Whenever I tell someone I am an author and speaker, the next question is always, “Well, what do you write and speak about?” I always want to say, “If it was a simple idea, it would not be worth your time to listen to me speak for an hour about it,” but I try to be nicer than that. For those who may be interested, after “making the leap” from a farm in Ohio to playing in the Boston Pops (this is statistically harder to achieve than climbing Mt. Everest, by the way), and after having lived so long in the artistic maelstrom of Major Orchestra Culture, and after traveling the world seeing my plays performed in major concert halls, here are some of the things I speak about:
Trust is more effective than control. Ever had a boss who couldn’t delegate? Do you wonder why schools in Finland are so much better than schools in the USA? These are issues of trust, not money or skill.
Stars never follow standard procedure. This was the only consistent element I ever observed in superstars; it was not talent, training, or connections. People who do not have the ability to “buck the system” can never be superstars at anything.
Simplify. It is far more effective to remove an obstacle than to fight it. “Lean Manufacturing” applies to playing an instrument as well as managing emotional energy.
Are you a living being or a machine? Sounds like a silly question, but the industrial age taught us to view ourselves as machines. Major Orchestra Culture missed all the efforts by social engineers to turn us all into standardized parts.
It’s about connection, not precision. Our fascination with perfection is industrial era thinking, and misses the point. Perfection does not exist. It is the purpose of the arts (and of life in general) to connect. Perfection, as a goal, is the mark of a person mired in industrial thought.
Money is emotion. We can talk about money in mathematical terms, but in the end, money is merely an artifact of some emotional energy that is upstream of it, making it move.
That is a short list of what I write and speak about.
So . . . for your next meeting, event, or just an interesting conversation, if you are looking for a truly different approach and/or presentation on making fundamental changes from industrial age systems to the neo-artistic digital age that is already upon us, I could be just the thing. Let’s talk. No hard sell, I promise.
Call me at 781-330-8143, or email justinlocke1@gmail.com.
