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Eight Simple Words of Clarity...

By Jeff Gallagher (Intel) (17 posts) on October 3, 2008 at 2:06 pm

In 1996 I had the privilege of watching a world-renowned, Danish-American pianist and humorist named Victor Borge perform in a local concert hall. The evening was billed as part of his 85^th Birthday Tour, as he was apparently working his way around the US playing to sold-out crowds even at that advanced age.

You may or may not know that world-class pianists have a tendency to evolve into marvels of efficiency and perfection as they age, generating music of an almost unbelievably high quality and beauty; and they do this seemingly effortlessly. Their hands seem barely to move as they perform, no matter how intense or difficult the music is. No way I was going to miss this; and I needed to be up close to watch all the action as well as hear it.  I got my tickets early and sat about as close I could hope for.

The concert night rolled around and I was there barely able to sit in my seat. At exactly 8:00pm, amazingly – right on time – the lights dimmed and Mr. Borge strolled out to his piano to massive applause. I noted the hall doors slamming shut and quite a few loiterers loping quickly to their seats. He sat immediately and the concert started, dazzling us with a short and highly technical piece, really showing off his immense talent. After, he received the applause, and then the doors opened again in the hall, lights came up, and the late comers were rushed to their seats.

One such unfortunate late comer was heading for a seat in the front row. Mr. Borge called to the theater crew, “Let’s give him some light so he can find his seat.” And a spotlight immediately followed the gentleman to his seat in the middle of the row, very near the piano.  Mr. Borge leaned forward to speak to him in a conversation that he intended the audience to hear:

“Spotlight here, please. Let’s help the poor man find his seat. So. What’s your name?”

“Michael,” came the soft reply, as he approached his seat, sitting.

“Hello Michael, nice to meet you. I’m Victor. Where are you from?”

“Mountain View.”

“Well Michael, I’m from Copenhagen, Denmark, and I got here before you…”

Of course the crowd erupted into laughter, much of it a nervous, better-him-than-me kind of titter. So it seems Mr. Borge likes to start his concerts on time, an almost unheard-of standard in the US of A these days. And more, he liked teasing those who don’t share his priority in that matter.

The evening was filled with wonderful music of course, but, it soon became clear that between songs Mr. Borge would turn away from the piano, toward the audience, and in a fairly quiet voice, share the benefit of his thoughts or wisdom to anyone who cared to listen. These comments were short, glib and humorous, and certainly kept the crowd quiet between the songs, so as to be able to hear what he had to say.  It was during one such time that he said something that has stuck with me to this day:

“You know, you’ve got to pay attention. That’s where all the joy in life is.”

Well, when an 85-year old genius speaks, I listen. It occurs to me years later that, at least from the Intel Software College perspective, his wisdom in concert, by both word and example, is as meaningful as ever. To recap, here are the lessons I brought back with me:

1)       Be on time

2)       Do your best

3)       Pay attention

That’s eight total, concise words with powerful, precise meanings. Hard to imagine better advice for any profession in as many words, let alone fewer. But especially so here in the 21^st century, the golden age of mission statements and vision declarations, written in language that would make George Orwell cringe.  Actually it’s not a very large task to bring these bits of wisdom into the here and now of multinational corporate culture, especially in courseware design and implementation. 

And this brings me to the crux of my posting: how and when did complexity replace brief clarity in the corporate cultures of our age?  Why did it happen?

I have no idea about the answers to those questions, but the end result is simply that I will continue to look for wisdom in the cross reference detail of other mighty disciplines such as the arts, literature, architecture, and the rest, to see their solutions to the problems we all face, not just those problems of courseware design as related to models of parallelism. I tell you, he hit the nail on the head: details.

That’s where all the joy in life is…

Categories: Academic

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Comments (1)

October 8, 2008 2:41 PM PDT Dan the Music Master

Victor Borge; one of a kind. How wonderful that you not only saw him live, but found inspiration from his words and humour.

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