Grammar, leadership and clarity of thought

It has been a harrowing few weeks, and finding time to write original material for the blog has been a challenge.  I tried to recycle material I had received from friends and associates, but that turned out to be quite inadequate as well.

Instead I spent the little time I had to re-read an article by an actor I admire, about a fascinating new product from a company I respect, in a magazine long established as one of the best in the world: Stephen Fry’s article in the April 12^th 2010 edition of TIME magazine on the iPad: http://bit.ly/bY9ah5

Doing that opened the floodgates.  I noticed something in the article which I had missed altogether when I skimmed through it the first time – a grammatical mistake!

No, I said to myself, that can’t be true.  A grammatical mistake in a TIME magazine article by a world-renowned actor and author spotted by an ignoramus like me?  That’s not possible.

I rubbed my eyes, and read the offending sentence over and over again.  I concluded that it was a mistake.  Here’s the passage where the error occurs (page 29 of the written article and at this link on the web: http://bit.ly/aP7eWa), as Fry describes Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO:

“...I do believe Jobs to be a truly great figure, one of the small group of innovators who have changed the world. He exists somewhere between showman, perfectionist overseer, visionary, enthusiast and opportunist, and his insistence upon design, detail, finish, quality, ease of use and reliability are a huge part of Apple's success..”

Job’s insistence on the variety of factors that account for Apple’s success is a singular noun, and therefore should be followed by “is” rather than “are”.  Had the first part of the sentence been written “The aspects of the product he insists on getting right - design, detail, finish, quality, ease of use and reliability...”, then it would have been appropriate to use “are”.

Let me be clear: finding a mistake in TIME magazine is a rare occurrence.  Its editors are human and therefore susceptible to the same chances of oversight as everyone else.  To err, after all, is human.

Which is not to argue that we should consider it acceptable, as many writers nowadays do, on the pretext that when the English language becomes more common as the medium of communication among people from different backgrounds, we should be more tolerant towards grammatical mistakes.

That’s codswallop, as it’s tantamount to saying that Pidgin English is good English.  Grammar is a set of rules by which sentences in a language are constructed and therefore understood.  To tolerate grammatical mistakes is to condone fuzzy thinking, which makes for bad leadership.

A simple grammatical mistake does not a bad leader make.  Perhaps, but an important skill of a good leader is the ability to communicate clearly.  How can a leader do so when grammatical mistakes clutter up speeches and proclamations, thereby creating confusion, ambiguity and suspense?  Besides, leaders are supposed to set examples.  If they tolerate sloppy use of language, woe betide their followers when they write and speak.

Recently I came across an excellent talk by Clive James, an Australian raconteur and author who has been living in the UK for some time.  In May 2006 the Australian magazine The Monthly carried an article he wrote on the English language, entitled “The Continuing Insult to the English Language”.  He explains further on his web site:

The piece ...attracted a gratifying amount of attention, although I got the impression that I was preaching to the converted, whose numbers were dwindling. Even if that were so, I got the chance of preaching to a lot more of them when Jill Kitson of the ABC asked me to turn the text into a broadcast... 

The broadcast can be heard at this link: http://bit.ly/dhNym5

James continues:

That melancholy long withdrawing roar you hear in the background is generated by all the surviving members of my generation who were taught to parse a sentence. The text of the piece is filed under "Recent Essays" — two versions of the same doomed campaign. 

The text James refers to can be found at this link: http://bit.ly/bbicwT

I am one generation down from Clive James, but if he is right, I must be one of the endangered species of purists who insist on getting things right in language, as I am dead scared of fuzzy thinking.  I am happy to be so.

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Easy listening is lazy listening when it comes to Harry Connick Jr.

I’m a late comer to the music of Harry Connick Jr.  I had heard his name often, and had been aware that some considered him heir apparent to Frank Sinatra, but I had never bothered to find out what his music was like, until recently.

After all, I thought, Michael Bublé was the true heir apparent to Sinatra, and his records had been on the charts far more often than Connick’s.  Furthermore, I had heard Bublé live by pure coincidence in a Manhattan bar and grill.  It was standing room only, and I stood all the way.

Connick’s latest CD Your Songs is listed in the Air Canada in-flight entertainment programme as “easy listening”.  I often wonder what easy listening means, as opposed to other types of “hard listening” music.  Since the flight was not long enough to do much else, and most of the music in other genres was eminently unappealing, I decided to give him a try.

As far as I can tell, Your Songs consists purely of covers, and no original material.  The opening track, Sinatra’s All the Way, is followed by Billy Joel’s Just the Way You Are, the Beatles’ And I Love Her, the Carpenters’ Close to You, Your Song by Elton John and, among others, Nat King Cole’s Mona Lisa.

Covering other artists’ material in itself does not mean that the effort has no creative value – even “hard listening” artists have tried their hands at covering material of another artist, another genre, or another era.

Linda Ronstadt broke new ground collaborating with the Nelson Riddle Orchestra in What’s New in the 80s, and Rod Stewart set new standards for the full gamut of the classics in The Great American Songbook.  Black Sabbath front man turned reality show superstar Ozzy Osbourne released Under Cover a few years ago; as did Bette Midler a collection of Rosemary Clooney songs.

Peter Gabriel’s latest release Scratch My Back probably ranks among the most interesting cover project to date.  According to his web site, this is “a very personal record with the twelve songs performed only with orchestral instruments and voice”.  The project is a “song swap”, in which the next phase involves each of the original artists whose songs Gabriel covers performing one of his in return.

The mark of true artists is that even when covering someone else’s material they bring an interpretation uniquely their own.  Ronstadt and Stewart both cover the Gershwin classic Someone to Watch Over Me, yet they each instil the song with such unique vocal qualities and phrasing that they may as well not be the same song.  Ronstadt never seems to be able to shake her nasal twang, and Stewart’s husky voice is distinctly well aged.  Stewart’s interpretation of Hoagy Carmichael’s Stardust is far and away better than my next favourite rendition by Nat King Cole.

What about Harry Connick Jr.?  Granted, he does have a smooth voice and sing well, but it’s hard to pin down what new angle he brings to the various songs he covers, apart perhaps from sugar-coating them until they blend into the background.  All the tracks on Your Songs are so watered down and evenly paced that they don’t command a lot of attention.  Somehow something is missing.

The whole point about an artist covering someone else’s material is that it brings a challenge to our assumptions about him or her.  It makes us sit up and listen.  Ozzy Osbourne certainly does that with the Beatles’ In My Life and the Mott the Hoople classic All The Young Dudes.  Peter Gabriel’s version of David Bowie’s Heroes is hardly recognisable.  Osbourne and Gabriel present a musical as well as an intellectual challenge.  To enjoy their covers, you have to suspend disbelief and view them in a different light.

With Harry Connick Jr. all you have to do is sit back, relax and take it all in, as the music simply glides over your consciousness and leaves nothing behind.  You don’t have to suspend disbelief, as you don’t know what to believe in the first place.  There is no challenge, as his smoothness is amorphous and defies description.

So it seems Harry Connick Jr. is not only easy, but lazy, listening.  It goes to show that in music, as in everything else, I do it the hard way.

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