The other day I wrote about chaos theory. Today I’m going to write about a mixed tape a friend recorded for me when I was a kid. And believe it or not, there’s a connection.
When I was 16, I lived in eastern Washington state and drove my dilapidated Volkswagen back to California to hang out with my friends for the summer. That thing was such a piece of junk that I smelled like gasoline and burnt motor oil after only 20 minutes behind the wheel. I can’t believe my girlfriend put up with me.
I also can’t believe my parents let my brother and me do stuff like that. They must have had the patience of Job (Gob, for the Arrested Development fans out there, of which I am one, that show is like a drug to me).
Anyway, while I was in California, my friend Jeff Weyer, who was a couple years older than me, asked, “What are you listening to these days?” I told him, and he scrunched up his face, obviously very displeased and not a little disappointed that the scrawny, uncool kid he had taken under his wing had gone so wrong.
He went home, made a mixed tape of “good” Jeff-approved music, and called it “Rice Cakes, Gonad, Tootsie Rolls, etc” (don’t ask me about the name of that tape, each one of those phrases is another story for another time).
By the way, remember that I came of age in the 80s, which was when mixed tapes were just the way you did things. Nowadays I guess kids make Spotify playlists for each other or something. Not the same. But whatever.
Anyway, that mixed tape changed my life. It changed my brother’s life, too. There was a direct line between that mixed tape and the fact that my brother spent most of high school dressed like a member of Echo and the Bunnymen. That mixed tape is the reason I tie Love and Rockets lyrics to presentation tips today. It is the reason one of my favorite bands for the past five years has been Carseat Headrest, even though the lead singer wasn’t even born until about 10 years after that tape was made. That mixed tape is even the reason I am listening to the song I am listening to right now as I write this email.
Why do I mention Jeff Weyer and that mixed tape? Because chaos theory isn’t really about chaos. It’s about unintended consequences, and our inability to fully understand the systems in which we operate. When you do something, you don’t know how it is going to affect the world around you. You have no idea what people are going to do with it.
Jeff probably had no idea what that mixed tape was going to do to the person he gave it to, and then to that person’s brother, and then to the people who were in that brother’s circle of friends, and on and on, the ripples spreading outwards.
And that’s why, when you present, you need to go to your genius zone, even if you barely know what it is. You need to push your ask to the edge. You need to go a little past what you think is reasonable.
Because do you want to be safe but forgotten, or do you want people to walk out of that room and say, “Damn, that was badass, I want to be like that person,” and then take your words and do something so inspired with them you couldn’t have even imagined it?