Critical criticism is crucial...or so I thought

OK so you all know me. My brain runs at ten billion miles a second when working on some kind of creative puzzle, and about one mile a year on mathematical or logical problems. And I pride myself on my ability to 'insert a giant banana' into any creative problem and find a solution. Although of course last week I couldn't and that got me down. And all you wonderful people rallied and said that I'm sometimes to harsh on myself.

Now I want to know am I too harsh on others? For example this past week I've been writing proposals for SABC and company and working with a producer whom I only met on Wednesday. Each day he'd come into my apartment - thankfully clean now that the maid has returned - and we'd brainstorm ideas from 0900 till 1800. We'd attack one another's ideas furiously, looking for weakness, uncertainty, and most of all better angles from which to tell the story.

I like stories. I like hearing them, and I like making them. I think I do a pretty good job at both. So when I get presented with a story I like to make sure it works for me - which means it needs to be captivating, and niggly details need to be in place. But crucially the tale needs to told by someone who believes in their story. So this producer and I would make sure that we believed in the idea first.

Once you believe in your story you can fight out the details later. So when someone discusses their ideas with me - story, life plan or other idea - I look for the belief in the story first, and then the actual story. I know my boss does the same, and until I learned that is what he was looking for, I was damned irritated by it. I couldn't work out why he was interested in some minor point rather than the bigger picture. Now I realize he's attacking the small points to see if I remain true to myself. The correct answer of course to someone picking up a thread of uncertainty or weakness is: It doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things because X.

However what I also learned, and what came to be painfully true but from another friend of mine was that sometimes those loose threads will unravel the whole plan, no matter how good it is. And the loose threads need to be tied up, sometimes before the rest of the plan can be put into action. In fact he was so negative about all my plans, that - and I remember it clearly - as he walked down my drive way I told him about some hair-brained scheme or other, and he shot it down. I remember telling him that if shot all my plans, my dreams down, I didn't need him in my world anymore.

Thankfully he realized that dreams, that plans, are sometimes all that we have. All that we can call our own, and genuinely believe it. Those little schemes, which might not lead anywhere, have at least opened us up to a different perspective, a different way of seeing things. And that might very well lead us to completing one of our dreams. Which would be fantastic. Now I'm forced to admit that I use my mental faculties far to often - again as some of you, and my therapist pointed out - and so whenever someone presents an idea to me, those little grey cells flare up, and begin building patterns of narrative, looking for angles, both good and bad.

What I learned today from my office staff, is that the good angles, the praise, is often put aside, and only the negative, the bad options vocalized. So instead of giving the originator of the story hope and encouragement, all that comes out is a barrage of possible weakness's, potential faults, and solutions to problems which may never arise. Whereas it should have been a barrage of encouragement, and of support, with the voicing of the negatives delivered later, or perhaps only upon request.

But that leads me to my dilemma. If I can see problems, shouldn't I voice them? As friend, employer, lecturer, general busybody is it not my responsibility to voice issues if I see them? The balance I suppose is called a shit sandwich. A term my students begged me to use, and take to heart. For those of you, like myself, the idea of a shit-sandwich, was a little repulsive. But this is what is means: It means you start with something nice, a supportive comment, then you hit them with the negative comments - the shit - and finally you finish off with a good compliment to bolster spirits. Now personally I think whomever came with the idea of a that was an idiot. Firstly, bread, almost regardless of the contents of the sandwich, can at best be described as neutral, not good. Secondly bread comes with crusts, which is a tough, nasty bit.

But I get the point. I sometimes just find it difficult to include the bread with the sandwich it seems. So to all of you who have presented me with an idea or a plan or a dream, that I've just shat on without providing any pastry (is bread a pastry? or is it a dough? or what? who cares? But for those who do, I encourage you to answer [see I can do it... although I think we all hear the sarcasm in that sentence... sigh, back to the drawing board.]) I do apologize. But then I think - and this is my last thought for the week I promise: Surely we should believe enough in our own dreams that the words of others, that the shit of others should count little? I know all that bumpf about us being social and genetically required to seek approval from others, but you get some people who can take shit, look at it, absorb some of it, and toss the rest back. OK I agree. Time for another metaphor, there's too much shit here...

When should we as humans step back and accept criticism, and change, and when should we defend to our dying breath our idea? Isn't that the problems with religion? Politics? Family? We can't define it. Some people are good at accepting criticism, some seek it out (some to their own determent), whilst others take it so personally that it causes great strife and rifts. Why are some more open than others? Is it all to do with self esteem? Is it to do with the fear of rejection? Or is it the ultimate fear that the dream is just an illusion?

I don't know, and I hope that when I get critical responses to my ideas that I am gracious enough to look at the criticism and learn or adapt or defy it. How one chooses which of the three options to go with, I do not know. So what are you then dear reader? A shit-sandwich salesman? A shit sandwich eater, or just a shit stirrer? Or like me just a shit?

(I am only joking about the last bit, I'm not a shit, I'm a pompous git... who thinks rhyme at this time of night is funny...)

Failure...finally

This isn't going to be a long one. I promise. But I feel it needs to be written, perhaps as a confession, perhaps as a way of absolving myself. I don't know. For much of my considerable life ( considerable in comparison to say a field mouse or a gnu) I have bull-shitted (Bull-Shat?) my way through. Whether it's lying about being able to do something, lying about facts, lying about information, lying about how I feel, it has all really been a smoke-and-mirrors type of game with me being able to pull a rabbit out of the hat at the last moment and save myself.

There are certain times for sure when I've realized that I couldn't do something. Loose weight for example is one of those things that I doubt will ever happen. Or giving up milk. That certainly will never happen. But when it comes to my profession, the thing that I love doing the most because it allows all my bull-shit to work, I have never encountered something that has been impossible. Oh I've worked hard, and that is no bullshit. I've spent sleepless nights working to get something done that others would have never dreamed of attempting. But I did it.

And although a lot of the work I do is really just bull-shit dressed up in fancy clothes, people buy it, and comment on how nicely it works. It has always been a secret fear of mine that someone will see it for what it is. And some of my friends do point it out, painfully so. And it causes me deep shame when they do because no matter how I try to bull-shit my way it's merits or values (implied, or non-existant) I know deep down that they are right.

So for a con-man, a bull-shitter, to be caught out, and not be able to worm a solution is a very humbling thing. For it is the mark of the ultimate fail. A piece of work that is held together with smoke and mirrors, promises of delivery delayed through words and loop-holes, these are in many regards successes. And Heaven forbid a bull-shit that actually works. That's just heaven. I'm very close to achieving one of those, with the aid of some hard workers that I've managed to con into believing I know what I'm doing.

But tomorrow I have to admit that there is something in my profession that no matter what technical trickery, what magical smoke I blow across it just will not work. I cannot do it. I couldn't do it if I spent a week doing it. And yet I said I could. I know perhaps I'm being too hard on myself, and that no one else can do it either. There might be some arsehole out there who'll spend his whole weekend doing it, and get it right, or some other cunt who will do it half-arsed and it'll be accepted because of time pressure, but I cannot get the work done to my usual level of bull-shit.

Which of course makes me stop and think: If my bull-shit is a little more polished, a little more dedicated to being a better kind of bull-shit, does that make mine worth more than some other bull-shitter? Does that make me a better person? Or just a slightly better bull-shitter? I don't know. I really don't. I guess that's also why I can't trust other people - intrinsically, and possibly why relationships are doomed to fail: I see everyone as being a bull-shitter. Some good at it, others not. I also see some who are perhaps not bull-shitters, but who are real. Who are honest. And although they are really nice people, they don't seem to have a spark.

The spark of course is the excitement of carrying a bull-shit beyond just a thought. The spark is putting something out into the world, and watching it grow, change, develop, and turn into something solid that others then use. It's like a perverse way of altering the universe. It's sad to think that the only way I'll alter the universe is by smearing my bull-shit onto it. And yet, sometimes my bull-shit is meant with the very best of intentions. So perhaps bull-shit is the wrong term? What could I replace it with?

To bull-shit is to offer up something that is not real, as being real. The reason for offering up something can be motivated by a few things: Greed, envy, social pressure, love, hatred... there are many reasons for bull-shitting. When we offer a sympathetic ear to a friends woes, and offer them advice that it'll be better, or that their decision was a good one - technically we don't know for certain (we can't right) so we're bull-shitting. When we accept more responsibilities at work, we're bull-shitting that we can do it, either to ourselves or our bosses. When we have children we bull-shit everyone (we're capable of raising other humans). I mean which parent on Earth raises their first child with complete confidence?

No we all bull-shit to some degree. Could I replace bull-shitting with: Decision making? I make a conscious decision to exaggerate my abilities to a client in the hopes of getting business? I make a decision to make my friend feel better by saying to him that he's a wonderful dresser? So why bull-shit? Why lie? Because we're programmed to do it. Only some of us have little moral codes that jump into the way: I don't lie. Really? Tell your mother-in-law what you really think of her?

I don't lie - so keeping silent about the affair you know of is not lying? It's what? None of your business? Surely the other person would say: if you knew why didn't you say? No I think evidence far outweighs all arguments: As Humans we lie. Social requirements. So it's just some Humans who say that certain types of lying is good or acceptable and other types are not. Oh God I know, I've spoken about my lying before. It's irritating. I lie. I don't like it. I can't help it. It just happens. Well tonight I lied and now tomorrow I have to admit it.

And if fucking sucks. So why do we do it? Ah fuck. Humans! Who fuck'en want's 'em? I don't. So how do you bull-shit? And how do you feel when you're stuck in a lie? And it keeps going? Or growing? Who are you lying to at the moment? And is it really necessary? (Stop shaking your head, of course you think it's necessary, cause you're bull-shitting yourself that it is...).

Anyway, all of you wonderful people have a great evening (see how easy it is to lie. I don't care if you have a great evening or just a normal evening...) and think about it: If you stopped bull-shitting for a day how many friends/family would you have to politely tell to go fuck themselves? Really...