Patti Smith: “I can’t do this. I don’t know what to say.”
Sam Shepard: “Say anything. You can’t make a mistake when you improvise.”
Patti: “What if I mess it up? What if I screw up the rhythm?”
Sam: “You can’t. It’s like drumming. If you miss a beat, you create another.”
{Patti Smith, Just Kids, 2010}
I don’t know anyone who’s not at least a little bit nervous starting something new. Patti Smith had never written a play and here was Sam Shepard encouraging her to just fall into it, to let it happen.
That’s easy for a seasoned pro to say but for a newbie, that falling feels endlessly scary.
The ability to begin, again and again and again, is the privilege of the human species. Reinvention is the best of who we are…it is, quite literally, why we are here.
Patti Smith was young, energized and on the verge of a breakthrough when she was doubting herself to Sam Shepard. That’s an “easy” space within which to be doubtful. But decades later, this proven poet, rock star, and author performed for the Swedish Academy at the Nobel Prize ceremony for Bob Dylan.
And she screwed it up. Improvisation in the moment eluded her. So she attempted a different kind; she politely asked if she could start again.
She did exactly that, beginning and completing a beautiful rendition of “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” and the other laureates fell over themselves telling her how much they admired her for how she handled it.
Young or old, seasoned or new, we are invited to approach this moment as a beginner.
The only question is whether or not we will be willing to start again.
DAVID BERRY is the author of “A More Daring Life: Finding Voice at the Crossroads of Change” and the founder of RULE13 Learning. He speaks and writes about the complexity of leading in a changing world.
