any of these rumors were true, but in the absence of information, misinformation is allowed to fester.

It would’ve been quite easy to offer the audience information on the cancelation.

Take care of your customers at all times, but especially when something has gone terribly wrong. When you know that at least some of your customers have gone above and beyond to purchase your product, as is often the case for a Broadway show, take extra special care of your customers.

Treat them like gold.

A small amount of effort could have gone an exceptionally long way on Saturday. Unfortunately, the audience left the theater confused, disappointed, saddened, and angry.

We deserved better.

First concert

I took Charlie to his first concert on Friday night:

Styx at the Oakdale Theater in Wallingford, Connecticut.

Charlie and I fell in love with the song “Come Sail Away” last summer, and it began his journey into loving Styx. Soon, songs like “Mr. Roboto,” “Renegade,” “Lady,” and “Babe” entered frequent rotation on our playlist.

“Our Wonderful Lives” is a new and fantastic Styx song that I can’t recommend enough.

So when I saw that Styx was touring, we bought him tickets to the concert for Christmas.

He loved the concert so much.

He was the only child in the theater of nearly 5,000 on Friday night. We did not see another person even close to his age, and I asked two of the ushers checking tickets at the door if they had seen any kids pass through.

One responded, “I think the youngest person in this place, other than your son, is 35 years old.”

As a result, Charlie got a lot of attention. People high-fived him, asked if it was his first concert, and cheered him on. One person asked, “Do you know any of the songs you’ll hear tonight?”

“Of course,” Charlie said and then started rattling off titles.

Everyone was impressed.

Another person pointed to his Pepsi, mistook it for a Bud Light, and asked, “Is that your first beer?”

Apparently, if I had given my eleven-year-old son a beer, at least one person in the theater would’ve thought this cool.

I also got a lot of credit from people for ensuring my son’s first concert was one he wouldn’t ever forget.

Clara’s first concert was Taylor Swift at Gillette Stadium with Elysha, so we’re doing it right.

Styx put on a great show, and Charlie loved every minute. He plays the electric guitar, so he loved watching the guitarists play, and their lead singer, who also plays the keyboard and replaced founding member Dennis DeYoung in 1999, puts on quite a show.

To their credit, the songs sounded almost exactly how they sounded when recorded, absent any endless guitar solos or extended riffs that can make a show slow and long.

Charlie was standing from the first song, singing, cheering, and screaming throughout. We had a set list from a previous show, so we were following along as they played. With about four songs to go, after nearly two hours of music, he said to me, “I can’t believe it’s almost over. It feels like it just started.”

A good sign that he had a great time.

As we left the building, Charlie said, “That was amazing. When are we doing it again?”

My friend Jeni often complains that I’m constantly looking ahead to the next moment instead of reveling in the present one. In a recent text message exchange, she wrote:

“Okay. Don’t ruin this nice moment.”

My response:

“The only nice moment is the next one.”

Charlie, I think, gets it.

I’ve already started planning our next concert together.

Welcome to the Gen X Playground

I’d like to add one item to this Genx Playground list:

No water bottles.

Not a single water bottle could be found on any Gen X playground.

In fact, most convenience and grocery stores DID NOT SELL WATER IN BOTTLES when I was a kid, and no human being was walking around with a water bottle of any kind.

Other than expensive mineral waters in green glass bottles and celebrities toting bottles of Evian, the concept of water in a bottle did not exist for Generation X.

My generation grew up perpetually thirsty, drinking occasionally from questionable water fountains, hoses, and the tap, and we were just fine.

We also punched one another a hell of a lot more than kids today, often in the face, and repeatedly.

At least in my case.

Though this admittedly might not be quite so admirable as all that other stuff.

Storytelling gets you out of trouble

Storytelling, when done even marginally well, can do many things.

It improves communication. Assists the storyteller in connecting with their audience. Helps the storyteller be more trustworthy and convincing.

It also makes the storyteller more memorable. More engaging. Far more entertaining.

Telling a story can actually alter the audience’s brain chemistry. Stories trigger the release of dopamine, cortisol, oxytocin, and endorphins, which can help the storyteller capture the audience’s attention, evoke empathy, and make them feel good.

Best of all, the listener’s brain then attributes these good feelings to the storyteller, making them more likable and attractive.

Steve Jobs said, “The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller.”

He wasn’t wrong.

It turns out that storytelling can also get you out of trouble. A friend once said, “Matt is a fundamentally unlikeable person who tells a good story.”

I’m not sure if this is true – but it might be – but what I know is true is this:

Telling a good story has helped me improve a problematic situation, calm nerves, mitigate bad feelings, teach important lessons, alter the course of a potentially negative outcome, and preserve a relationship that has gone afoul.

I’ve done all of these things – many, many times – with a story.

When someone once asked my wife, Elysha, when she first started falling in love with me, she surprisingly didn’t cite my exceptional good looks, impressive physique, or vast intellect. Instead, she cited a meal we once shared as friends, during which I told her stories about my life.

Over the course of that dinner, she began to think that I was a different kind of person, with a background and life experiences unlike anyone she had ever met before. She also noticed that I was willing to share just about anything from my life with her, and that if we ended up together, we’d never run out of things to say.

Storytelling helped me to marry the best person on the planet.

Pretty good. Huh? Seems crazy not to invest in learning to tell better stories.

Storytelling, it turns out, can also get you out of some sticky situations, as this amusing video can attest:

He wrote back!

Back in 2023, I wrote letters to six authors whose work I adore.

Near the end of 2023, I received a note from Kate DiCamillo, author of many books, including one of my favorites, “The Tale of Despereaux.”

Last week, I received a note from David Sedaris, author of many books – all of which I have read and adored.

I cannot adequately describe the excitement I felt upon receiving this note. A simple postcard – penned by a man whose words I have been reading for over two decades – made my day, week, and month.

I also cannot recommend the writing of physical letters adequately enough. In the past three years, I’ve written 533 physical letters – envelope, stamp, and all – to a multitude of people:

Friends, colleagues, neighbors, students, former students, places of business, authors, comedians, clients, former and retired teachers and professors, politicians, business leaders, and many more. I never send a letter expecting a response, but more often than you or I might expect, the letter results in some kind of glorious response:

A letter in return. An email or phone call. A reconnection with an old friend or teacher. A rekindling of a friendship. An offer of assistance. A new line of business. An expression of gratitude.

The unexpected, joyous, serendipitous responses have been amazing.

But more importantly, I’m writing for a real audience. Expressing gratitude and appreciation. Encouraging students and friends. Reminding teachers, coaches, principals, and Scoutmasters of their impact on my life. Letting people know they were seen and are still remembered. Praising service workers and local businesses. Thanking and scolding politicians.

If I write to a bigoted politician who stands opposed to LGBTQ rights, I always include a small pride flag in the envelope.

I write to express my thoughts in a written, physical form to another human being.

Sometimes, something lovely happens in response.

Including this week’s postcard from an author whom I adore.

David Sedaris… a great writer and a solid human being.

Coddiwomple

I learned a new word this week:

Coddiwomple: To travel purposefully toward an as-yet-unknown destination.

I love this word.

In my book “Someday Is Today,” I discuss the importance of horizon goals. Too often, people establish exceedingly specific goals, absent any flexibility or opportunity for insight, adjustment, revision, or a change of mind.

Adherence to a specific goal, absent the willingness to adjust or pivot, often leads to failure.

I believe that the most successful, creative, and happiest people maintain a certain degree of flexibility in their goal-setting. While it’s perfectly fine to drive towards a lifelong dream, we must also understand that the horizon is vast, so that dream may ultimately take a new form. And if you remain open to that possibility, your chances of doing something great expand exponentially.

This means that my screenplay idea might someday become a novel, a musical, or even an epic poem. Maybe one of the characters in the screenplay becomes the antagonist in a future novel. A joke in that same screenplay may instead become a seed for a humor column.

Everything can be anything of you keep an open mind.

If you coddiwomple.

I’ve transformed autobiographical poems written in college into stories I tell onstage.

I’ve turned amusing lists in a notebook into an entire novel based on those lists.

I’ve taken a single sentence, spoken oftenhandedly in a workshop, and made it the basis of an entire TEDx Talk.

I’ve turned a tiny bit of advice – offered to a client amid other advice – into an entire online course.

I’ve transformed a career of telling stories and performing comedy onstage into a business consulting with Fortune 500 companies, hospitals, nonprofits, attorneys, inspirational speakers, advertising agencies, the FBI, and many, many more.

Coddiwomple tells us to keep moving forward, relentlessly and purposefully, toward a flexible, uncertain horizon that will likely land somewhere on the continent of our dreams but perhaps not in the exact city we once envisioned.

Coddiwomple your way to greatness, even if it looks slightly different than you once envisioned.

Foul mouthed parrots

The Lincolnshire Wildlife Park accepted five African grey parrots in early 2020 and intended to merge them with the existing flock, except one of the parrots swore extensively, and then the other newly adopted four parrots learned how to swear and apparently found great joy in it.

These five parrots were then separated and kept from public view lest their foul language be heard by the many children who visit the park regularly.

Even though these five parrots were separated, three additional birds also learned how to swear and also love it.

Officials hope to rehabilitate the eight foul-mouthed parrots by integrating them into a large flock, hoping they will be drowned out by the larger population and conform to cultural expectations.

I have four thoughts about this situation:
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I suspect that my wife, a kindergarten teacher, would say, “This sounds exactly like kindergarten,” wherein one student’s naughty behavior can spread like wildfire throughout the population.
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I’m not especially keen on swearing and try to avoid it onstage as much as possible (to be as accessible to as many people as possible) and also in my classroom (to remain as employed as possible). My kids despise swearing, too, and we have a swear jar – installed by the kids – for every time I swear. I’ve never heard either of my kids swear, and Elysha rarely swears, too.

Nevertheless, I love these foul-mouthed birds so much.
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We’re all pretty stupid when it comes to the power we give to certain words. Most swear words pertain to the parts and processes covered by our underwear, which makes us all immature toddlers who find it too offensive to mention these biological bits and processes in public, which is asinine, prudish, and illogical.

Though I don’t swear often, I probably should be swearing a lot more often in protest of the ridiculous power we give to these words.
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As troublesome as I know it would be, I can’t help but hope that the whole flock of parrots eventually starts speaking like drunken, foul-mouthed pirates.