The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 124 - Context

Transcript:

Pete: What's up, legendary listeners? Pete, here. Of course. I mean, who else would this be? It's definitely not Jen. And just wanted to remind you all that we have a weekly newsletter, a weekly email that goes out to those that are subscribed. It's called the Box O' Goodies, where each week Jen and I review the episode, review the transcript, and come up with a collection of our favorite resources that we think build upon the ideas shared in that week's episode. So they might be podcasts, they might be Netflix series, they might be books, or quotes, or tweets, or blogs. Anything that we think helps serve the episode for that week, we will include in the Box O' Goodies. It's also the place that we share upcoming workshops and things that we're noodling on first. So if you want to find out all of this first, if you want to unpack (literally) a Box O' Goodies each week with us along with the episode for that week, you can subscribe to that newsletter at thelongandtheshort podcast.com. You scroll down a little bit, you'll see the Box O' Goodies, type in your email, hit "Subscribe". I mean at this point, I feel like most people are familiar with how to subscribe to an email. But I outlined it anyway. So, Box O' Goodies, every week, thelongandtheshort podcast.com is the place to go. For now, we hope you enjoy this week's episode.

Jen: Hello, Peter Shepherd.

Pete: Hello, Jennifer Waldman.

Jen: So I'm coming to you today with a question from a mutual friend of ours. It's actually a series of questions. She sent me multiple voice memos on this topic, and I'll try to put it in a nutshell. How do we create art that doesn't need context? And I'll just say, replace art with anything.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: How can we create fill-in-the-blank that doesn't need context?

Pete: Okay, I feel like I need some context. So let's, let's try and get some. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Jen: I feel like I could have set that up better, which is so ironic.

Pete: I realized that like, as I was saying that...basically at the start of every episode we do, after the intro, we go, "Alright, let me just set some context here."

Jen: Well, I think this is going to be a really important key element in this conversation.

Pete: Mm-hmm.

Jen: So, let me set a little context here. So basically, she was telling me that she listens to this podcast where a comedian has a theory that 2016 was the greatest year in the history of music. And he brings other comedians on, and he asks them to listen to an album from 2016. And then he will provide all sorts of stories, background information, bio, personal info, etc., about how the album was created. And then the person who just listened to the album typically has a response like, "Oh my gosh. Now that I know that, it's so much better. Now that I know that, I want to listen to that again." So her question was, do we have to explain everything in order for people to understand what we're trying to communicate? Is it possible to create art that doesn't require context? And, well, I guess I have a lot of opinions on this topic. But I'll, I'll open it up to you to kick us off.

Pete: Yeah. I mean, I'm trying to...my brain is trying to answer the question immediately. But I think before I can answer it immediately, we probably need to unpack it. Because I mean, art aside, when I was working in a company in a leadership position and presenting to clients, and doing pitches, and talking about the work we were doing as a company to the client, I used to actually struggle with this same thing, I think, of, "How much context do I need to set for this meeting, for this pitch, for this client? What do they need to know?" Because my assertion in that project in particular (or in that world, the world of tech, and startups, and all of that), my observation with a lot of people in sales, and marketing, and client relationships was they usually try and set too much context. They usually just talk at them for forty-five minutes, and then say, "Have you got any questions," for fifteen minutes. And so, I would always try (and I think, sometimes I'd go too far the other way) and not give enough context. And they'd be like, "Could you tell us about the background of this project?" And so I'm like, I feel like I've forever been trying to straddle this line. How much context do people need? What do you need to provide in order for them to be enrolled in the change you're trying to make? If that makes sense.

Jen: It does. It makes a lot of sense. As a person with a background in storytelling, I'll tell you there's like two key mottos, I guess, mantras to live by as a storyteller. One is, context is everything.

Pete: Right.

Jen: And then the second motto is, I guess really an addendum to the first. Every single thing has storytelling value. So if context is everything, and everything has storytelling value, I think the question needs to become: How are you setting the context? Because in this particular case, this podcast comedian host is setting the context by offering explanation. And context doesn't always have to look like explanation. In the world of music, an example immediately comes to mind. Adele, who, with the way she titles her albums, provides the context. The name of her album is how old she was when she wrote it. So, you know, 23...I don't actually know if that's one of the albums. But 23, the context is, "I wrote this when I was twenty-three." And so, you listen to it through that lens. There are so many different elements we can tend to, to provide context without needing to always rely on explanation.

Pete: I love this thread of like, how might you provide context? How might we provide context? And the comedian in question, by the way, is James Acaster, for those wondering.

Jen: Oh, thanks. I had no clue.

Pete: And he has an unbelievably good four-part series on Netflix. I highly recommend it to anyone who is into comedians. He's a British guy. Very quirky, very funny. Hence, I mean, the topic of this podcast that you're talking about, it's super niche, super quirky. Anyway. So, the different ways we can create contexts. Okay. What are the other ways that come to mind for you? Like, how else might we create context? I'm trying to think of some on the spot.

Jen: So she was specifically asking about art, so artistic examples are immediately popping into my mind. And maybe I need to clear those out of the way first, before I can get to some other things. I'm thinking right now about walking into the theater to see a musical called Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, where they had not just tended to what was behind the curtain, but the second you walked into the theater, you were in a world. And the world was all sorts of off. Like, things were not okay in this world. There was a dead cow hanging upside down from the ceiling.

Pete: Oh my gosh.

Jen: I mean, it was like...obviously, it was not a real cow. But the point was, you walked into a world where now your expectation, the context through which you're watching the show is: things are not okay, things are off. So you're not expecting to see Mamma Mia, because they've set the context that this is going to be something other than your average Broadway musical.

Pete: Yeah. I would call that environmental context. Almost like, the one that comes to mind for me is Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. When you walk in, at least when I saw it in Melbourne, when I walked in, it was like, there was a gift shop selling wands. And there were people wearing like, dressed in robes. And I was like, "Oh my god, I'm at Hogwarts. This is incredible."

Jen: Yes, yes. And I don't want to spoil what happens, but let's just say that gift shop changes between the two parts.

Pete: Context changes. Yeah.

Jen: Oh my gosh, so good. Well, there are other ways to set context. For example, what comes at the end of your URL. So if I was jenwaldman.edu, you would have a very different expectation than if I'm jenwaldman.com.

Pete: That's such a good example.

Jen: And that's context.

Pete: Another one that comes to mind...maybe this is because you and I have been talking a bit about keynotes, and talks, and Big Ideas Lab, is the visuals that we use or don't use when presenting or giving a keynote. So if I have a really beautiful image behind me that is representative of the thing I'm talking about, it's seeking to give context to the thing that I'm talking about, just in a different way. So visuals, I think, as well, in presentations.

Jen: Yeah. Okay, something just came to mind that I feel like is so important to bring into this conversation. We are sometimes in situations where we have an awareness of when we have opportunity to provide context. So the Broadway theater example, we know the audience is going to walk through the doors and to their seats. There, we have the opportunity to provide context. But in the case of the album being discussed on the podcast, I can't imagine that the artist knew that their work would be unpacked on a comedy podcast about 2016. And so, should the artists have tended to that context? I don't know. But, you know, as a person who makes things, the question we have to be asking ourselves is: Where have I not accounted for someone happening upon the work, as opposed to someone finding the work the way we intended them to find it?

Pete: Hmm.

Jen: Does that make sense?

Pete: Yeah, I mean, I think so. Let me try and like rephrase it back to you, because I feel like there's a parallel to "who it's for".

Jen: Mm-hmm.

Pete: And probably, "what's it for", too. So if I make this album for this particular group of people, clearly James Acaster was one of the "who's it for", because he fell in love with this particular album to the point where he created a podcast about it. So I think I've heard you say this in the podcast...if not, you've definitely said this to me offline. There's like a core "who's it for" that we make something for. So, we intentionally create something (an art piece, a proposal, whatever) for a group of people or an individual, really specifically. But then it's almost like there's this "who else is it for" which you've said to me. I thought it was such a brilliant question. And so, it's not necessarily that you need to reinvent it, or change it that much, I don't think. But it's that you need to be aware, maybe. There's an awareness of how else or who else might stumble into this work. And I guess on that note, does it still stand up? How might it be interpreted because of that?

Jen: Yeah. I think that's such a great question to ask. Is, who else is it for? Because that helps you expand just the concept of what context you need to provide to the person who will ultimately be engaging with whatever it is you create. And this immediately reminds me of something that I run into a lot with my actor clients, is them having to grapple with the multiple audiences who they know, they have an awareness of who is coming to visit their website. So on the one hand, the creatives that they wish to collaborate with (directors, composers, etc.) who don't necessarily want to go to an artist website and see someone commoditizing themselves by leading with a headshot and resume. I mean, how uninspiring. On the other hand, they know that casting directors, agents, producers, etc., are also going to be visiting their website and need to know that there's a headshot and resume available. (Which I believe is extremely problematic, and maybe we can talk about that on a different episode so I don't fall down this rabbit hole.) And they need to be able to provide the context for both. And so, one of the things I've landed on in recent years is just being explicit about it and having a button that says, "For Casting". So casting knows, "I need to go here to get the things I'm looking for." But that if a director were to come to your website, they wouldn't be completely uninspired by how status quo the material is.

Pete: Then the thing I'm trying to process in my brain is, at what point do you need to be okay that not everyone is going to have the context or understand the context? Because of "who's it for", because of what you and I spoke to Seth Godin about, about the play Waiting for Godot, where it deliberately alienates a bunch of people who can't stand it because of how different it is, or how specific it is to a certain genre or group of people. So at what point do we go, "Okay. I've set the context enough for these people. But also, I recognize there's a bunch of people who are just not going to understand the context, not going to want to know the context, not going to get this, and that's okay."

Jen: Yeah. I think you're landing on something that is so important. And in case we haven't spoken about this in a while, when you and I started this podcast, we did a big whiteboarding session where we went through our "who's it for", "what's it for", and then we did "who's it not for". So that we would be able to know ahead of time, if someone was like, "I hate this podcast because you never come to any conclusions," that we'd be like, "Yes, that's right. That's exactly right. You are in the 'who's it not for' category, and we can celebrate that we have properly contextualized our ideas as not being definitive, but instead just possibilities."

Pete: Noodles. I like it. I like it, I like it. The "who's it not for".

Jen: So to come back to the initial voice memos that I was getting from this mutual friend of ours, I feel like it's important to state that explanation is always context, but context is not always explanation.

Pete: Yeah. Could you say a little more about that?

Jen: Yeah. Some of us rely on the crutch of explanation. And because we are all creative, there might be more creative solutions than explanation to provide the context. However, there are times when explanation is the best way.

Pete: Yeah, yeah. And I think if I use the...I'm going to use the Harry Potter example. When you go to the theater, you could walk into a normal looking theater and get a piece of paper that has a very long-winded explanation of, "This is the context of what you are in." Or, you could just change some of the environmental settings. And I feel like we've probably all been in a meeting, or a pitch, or in a conversation where someone is setting or giving such a long explanation where like halfway through, you're like, "Oh, I get the context. Okay, like you can stop talking now. I understand the context." And they keep going and they keep going, and you're like, "You're overexplaining, you're over explaining."

Jen: Yeah. Okay, so what's the big takeaway here, Mr. Shepherd?

Pete: This is potentially a whole other episode, but I'm overlaying all of this through the lense of empathy. That what I think we're ultimately talking about is: in setting context, whether through explanation or environment or any other means, what we're really doing is trying to build the empathy bridge between who we're serving, and who else we're serving, and the work that we want to communicate to them. Can I meet that person where they're at? And can I give them the context so that they understand, based on where they're at, what I'm trying to communicate to them?

Jen: And that is The Long and The Short Of It.