Touching scenes? Texan competitors try to win a Nissan …
By The Landlord
“Do stuff. be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It's all about paying attention. attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager, stay eager.” – Susan Sontag
“The world journeyeth to its silly will, but I fare alway with my purpose before me.” – E.R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros
“Nothing, save the hangman's noose, concentrates the mind like piles of cash.” – Tim Wu, The Rise and Fall of Information Empires
“Normally, we do not so much look at things as overlook them.” – Alan Watts
“I do not always know what I want, but I do know what I don't want.” – Stanley Kubrick
“Put all your eggs in one basket, and then watch that basket.” – Andrew Carnegie
“Single-mindedness is all very well in cows or baboons; in an animal claiming to belong to the same species as Shakespeare, it is simply disgraceful.” – Aldous Huxley
Could single-mindedness be a colour? As a young kid, excited and curious about the world, I would just as much look out of the classroom window as at books or teachers. When I was told to pay attention, I wondered what the secret to doing this might be. Then around that time, certainly learning new words at a rapid rate, I thought I found the solution in a special potion. Imagine then, how thrilled I was to voraciously read this on a drinks bottle label: “orange concentrate”.
That sugary formula, as it turned out, was most certainly not the answer, nor, ironically, was stumbling on a certain Dutch band, led by the twitchy, swivelled-eyed, mischievously hyperactive Thijs van Leer, whose own magical flavour of flautist-yodelling musicianship, along with the rest of that brilliant band, despite their name, made me progressively more excited rather than focused and calm, as they poured forth wondrous performances such as on a Christmas special edition of the The Old Grey Whistle Test:
So then, it's time to indeed to focus more on this topic, and other synonyms, such as concentration, drive, relentless purpose and pursuit, and how it might be expressed in song. Could it express in lyrics, single-mindedness to find love or 'the one", to work, to gain acclaim, achieve fame, or a particular goal? We live in a world of increasing distraction, but the sheer process of learning an instrument to a high level, or finishing and recording a song, let alone an album, requires a a level of single-mindedness that’s often difficult to achieve, and can take years.
Experimentation and pursuit of perfection can be demanding and exhausting, with many examples, from the methodology of Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys to the nocturnal Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine, whose torturous three-year process with the band towards making 1991’s Loveless album is legendary. A pioneering, highly influential release, yet after it the band struggled to make further music, and split up for many years before eventually reforming.
Endless patience: Kevin Shields (left) with the rest of My Bloody Valentine back in the day …
While some artists are prolific and churn out an album almost every year or so, some of music’s most single-minded obsessives are also the most interesting, those who take many years between album releases, often creating landmarks of contrasting styles, artists as PJ Harvey, Fiona Apple or Joanna Newsom.
There is a strange contradiction about single-mindedness, suggesing a blockng of metaphorical, imaginative double-mindedness, channelling of both hemispheres of the brain, of practicality with creativity. Perhaps that’s what successful business people do, not artists. Perhaps that’s what Aldous Huxley refers to above, and perhaps that’s one of the reasons why artists suffer so much.
Struggling, but also obsessive writers also come into that single-minded bracket. There are the prolific examples, such as Charles Dickens, and also the obsessive moody types, such as Joseph Conrad, who for example barely left his desk for two days and nights in order to finish his 1904 masterpiece, Nostromo.
The notable equivalent in film is arguably Stanley Kubrick, whose research and preparation process, let alone directing was exhaustive, obsessive and very demanding on others around him. He even had an obsession with stationery to catalogue his research. Each film was radically different to the last. He variously said that “if it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed,” and with this lofty goal, was also quick to dismiss bullshit: “If you can talk brilliantly about a problem, it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered.” Perhaps you have to think that way to make contrasting landmarks such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Barry Lyndon, A Clockwork Orange or The Shining.
Single-minded Stanely Kubrick
Perhaps Kubrick’s single-mindedness ran parallel with his obsession with chess, a game that certainly requires huge focus and concentration. “If chess has any relationship to film-making, it would be in the way it helps you develop patience and discipline in choosing between alternatives at a time when an impulsive decision seems very attractive.”
Concentration or kicking under the table? Kasparov v Karpov, 1987
So you might also draw inspiration in songs about single-mindedness through famous sporting examples. Perhaps by record-breaking achievement’s by multi-medal winners in their discipline, cricketing batsmen who survived ball after ball for several days, snooker players who achieved numerous 147 breaks, or tennis players who played almost endless final sets. The record for the latter in a professional match was more than 11 hours, between America’s John Isner and France’s Nicolas Mahut, the last set games finally settled by a heartbreaking 70-68.
John Isner and Nicolas Mahut at the end of their epic 2010 Wimbledon match. Can you tell which one won?
But a force even more extreme and single-minded is surely to be found in the brain and body of American long distance swimmer Diana Nyad, whose most famous exploit was to swim from Cuba to Florida’s Key West, requiring up to 60 hours of non-stop sleepless splashing over a distance of 110 miles. She originally tried and failed in 1978 at the age of 28, swimming in a shark cage alongside a boat. From 2011 to 2013 she made five further attempts, almost killing herself and her support team, with new sonic technology to repel sharks but encountering near-fatal stings from box jellyfish, finally arriving at her destination in 2013 at the age of 64.
Nyad seems operate like a memory expert, her brain training just as important as the physical side. Her method while swimming includes counting, and remembering hundreds of songs, various books, particularly by Stephen Hawking, but also experiencing various vivid hallucinations of famous landmarks under the sea, or of scenes from The Wizard of Oz and its Yellow Brick Road.
Here’s a trailer for a recent documentary feature film about her stubborn endeavours, starring Annette Bening as the unsinkable Nyad, and Jodie Foster as her extremely patient best friend and trainer.
But not all single-mindedness touches on glory. Though it touches on other many other things including despair and failure. Hands On A Hardbody is a provocatively titled but absorbing 1997 documentary about competitors trying to win a Nissan pickup truck in Longview, Texas, by whoever can keep their hands on the vehicle the longest. Aside from a toilet break for five minute each hour, competitors would hold on for several days. It’s a groundbreaking, insightful film that has since inspired many less well-made reality TV shows.
From the sublime to the ridiculous, and then the even more so, let’s close with some unblinkingly silly entertainment. We’ve had chess, but what about single-minded Big Train staring matches? Try to keep your eyes off this lot:
So then, it’s time to concentrates, channel your musical focus and suggest single-minded songs in comments below. Keeping a strong and educated gaze on proceedings are the wonderfully watchful eyes and ears of the sagacious Shiv Sidecar! Deadline for those left standing is 11pm on Monday UK time, for playlists published next week. Stay with it to win …
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