On Monday, my wife and I drove our kids to San Diego to pay respects to their Great-Grandmother, Leonor Baez, a pioneering woman who not only built a home, family and church in Rosarito but a lasting legacy of strength and bad-assery, forever evidenced in my bad-ass wife.
Leonor lived to nearly 90. She smoked several times a day, often waving to the priests across the street with her free hand as they walked in and out of the church she helped build.
On the two hour drive to San Diego, we listened to music, talked early childhood , listened to more music and entertained a range of questions from the kids.
“What’s a Mormon?” “What’s a Baptist?” “What’s peace and quiet?”
You can trust I did my best to over-explain.
“You see…Martin Luther King Jr. was named after Martin Luther, who was the person that nailed 95 theses…”
‘Actually, Dad, Martin Luther King Sr. was named after Martin Luther.’
That was Maya.
And on and on.
And this and that.
When we got to the mortuary, we were greeted with a temperature check at the door.
The viewing happened in rotating shifts by household. These things are always tough but the isolated grieving made it more difficult, less humane. Before wrapping up the viewing portion, we had one last opportunity to say farewell.
Joaquin wanted to go back in. I took him by myself. When we got to the casket, Joaquin lifted his hands, as if performing some sort of magic trick. I was dumbstruck.
“What are you doing, bruh,” I hushed.
“I’m really into this Jesus thing right now, so I’m trying to see if I can heal her. Or bring her back to life.”
It didn’t work.
But it didn’t stop him from trying, again. Down at the grave site, hands lifted, the boy tried. Again, in the mausoleum, trying.
I washed dishes w/ Hugo Asamoah (Kif) during our first year at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts.
We were students in the Brandeis Transitional Year Program (TYP). Me, one of 4 Mexican-Americans on campus and Kif from Cambridge’s Malden Sqaure, alumnus of Ringe & Latin and a smack talking, hood genius.
For the unawares, Brandeis is was and forever will be predominately Jewish. The college was started in the late 40’s as a response to rampant anti-semitism in the Ivy League. The student body in the early 90s was 80%+ white (this is anecdotal but I did search for exact numbers and nada).
After MLK Jr was assassinated in ’68, black students on campus demanded the administration address inequities on campus. The TYP program was created as a concession.
Then, in ’69, a black TYP student was shot in the cheek with a BB gun while on campus. The black students weren’t having it. They took over an administrative building for 11 days, presented a list of demands and renamed the campus Malcolm X University. You can read more about the ordeal here.
Both Kif and I had jobs on campus. We worked in the dining hall. Now, dining Services was a good look for us for the obvious reasons. But it was a terrible look for equally obvious reasons. You see, part of my job included picking up trays students had lazily left behind.
So, after about a week of this denigrating dumb shit, I bought a whistle. Then, when students left a tray on the table, I’d blow a whistle on their asses.
Sometime around 2005, me and the longtime homies and apostate Christian rappers, Free Agent (Mike Parham) & Budzo Supreme (Isaac Forsman) formed The Space Cadets.
I’d some limited success in Latin rap circles the year prior, performing at quinceneras, liquor store ribbon cutting ceremonies and a car wash to raise money for a DUI bail (Frankie, I hope your tia’ Lencha learned her fucking lesson).
That summer, I’d been invited to perform in Central California by a Chicano rap promoter.
Now, as a non-gang member esoteric Latino rapper with white and black group members, I thought we were safe to travel up north, where the long-standing deadly conflict between northern and southern Mexican-American youth had killed many a folk.
After the 5 hour drive to Los Banos, we landed in the two bit tavern where we were scheduled to perform.
Half the crowd loved us. The other 5 people looked like they wanted to shoot us. They were waving red rags as if auditioning for a Lil Wayne video.
After our song about traveling to Mars on an intergalactic blunt and our ditty about being caged inside a beat machine, we packed our shit up and hightailed to the Hotel 7.9 where we stood vigil till daylight broke, at which point we peeled out, leaving only the dust that greeted us behind.
My favorite example, tho, has to do with how re-framing a question can break through the noise and allow for helpful, even insightful, responses.
There’s one particular trick that’s always a hoot to deploy. I first learned it as a Literature Instructor at Harvey Mudd College’s Upward Bound program.
Often, students respond to teacher questions in class with a reluctant, “I don’t know.”
The typical teacher reaction is to move on to the next student. But, I learned, if the teacher instead responds with: “What would you say if you did know the answer?” sometimes surprising and true answers follow, almost as if out of nowhere.
What does this demonstrate?
On the teaching side, there’s more than one way to ask a question in order to get a desired response. If your questions aren’t getting the types of responses you want, re-examine the question. There’s likely a better way to ask it.
On the student side, we sometimes close ourselves to the prospect of internal discovery…out of fear of being wrong or seen as wrong or ignorant or deficient. But what if you did know the answer but simply didn’t give yourself the mental time and space to articulate it? This is one reason good teachers are important. We facilitate discovery.
I’m thinking about this today because I recently used this big brown mind trick on a CVS cashier to remarkable success. I rushed into the store, headed straight to the cashier and asked if they carried paper name tag stickers thingies (I was sure to include every seo term). To my chagrin and befuddlement, she said, “No.”
No?OK. But if you did carry them, which aisle would they be on?
On Day 3, big ol’ bad security wouldn’t let me into the fairgrounds because my pass was this or that and red and circular when it was supposed to be blue and square or whatever.
I urgently plead my case through a chain linked fence.
Nothing.
I desperately made some calls from the other side of a chain linked fence.
Nothing.
That’s when I lifted my hands, faced down security and prayed OUT LOUD that “…the Lord would lift the veil from these rent-a-cops eyes and allow them to see the good work that is being done in here on the grill in your blessed name.”
Our greatest religious traditions draw heavily on agricultural metaphors, which is cool and all but considering we don’t grow or farm anything, this puts us at a disadvantage.
These three slang words are similar insofar as they all relate to amplification but they have different meanings and are deployed in divergent contexts. What’s with amplification?
In part one of this three part series, we explored a few ways the ping pong volley is like the creative process, where an interplay of ideas helps establish a rhythm, set the vibe and display skill sets. Today, we explore what the ping pong rally can teach us about facilitating rewarding creative collaboration.
DO YOU EVEN RALLY, BRUH?
By rally, I simply mean a prolonged period of back and forth pinging and ponging. A strict definition is hard to come by but like pornography, you know it when you see it.
(The link above is to an entry on ostensive definition, in case you were afraid to click.)
During a ping pong match, rallying does at least three important things: 1) it signals to the other player that you’re at least as interested in the means as you are in the ends; 2) it establishes and fuels momentum; 3) it sets the table for creative flourishes.
While outscoring your opponent is the objective, it’s often not the only goal when playing. While competition is a driving force, the quality of any match turns on the players’ cooperation–literally, how well they operate together while playing. A willingness to rally is a signal to the other player that having fun, and working together, is at least as important as competing. The means is at least as important as the ends.
My favorite part of any rally is the way momentum builds to a crescendo. Momentum is an intangible force that’s hard to locate but impossible to deny. Each ping and pong of a rally pushes the game towards its unknown end and is akin to building a plane while flying it. And while you work to sustain a rally, there’s an ebb and flow to the competitiveness at play.
Rallying can appear rudimentary but it’s foundational to more creative game play. Its during a rally that players attempt to execute strong forehands, cross-body returns and slams. And during a rally, a player often switches quickly between offensive and defensive postures. This requires an agility that results in heightened game play. Acting and reacting are equally important.
BE CREATIVE
You guessed it, the creative process in uncannily similar. Rallying ideas is key to getting the most of your collaborations.
It’s important to head into the collaborative process valuing the means as much as the ends. Values like charity, collegiality and curiosity will go a long way in encouraging participation. Charity is a willingness to see the best version of an idea. Collegiality places people over product, while curiosity signals an intellectual openness.
Momentum is key to driving the creative process. When it develops, you want to feed it so that it’s potential energy continues to accrue. You feed the process by contributing ideas that move the project towards the desired outcome. And sometimes you contribute best by getting out of the way.
Every good rally culminates with a score. When it comes to the creative process, you can score by playing both offense and defense. You play offense when you generate new ideas and you play defense, if you will, when you pose questions that help refine existing ideas. An offensive approach often frames contributions in terms of “How about” and “What if,” while a defensive approach will lean into “Why?” and “Who?”.
Rallying is one of the most exciting parts of playing ping pong, rivaled only by the slam. Check for that article next.
It reduces some of the excesses we find in other competitive pursuits to two people, two paddles, a table, net and ball. The game is played by an estimated 300 million people worldwide, including a dozen or so savage colleagues at our full service creative agency in downtown Los Angeles, Quantasy and Associates.
I’m not the best in the office but I play with panache and that’s worth style points, if nothing else. I also play with a pair of $150 Nike trainers I bought for the expressed purpose of leveling up my game–so, make that two style points.
Recently, while having a seat after a devastating loss to a lower ranked player (yes, we have office rankings), I was struck by the parallels between ping pong and the creative process. In particular, there’s crossover value in analyzing the triumvirate that is the volley, rally and slam.
In today’s post, we explore the volley.
VOLLEY
Our games at Q+A start with a volley–a warm up exercise that allows both players to find a rhythm, establish a vibe and get a preview of the other player’s skill level. It’s a low pressure, pre-game activity that operates outside of the game rules. Ultimately, though, the volley ramps up and the result determines advantage.
With ping pong, you volley in order to find a rhythm for the patter. You want to get in sync. You want your body and mind working together. And if there’s good music playing overhead (which is always the case at Q+A), you want to match the energy.
Volleying also commands you to check the vibe. Is your partner passive or aggressive? Competitive or hyper-competitive? Sad, happy, hungry or mad? You can tell by the way they volley.
Volleying also provides a preview into your partner’s skill level. How do they hold their paddle? Where do they like to stand? And most importantly, will my trash talk work?
As a writer and producer of reality TV and branded social campaigns, I’ve learned the best collaborative creative projects begin with a volley of ideas. “Starting” is often the first hump to hump. During impromptu brainstorm and story sessions, I’ll sometimes take the lead by offering an idea that isn’t intended to “score” as much as its intended to generate an interplay of ideas–a rhythm, if you will.
The early interplay, unbounded by ‘rules,’ can help provide creative latitude, thereby establishing the vibe for the remainder of the project. It also provides a window into your collaborators’ points of view, their processes and proclivities. Indeed, some creative partners hold their respective ‘paddles’ differently. Some prefer rapid exchanges, others something more tempered and still others, a mix.
What do you think? Is ping pong like the creative process or am I putting 10 on 2? Leave a comment below.
