Last season, on Nov. 12, Adrien Nunez was thrown to the wolves.

Following a wrist injury to freshman phenom Franz Wagner, Nunez a sophomore that barely sniffed the floor the season prior was thrust into a starting position.

A guard with daunting range and 3-point shooting ability, Nunez was billed as a solid force in Michigans offense throughout his career. It was the other side of his game, though, that left people worrying

From the early minutes of Nunezs tenure as a member of the starting squad, this flaw became widely apparent perhaps at no more obvious moment than in mid-November, his second start, against the Bluejays.

The game began with both teams sporting young rosters and nobody really knowing what to expect, but Creighton set an aggressive tone early and targeted Nunez.

Bluejay guard Mitch Ballock sat at the top of the key with the ball in his hands and Nunez across from him. Ballock drove to the hoop. It would be the ultimate test of Nunezs on-ball defense, less than a minute into his starting role.

Ballock sped past Nunez and got an easy two points at the rim.

(Ballock) blew by me, and I was like, Oh, snap. I need to get this together, Nunez told The Daily. That was the moment I was like, Oh, I really need to work on this. Just getting comfortable in that position.

From that point on, Nunezs battle with defensive consistency proved to be an arduous one.

The rest of the season, Nunezs defense among other things did not improve to the point where he would see consistent minutes for the Wolverines.

As the games left in the regular season dwindled down, so did Nunezs playing time. Wagner returned to the lineup and Nunez returned to the bench. Some games, Nunez would only see a handful of minutes, playing the role of an offensive specialist. Others, he wouldnt see the floor at all.

Yeah, its tough, its a change, going from nothing to a lot to not a lot again, Nunez said on Jan. 8. Im just working everyday. Working before or after, gaining (coach Juwan Howards) trust to really put me on the court.

Nunez took it in stride, though, not allowing himself to fold in frustration.

Howard saw potential in Nunez. The kind of potential that makes a coach dig to find the crux of his players deficiencies and hammer out inconsistencies. In Howards mind, the best way to do that came during particular drills in practice.

Unlike other coaches Nunez has played under, Howards mentality on how to run drills in practice is simple: You run it until you get it right.

That was a big thing, Nunez said. He made sure I was getting it. For some coaches, if a player doesnt get it the first time or second time, they move on, but I could mess up 10 times, hed make me do it over and over and over again until I got it, which showed how committed he was to getting me better."

That was a big aspect, and its a big trust thing with coach now because I know hes invested in me. Hes gonna stop practice for me just so I can get the drill.

Nunez wasnt the only player singled out like this, and some take to it more than others. Sometimes, it can fan the flames of that players frustrations and insecurities. For others, though, this crucible of performance shores up faith in the coach and their aptitude for the teams array of concepts.

I want to be coached, Nunez said. Im not gonna shy away from that, and I feel like that is a good quality to have, just wanting to be coached. There are definitely guys who will get frustrated when he would, not pick on you, but make you do the drill over and over again.

Nunez used his coachability as his north star throughout the season, and eventually that guiding light led him into Howards office at the beginning of February. Between the repeated drills and lack of consistent play and playing time, something still wasnt clicking for Nunez.

He needed help. Enter associate head coach Phil Martelli.

Martelli is a veteran coach that spent 24 years as the head coach of St. Josephs. Initially sorted into one of five players Martelli was tasked with keeping track of academically, Nunez had already established a rapport with him, one stretching back to Martellis initial recruitment of Nunez in high school.

But after discussing how he can improve with Howard, the pair struck up a new kind of relationship. One based on growth and film study.

***

Jenny Lessard Nunezs mother knew her son and Martellis paths would cross again. She just knew it.

Through much of his senior season at Bishop Loughlin High School in Brooklyn, NY, Martelli made his recruitment of Nunez to St. Joes personal. Through one stretch the summer before the guards senior year, Martelli visited 13 of Nunezs games in a row. He wanted him in Philadelphia, bad.

Then, Nunez broke the news to the veteran coach: he wouldnt be coming to the City of Brotherly Love, instead pursuing a postgraduate year at St. Thomas More Prep School in pursuit of other offers.

Nunez had moved on from the Hawks, but that didnt stop Lessard from texting Martelli with a seemingly divine piece of foresight Our paths will cross again.

With an extra year, Nunezs recruitment took off and he secured an offer from coach John Beilein. Two years later, Nunez and Martelli reunited in Ann Arbor, continuing the relationship forged in Brooklyn.

I recruited (Nunez) very hard coming out of high school, it was just a joy, Martelli said. It was ingenious by coach Howard to put us together, not that the other guys wouldve done just as well, but we were in a good place starting out. There was a trust there.

That progress started with Nunez making one simple concession: He didnt know how to study film.

Sure, like any player, he had watched plenty of film, but what the sophomore was saying was that he didnt know how to see it. He didnt know how to watch all 10 players on the floor at the same time and have the wherewithal to ingest what was happening and why.

Anybody can watch film, Martelli said. I think a player watches himself, but you have to watch, and I mean its not rocket science, but you have to be able to see the whole play even when youre not involved with the ball.

The film study with Martelli has continued into the unexpectedly abrupt postseason with the coach sending Nunez game clips and inspirational sayings.

Watching film, running drills over and over, for Nunez, its all part of the mental aspect of the game. He knows he can physically do whats required of him because hes done it before at some point or another.

He just needed to do it in front of thousands of people.

Through nearly all of his in-game appearances, Nunez knew something was off. He was uptight, worried to death about whether he would make a mistake or squander his quickly vanishing playing time it was a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure.

I didnt have that mentality to just act free like the way I was playing before, Nunez said. I was so worried about either getting taken out or making a mistake, I was so focused on that that it kinda crippled me in that way.

Since stepping into Howards office to tackle this mentality problem, Nunez has done nothing but try to loosen up and make the most of his time on the floor and, simply put, have fun. The Brooklyn native is even using all of his newly found free time in the coronavirus-related quarantine to reflect and find a solution.

One outlet for Nunez to step out of his comfort zone comes from the popular app TikTok. The social media platform is used for a variety of goofy videos, and Nunez had adopted it to show himself dancing or expressing comic concepts. Currently, Nunez has 41,000 followers and nearly 700,000 likes on his posts.

People think Im fooling around, but thats taking me out of my comfort zone, Nunez said. Its something that I never liked, to be showy. I never liked to have the attention. Ive always been so reserved and tense trying to do everything right, but now Im acting like a goofball in front of thousands of people, and just being loose, thats a big thing.

***

Largely due to his lack of success this past season, many people speculated Nunezs name would be first up in the transfer portal.

With his first recruiting class, Howard made it clear the quality of talent coming to Ann Arbor would only rise, and Nunez struggled to fit into the rotation even with plenty of opportunities. But when the pandemic hit and the season ended, the decision to stay was a no-brainer for the sophomore.

I definitely talked a little about it with my parents, but nothing really serious, like, Oh I wanna stay here, I didnt want to pack everything up, Nunez said. I know that if I can make it here, I can make it to the next level. Even if I kill at another school, it wouldnt be the same, so I just decided to stay.

Buried in his decision to stay is the idea that this will be the sophomores first season having the same coach and system from the year prior in nearly five years. Going from high school to prep school to Beilein to Howard has meant a lot of different systems and learning curves. A creature of routine, Nunez is more confident with a year of Howards plays under his belt.

Now that begs the question: What will Nunezs role on the team be in the seasons to come?

Nunez wants to be known as an all-around player, not just a shooter. That means tackling his weaknesses, including on-ball defense, being able to come off screens and playing off a shot fake.

One aspect he personally wants to tackle is his ball-handling abilities. With point guards Zavier Simpson and David DeJulius leaving the program due to graduation and transfer, respectively, the vacuum at that position is one of the biggest question marks for the team. Nunez could be instrumental in filling that void.

The bottom line for Nunez, though, is self-awareness. He knows what he needs to work on and is not shying away from the challenge.

So perhaps the next time Nunez steps on the floor in a maize and blue jersey, he wont be watching an opposing ball handler fly past him on his way to an easy bucket. Through relentless practice, film study and self-awareness, Nunez will flash a smile after showing the product of his trials and tribulations.

See more here:
The trials and tribulations of Adrien Nunez - The Michigan Daily

Romeen Sheth is president of Metasys, a workforce-management firm based in Atlanta.

Steve Schlafman Contributor

Peacetime CEO/Wartime CEO by Ben Horowitz is one of the most commonly cited management think pieces of the last decade.

And for good reason; Horowitz surfaced a fundamental distinction in operating philosophy that is necessary for companies to survive, reinvent and ultimately win when macroeconomic environments shift. The framework is especially useful given how counterintuitive the advice is behaviors of a peacetime CEO and wartime CEO are often on diametrically opposite sides of the spectrum; it is rare to find a CEO who can successfully emulate both personas.

While in concept it is easy to understand these principles, as with most things in life, nothing can replace the visceral comprehension that comes via learned experience. We are at the onset of enduring the most challenging startup environment of (at least) the last 15 years. COVID-19 is an indiscriminate event that is systematically wiping out businesses, whether atoms or bits.

For most startup operators, this is the first taste of true systematic adversity. The undercurrents of frothy valuations, the social milieu of early-stage investing and stores of excess capital are coming to a grinding halt as the bull market of the last 12 years is dramatically disrupted. We have an entire generation of founders/CEOs who may conceptually understand the peacetime CEO/wartime CEO ethos, but now, theyre going to actually live it. At the same time as every other founder/CEO. Brutal.

Since the onset of COVID-19, we have spoken to more than 100 founders and CEOs. Naturally, we are hearing frequent allusions to peacetime CEO/wartime CEO as a framework to help navigate the landscape. Weve even used it over the last few months. While we believe it is a helpful framework, it is also incomplete. Further, we believe its application can lead to deeply problematic outcomes.

At a micro level, the misplaced application of peacetime CEO/wartime CEO can fundamentally change a company for the worse. A wartime CEO, as Horowitz notes, is completely intolerant, rarely speaks in a normal tone, sometimes uses profanity purposefully, heightens contradictions, and neither indulges consensus building nor tolerates disagreements. In the strictest application, we are seeing this align with a common false trope that has plagued the tech industry: To change the world like Steve Jobs, I need to emulate all aspects of Steve Jobs personality. A classic logical fallacy many founders/CEOs have learned the hard way if you emulate all aspects of Steve Jobs personality, it doesnt mean you will change the world like he did.

Each company is driven by its own unique culture and values in a crisis situation, while it is important to be adept and agile, its equally, if not more important, to triple down on the strongest elements of your culture established pre-crisis. Many of the strongest founders/CEOs we have had the pleasure of coaching and investing in are uniquely world-class in their patience and tolerance, their ability to make the abnormal normal and their commitment to inspire with clarity. It is the adherence to these principles that will help carry their companies through this time.

At a macro level, peacetime CEO/wartime CEO conjures outdated themes that are at best inaccurate, and at worst, counterproductive. War implies destruction, ruthlessness, blood, death; there is an innate sense of machismo and bravado in this language reinforcing a homogeneous tech community. This type of vernacular and attitude increases barriers to a more inclusive community excluding women and underrepresented minority participation.

One of the most common takeaways we have heard in reference to the framework is, now is the time when real founders are made. If Rent the Runway, ClassPass, Away, the Wing and the countless other women-led/minority-led startups that have been adversely affected by COVID-19 are not able to bounce back, we highly doubt it is because they werent able to cut it as real founders, a ridiculous assertion to make under any circumstance.

The peacetime CEO/wartime CEO framework is clearly valuable it forces us to dissect the behavioral shifts necessary to survive in a crisis. That being said, it needs to evolve. Being firm, decisive and staring down an existential crisis is not mutually exclusive with applying empathy, gratitude and generosity. You can be an intense, laser-focused and paranoid CEO without losing yourself or fundamentally changing the culture of your company.

We know dozens of leaders who are leading their companies through these challenging times without leaving a wake of carnage or damage to the foundation they have spent years building. They are leading with their heart and values and will be remembered for how they carried themselves, treated their employees and guided the company through the crisis. COVID-19 presents us with a unique opportunity as an industry. Now is the right time to retire the false dilemma of peacetime CEO or wartime CEO and empower the rise of the human-centric CEO:

Theres no way to mince words. COVID-19 is having a devastating impact on the startup community. The inevitable is unfortunately occurring every day many startups will never come back from this. As eternal optimists, however, we see opportunity in this crisis for the broader industry: the rise of the human-centric CEO. Now is the time for us to propagate community, resourcefulness and generosity. Its the time to be ever thoughtful about employees, colleagues, stakeholders and fellow founder/CEOs in need. Individual startups may not survive this crisis, but it is our hope that an everlasting mentality does.

By no means is this list exhaustive, but it captures the behaviors and attributes from the top leaders we are working with. We believe CEOs should strive to become human-centric. Not only because its the right thing to do, but also because we believe it will lead to healthier organizations and better results over time.

See more here:
The rise of the human-centric CEO - TechCrunch

Illustration by Joe Ciardiello.

Were living in lonely times. Under orders to isolate at home, were separated from our friends, family, coworkers, communities. We find ourselves missing our loved ones and missing, too, the many strangers with whom we used to share the city streets. Some people wonder if and when theyll touch another person. Others go feral, knowing that theres no point in primping when theyre not going to be seen. Most of the time, these conditions feel unprecedented, unlivable.1

Mary Gaitskill did not write her fiction for this moment, but as the countrys leading artist of prepandemic isolationand of the sudden, miraculous collapse into intimacy that it can spawnshe is perhaps, more than any of her contemporaries, the writer of our times. A skillful composer of short stories and several novels, Gaitskill found herself breaking into public life with her collection Bad Behavior, a book acutely focused on loneliness and the destructive things many of us do to overcome it. Populated by teenage runaways, disillusioned sex workers, bored businessmen, exploited models turned temp workers, her fiction describes cities after work and late at night, in which her characters search for connection and only rarely find it. Sometimes they find moments of grace and kindness; most of the time they hurt each other gratuitously and indiscriminately. In one early story, A Romantic Weekend, two lovers with high hopes for an adulterous weekend witness their seductive puffball cloud deflated with a flaccid hiss, leaving two drunken, bad-tempered, incompetent, malodorous people blinking and uncomfortable on its remains. The scene is familiar rather than anomalous; discomfort is Gaitskills default setting.2

Reading about her wary, lonely characters, one gets the sense the author knows whereof she writes. Her ex-husband, the writer Peter Trachtenberg, once wrote of Gaitskill, I think I have never met anyone more lonely. One imagines her response: Sure, but Im in good company. In her fiction, loneliness is a universal experience, the thing that unites people across class divisions and divergent personal histories. And yet its also a great tragedy. When you feel alone, desperation drives your actions. A person might provoke or lash out or lie, all in the hope, perhaps even the unconscious desire, that she will be seen or even seen throughthat is, recognized as a damaged but tractable soul beneath a well-wrought surface.3

This is how Gaitskill depicts Quin, one of the two narrators of her most recent work of fiction, This Is Pleasure, who is caught up in a publishing industry scandal, the kind now familiar from the Me Too movement. First we hear from Margot, a book editor well into a successful career, who recalls how her friend and fellow editor boasted about flirting with a stranger. Then we hear from Quinthe culpritwho has slunk back into his office in the night to retrieve a resilient orchid. He has been forced out of his job because he was sued for sexual harassment by a female former employee. Since her suit went public, we learn, other women have come forward with similar complaints. The story switches between the perspectives of Quin and Margot, friends for decades, as they try to reckon with what he has done wrong and how the industry has changed since the two of them started working in it.4

The story is typical of Gaitskill in that it explores a familiar, even clichd situation, only to subvert our expectations. The story is not one of justice served, nor is it one of justice miscarried. Instead, it is a story about how loneliness can deform a person, even one who seems to have so much going for him. The story doesnt excuse Quins behavior, but in recognizing his flaws, it doesnt outright condemn it, either. Instead, it asks us to see Quin for who he iseager, erring, lonely, a creep and a bad guy who probably deserves to lose his job but not his humanityand it also asks us to try to recognize what we might share with him, what might cause us to behave badly. If this story of sexual misconduct refuses easy resolutions, it also offers something more sustaining: a recognition of the loneliness plaguing each of us and a suggestion for how the damaged among us might possibly be redeemed.5

Lonelinessand the desire to escape itis a current that has run through most of Gaitskills life. Born in 1954 in Kentucky and raised in the suburbs of Detroit, she ran away from home during high school. It was a whole huge mess, she later told an interviewer. She wandered from Detroit to Toronto to California, working a series of odd jobs, including street vendor, clerk, and stripper. She ended up stripping for only a short time, but critics and interviewers have focused on it, to Gaitskills frustration. Finding herself once again being asked about that interlude in a 1999 interview with the writer Charles Bock, she responded, Like most jobs Ive had, I saw a lot of different things go on, it didnt bring me to any one or two conclusions. When he asked about how she chose the sexual battlefield as her subject matter, she let out whats described as an audible sigh.6

She eventually expounded on some of her frustrations with those critics in the story The Agonized Face, from her 2009 collection Dont Cry. In it, an unnamed feminist author appears at a literary festival and refuses to read from her work. Rather, she speaks about how shes been characterized by the local media and festival organizers in brochures advertising her participation and her history of sex work. They had ignored the content of her work completely, focusing instead on the most sensational aspects of her lifethe prostitution, the drug use, the stay in a mental hospital, the attempt on her fathers lifein a way that was both salacious and puritanical. The writer reminds the audience that when we isolate qualities that seem exciting, but maybe a little scarywe not only deny that person her humanity but we impoverish and cheat ourselves of lifes complexity and tenderness! Here we see the worldview that suffuses so much of Gaitskills writing. Theres an allergy to reflexive judgment, a moral dedication to capturing human intricacy.7

This impulse was there from the beginning. In Bad Behavior, the 1988 short story collection that earned her epithets like the queen of kink, Gaitskill frequently focuses on moments and characters in which opposite feelings and qualities intertwine. In one story, for example, we meet a man trying to dominate his female partner; he feels an impulse to embrace her but then a stronger impulse to beat her. In another, a woman finds herself horrified and fascinated by the desolation and cruelty of the city at four in the morning. In a third, a woman working a menial job suspects that a wealthy friend views her with a mixture of secret repugnance and respect. Relationships are also built on competing impulses. In one story, a sadist is both cruel and helpful in attempting to fulfill a womans genuine desires. A boss, a harasser, victimizes his employee and at the same time spurs an important awakening in her. These encounters are not enjoyable exactly, but neither are they entirely damaging. They are simply things that happen.8

Often, conflicting feelings arise in the face of weakness. As Deana, the sage girlfriend of the brittle Connie, puts it in the story Other Factors, Its kind of strange to be confronted so aggressively with somebody elses frailty. Some people will want to protect you, as I did, but some people will want to hurt you. Others will be merely afraid of you, for the obvious reason that it reminds them of their own frailty. Weakness in Gaitskills work is both an enticement and a threat. People seek to exploit it in others, hoping that by doing so, theyll expunge it in themselves. But rarely does this impulse get her characters what they crave: recognition, connection, love.9

Gaitskill wrote the stories that make up Bad Behavior over five years in the 1980s, after her graduation from the University of Michigan, where she studied journalism and writing, and her move to New York City. In her last year at Michigan, she won the Avery Hopwood Award for writing. It was usually a predictor of literary success, but Gaitskill found it more a harbinger of frustrated promise. Unable to sell any of her stories to magazines, she worked various clerical jobs, including one at the Strand Bookstore. These day jobs gave her material; she offered sharp accounts of the anomie and ennui that can come from doing office work. They also gave her models for some of her characters, many of whom work in offices.10

Gaitskills best-known piece of fiction, Secretary, is a story about office work. A newly trained typist and the only first-person narrator in Bad Behavior, Debby finds a job doing very dull work for an unusually inquisitive lawyer. She is a detached, closed-off personlike a wall, the lawyer observesand he wants to draw her out, to get her to loosen up. He eventually gets what he wants: After Debby makes a series of typing errors, the lawyer spanks her in his office. The word humiliation came into my mind with such force that it effectively blocked out all other words, she recalls. Further, I felt that the concept it stood for had actually been a major force in my life for quite a while. Aroused and ashamed at the same time, she masturbates to the memory that evening.11

There are two more encounters between Debby and the lawyer, escalating in intensity and intimacy, and she begins to have recurring dreams. In one, theyre standing in a field of flowers, and the lawyer tells her, I understand you now, Debby. After he ejaculates on her during another spanking session, Debby quits her job but says nothing to members of her family, although they can tell something hideous has happened. The lawyer eventually sends her a note of apology and $200, along with a request that she keep their encounters secret. Debby does, even when a reporter calls seeking information about her former boss. Feeling as if shes watching herself from outside her body, she says of the sensation, It wasnt such a bad feeling at all. The story ends on this moment of dissociation, a common response for people too traumatized to stay in their own skin.12

Secretary was eventually made into a 2002 film starring James Spader and Maggie Gyllenhaal. In the essay Victims and Losers, Gaitskill calls the film the Pretty Woman version of her story, smoothed out to present its heroine as empowered. Gaitskill understands this emphasis on empowerment as a sign of Americans fear of being seen as victimsof being humiliated or powerless or lonely. But for Gaitskill, the weakness her protagonist feels is something worth preserving; it is, above all else, a mark of her humanity. To be human, Gaitskill writes, is finally to be a loser, for we are all fated to lose our carefully constructed sense of self, our physical strength, our health, our precious dignity, and finally our lives.13

Recognizing fragility can also lead to different and more meaningful victoriesanother theme that runs through her short stories and novels. In 1997s The Blanket, one of the sweetest stories Gaitskill has written, a 36-year-old woman and a 24-year-old man confess their love and commit to their relationship, but they can do so only after they have both admitted to the depth of their fear: the woman by telling the man that a particular bit of sexual role-playing upset her, the man by telling the woman how scared he is of losing her. In her first novel, Two Girls Fat and Thin (1991), two lonely women, both molested as children, find a tenuous connection, but only after one of them, a journalist, has published an unflattering account of the other. The books final scene finds the two women sleeping in bed together, a platonic echo of the concluding scene in The Blanket.14

The Mare (2015), Gaitskills third novel, doesnt give us the same kind of happy ending. The book is a rewriting of the 1935 novel National Velvet (later a film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Mickey Rooney) told from the perspective of several narrators, the point of view changing with every chapter. As in the original novel, The Mare describes how a girl named Velvet (in Gaitskills version, an 11-year-old Dominican American from the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn) tames an unruly horse and becomes a skilled rider. It ends with Velvet, now 13, winning her first equestrian competition and then immediately swearing off horseback riding forever at the behest of her abusive mother. Though the novel presents love as a dangerous force, it also acknowledges that it can provide people with moments of sweet communionfrom Ginger, the childless woman (and avatar for Gaitskill) who fosters Velvet, singing to her while brushing her hair, to Velvet, feeling a connection to her horse where my legs touched her sidesand we were in it together, to Velvets mother and brother, who join Ginger in cheering the girl to victory in her first and only equestrian competition. Its hard to characterize these moments; words like happy and joyful dont really do them justice, as they suggest the absence of pain or foreknowledge or doubt. Instead, these scenes are fleeting moments of connection and reprieve, and the characters can sense their end. Beyond impermanence, they are marked by ecstasy and quite often by forgiveness. They represent something like grace.15

While Gaitskills fiction is all about ambiguity, her nonfiction tends to be clear to the point of bluntness. In 1994 she wrote an essay for Harpers Magazine, On Not Being a Victim, that was an intervention in the debate then raging over date rape. On one side, there was a growing number of feminists who wanted to establish clear rules for sexual engagementrules that men would know and obeyso women would not have to experience unwanted sexual advances. On the other side, there were figures like Camille Paglia and Katie Roiphe, who insisted that women who made themselves vulnerable to violation were either stupid or naive (Paglia) or misrepresenting their experiences out of shame or regret (Roiphe).16

Frustrated by the extremes she found on both sides, Gaitskill tried to plot a third course by looking with a fairly unsparing eye at difficult sexual encounters in her life, including two rapes. If she did not vilify the men involved, neither did she blame herself for being stupid. Gaitskill instead focused on the need for both men and women to better understand their desires and actions. Insisting that she did have some control over how at least some of these situations played out, she also recognized that ultimately she did not have all of the control. To create a world of sexual equality would require more than just rules; it would also require greater introspection on the part of men and women.17

She presented herself as a case study. As a younger person, Gaitskill had trouble determining and then conveying what she wanted (and what she didnt want), and she sometimes suffered because of this. She suggested that other men and women ran into similar difficulties. She was not responsible for other peoples actions, but her upsetting sexual encounters prompted her to reexamine her own motivations and desires. Gaitskill calls this personal responsibilitynot the kind that Paglia and Roiphe wrote about but a self-awareness that helps a person protect herself and others.18

Because of the phrase personal responsibility, On Not Being a Victim could easily be read as a provocation in todays context, with Gaitskill joining ranks with the anti-feminists. But she was not agreeing with Paglia and Roiphe; she was trying to show the fallacies in their thinking. To insist, as Paglia did, that just by going to a frat party, you take on the risk that you might be sexually assaulted was essentially to absolve the assailants of their transgressions. Gaitskill, on the other hand, was insisting on an inward reckoning, a questioning of ones impulses and reactions. Dealing with my feelings and what had caused them, rather than expecting the outside world to assuage them, was, for her, a key source of protection: The best means of self-defense required self-knowledge. Through it, she could feel more confident and recover her ability to determine what happens to me.19

For her, both the feminists and the anti-feminists of the 1990s focused too narrowly on codifying sexual rules without paying attention to personal responsibility and self-awareness. Roiphe and Paglia are not exactly invoking rules, Gaitskill wrote, but their comments seem to derive from a belief that everyone except idiots interprets information and experience in the same way. In that sense, they are not so different in attitude from those ladies dedicated to establishing feminist-based rules and regulations for sex. The problem with these rules was not only how they were defined but also their inefficacy. Rules usually dont work if people dont buy into them. Gaitskill suggested that rules were quite often disempowering: If youre told to follow a rule that doesnt resonate with you (Dont sleep with someone on the first date) or doesnt seem to fit a particular situation (Never objectify a woman), then you cant develop the kind of personal responsibility that enables you to better take charge of your life.20

There might be a lot to argue with in Gaitskills essay, and certainly the argument she makes is out of step with our moment. But it would be a mistake to characterize her as a cynic or nihilist or someone who takes cruelty and pain for granted. Instead, Gaitskill wants us to better understand what motivates behaviorbad and goodand why people hurt each other in spite of rules and regulations. If shes skeptical about the efficacy of rules, shes remarkably optimistic about peoples capacity for self-reflection. The path she proposes in the essay is a more challenging one, but, she insists, it also has more potential to make lasting change.21

This ethic of self-awareness and personal responsibility is also at the center of This Is Pleasure. In Margots eyes, Quin is a mixed bag. An eccentric with a foppish haircut and a quick wit, he is a champion of women writers and yet a boss who evaluates his assistants based on the shape of their butts. Hes a supportive friendthe only one to have Margots back during a moment of crisisand a compulsive flirt, at one point even attempting to reach up her skirt. He can be perceptive; he notes that Caitlin, his assistant, is intelligent, more than she realized, and I wanted her to learn how to use that intelligence more actively. But he can also be astoundingly stupid. When Caitlin tells him that spanking is her kink, he sends her a clip from an old western in which John Wayne spanks an actress. Caitlin eventually sues Quin, citing the video as an offense.22

This Is Pleasure was first published online by The New Yorker in July 2019. It calls to mind another piece of Me Too era fiction in the same magazine, Kristen Roupenians Cat Person, which went viral in December 2017. Roupenians story was full of irony and ambiguity and all the stuff that makes fiction fiction. But many women, fed up with predatory men and fired up for change, nonetheless read it as moral instruction and pressed it into the cause. Gaitskills story, like much of her fiction, resists such instrumentalization. Many who shared it on Twitter were strikingly coy concerning what they thought about it besides that it was worth thinking about. Writers from across the political spectrum praised the story without saying specifically what they admired about it. Even if they couldnt agree on how to interpret it, most people agreed that they should respond.23

This Is Pleasure is confounding in part because it seems more interested in examining Quins inner life than it does in judging his behavior. The story does not deny his culpability and acknowledges that the loss of his job fits his crimes. But through the character of Margot, Quin is seen as not so much evil or tragic but pitiful. Successfully soliciting the kind of attachments he does not want, he is his own worst enemy. If his behavior remains unsympathetic, his motivationsa desire to be seen and a desire to be lovedare all too human in Margots eyes.24

This comes across in an early encounter between them. At a dinner together, Quin, who interviewed Margot for a job a few years earlier, tells her that he admires her new assertiveness. Im sure he didnt say this right away, she recalls, but in my memory he did: Your voice is so much stronger now! You are so much stronger now! You speak straight from the clit! Andas if it were the most natural thing in the worldhe reached between my legs. In response, Margot shoves her hand into his face, palm out, like a traffic cop, and tells him no as firmly as she can. But it is also in this very moment that she sees his humanity. Looking mildly astonished, Quin sat back and said, I like the strength and clarity of your no. After this exchange, they order food, eat, talk, and later say goodbye so warmly that a young man walking past smiled.25

Its a remarkable moment. Quin recognizes Margots no, but Margot recognizes something in Quinhis desire, even his need to be restrainedand how, by denying his overt request, she formed a truer connection with him. Later, she remembers his expression when she stopped him from reaching up her skirt as somehow grounded and more genuine than his reaching hand had been. Their friendship is forged not despite but because of this brief moment of struggle, during which each reveals something to the other and recognizes something in turn.26

As the story goes on, we learn that Margot cannot unsee this humanity even as Quins accusers grow in number. She doesnt fault them for failing to see it themselves, and she understands why they felt hurt or exploited. Yet Margot remains his friend throughout, even as she grows even more dismayed by Quins lack of capacity for self-reflection, his defensiveness, and his self-justifications. At one point, he sits down to draft a statementI realize that the way Ive carried myself in the world has not always been agreeable to those around meand finds his mind wandering to a piece of performance art and the sympathetic note he received recently from the artist, whom he describes as a sexy girl. Quin, Margot recognizes, cant sustain the kind of self-inquiry that he needs in order to become responsible, and so he may continue to hurt people. But hes also clearly lonely and desiring of a human connection. Margot has felt both of these things, too, and finds she cannot turn away.27

For Gaitskill, the solutions to loneliness and the cruelty it so often prompts are honesty, vulnerability, and recognition; this is the underlying moral vision that courses through her fiction. Gaitskill may be a secular writer, but there is something almost religious in the way she depicts human frailty. Its commonindeed, inevitableand cannot be barred or banned or legislated away; it can only be viewed, unblinkingly. And sometimes, after enough thought and time, forgiven.28

Gaitskill, while deeply moral, is not a moralist. Whereas others might only judge, she attends, as artists are meant to do. By offering us a portrait of ourselves, lonely and uncertain and vulnerable, she finds that miracles occur: rapprochement and forgiveness, sudden kinds of intimacy and, if not love, then recognition. The world will remain a cruel one, but cruelty doesnt always win. Her fiction asks us to pause, to look more carefully so that we do not miss these forms of miraclesthose moments that, like us, are present in this world only briefly, glimpsed for an instant, and then gone.29

Continued here:
Mary Gaitskills Art of Loneliness - The Nation

Its a sure sign youve reached maturity in life when you stop trying to have it both ways. As an adult, you probably shouldnt expect to be able to eat all the ice cream in the fridge every night and still avoid the long-term health effects of a poor diet. And yet, when it comes to COVID-19, its as if many in the black community who suffer disproportionately from comorbidities expect the entire country to remain closed until they are no longer at risk of COVID-related illnesses.

Such was the substance of the heated rants of a Rutgers University professor who last week blamed Trump supporters and state officials in Georgia, Utah and Florida who are beginning to lift the restrictions on commerce and social isolation put in place as emergency measures to stem the tide of the virus. Brittany Cooper, a tenured professor in the dubiously named Womens and Gender Studies Department, blamed it all on the white man, stating in a rage-filled Twitter rant, Not only do white conservatives not care about Black life, but my most cynical negative read of the white supremacists among them is that they welcome this massive winnowing of Black folks in order to slow demographic shifts and shore up political power.

By massive winnowing of Black folks Cooper was referring to the fact that as many as 80 percent of the reported hospitalizations from COVID-19 in Georgia occurred among African Americans. But at a reported total of 1,035 deaths thus far in Georgia attributed to COVID-19, even if all of them were African American (they are not), that would hardly constitute a winnowing of the black population. Georgias African American population is roughly 3.5 million, and the leading cause of mortality for African Americans in Georgia is heart disease. In 2017, nearly 18,000 Georgians died of heart disease, and African Americans, at roughly 31 percent of the Georgia population, accounted for nearly half of those deaths or 9,000. In other words, heart disease by itself is 10 times more likely to kill African Americans in Georgia than COVID-19.

And yet, not one of those prognosticators would even think about advocating closing down businesses offering fried foods, confectionary items or barbecue because black people are at higher risk of contracting deadly heart disease from poor dietary habits. In fact, when in 2019 neighbors in a Houston suburb formed a coalition to petition the city to shut down the black-owned Turkey Leg Hut because of concern over noxious fumes emanating from the establishments meat smokers, local black leaders protested that the voiced health concerns of the (mostly white) neighbors masked a racist vendetta against the Huts black business owners.

Again, as a mature adult, you tend to learn you cant have it both ways. And yet, Ms. Cooper persists. As if suppressing a glint of self-awareness as in awareness of the preventable underlying condition that increases not only all-cause morbidity, but also the comorbidity associated with increased rates of critical infection and death from COVID-19 Ms. CooperTwitter-shouts: Black Lives Matter. Black Lives with hypertension, diabetes, and asthma matter ... All Black Lives Matter. Fat Black Lives matter.

But she doesnt really seem to believe that. If she did, perhaps she would sue fast-food restaurants to prevent them reopening in black neighborhoods until there is, say, a 70 percent reduction in diabetes, hypertension and obesity among black folks. That form of protest would seem to be more congruent with her self-righteous contention that black lives actually matter. But the glint of self-awareness quickly dims in the opportunity for political invective.

Professor Cooper is hardly alone in spilling her misplaced ire into the Twitter-sphere. When U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams, a black man, advised African Americans this month to take preventative measures to address the COVID-19 threat including, horror of horrors, avoid[ing] alcohol, tobacco and drugs he was widely criticized for pandering to African Americans. Adams was excoriated by PBS NewsHours White House correspondent, Yamiche Alcindor, for offending African Americans because he used informal and idiosyncratic speech, urging people of color: We need you to do this, if not for yourself, then for your abuela. Do it for your granddaddy. Do it for your Big Mama. Do it for your Pop-Pop.

It made no difference that Adams himself has acknowledged on several occasions that he, too, suffers from underlying conditions, including asthma and high blood pressure, which he attributes to a legacy of growing up poor and black in America.

It would be absolute pandering of the most cynical variety for health officials to fail to advise African Americans of their increased susceptibility to COVID-19 given disproportionate rates of comorbidity factors among blacks. And it would be downright criminal for a responsible surgeon general to fail to suggest practical means of strengthening our health in the midst of this pandemic. But that would be true only if fat black lives really mattered.

Armstrong Williams (@ARightSide) is the owner and manager of Howard Stirk Holdings I & II Broadcast Television Stations and the 2016 Multicultural Media Broadcast Owner of the Year. He is the author of Reawakening Virtues.

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Why fat black lives must not really matter | TheHill - The Hill

Most of us prefer tobury the memories of our most vulnerable, blissfully naive teenage years brimming with mistakes and saccharine love. Alt dream-pop darling Joy Downer, however, channelled them into her songwriting. The result: A funky, neon-vibrant melody parading with tongue-and-cheek lyrics. A Song Youd Never Want to Hear is Downers latest single off her debut recordPaper Moon,and features a bold, syncopated bassline underscored by synths and drum machines.

Jeffrey [Joys husband and musical collaborator] was playing a sweet bass line, explained Joy in an email interview. I started to feel that wonderful feeling of inspiration I wrote it as I do most my songs, in stream of consciousness sort of just press record with this sweet sweet bass line rolling, start singing and see where it takes me.

The most sharp lyric on the track, I still dont know why I didnt let you let me go was notably a lyric Joy wrote for a scummy high school boyfriend. The remainder of that song may be history, but from it a gem was born!

Most the vocal you hear is from that very first recording, shares Joy. I always thought I would replace with some more clever and poetic words, or a better vocal take, but when I listened back to the idea, I thought about how it put me back in the mindset of my 17 year old self. How it resonated with who I was when I used to write romantic sappy songs for my high school boyfriend. He never really cared for them, or for my singing

Joy Downers childhood was filled with music her parents, both musicians and music lovers, helped to shape a wide range of influences from Broadway musicals to disco to punk. All throughout school Joy wrote music, whether it was to help her retain information for classes, or to cope with feelings of what she would later learn to be depression.

Ultimately, Joy Downer, shes not a downer at all, says Joy when asked to describe herself. Her positive outlook and self-awareness, combined with a fearless musical range, have culminated with a stunning collection of 9 songs on her upcoming albumPaper Moon.All nine tracks were written, recorded, and produced by Joy and Jeffrey Downer in their Los Angeles home.

Paper Moonis the highly anticipated follow-up to Joys debut EPRadio Dreamer- released in 2017 to local buzz, prompting Joy to sing a cover of Over the Rainbow for a powerful Honda TV Ad that same year. From there, syncs started rolling in with MTVsSiesta Keyhighlighting Weapons Down and Netflixs Original SeriesSpinning Outtapping In the Water as its theme song in early 2020.

Featured on Grimy Goods Forecast of Artists to Watch in 2018, as well as commended by Refinery29, PopSugar, Earmilk,andMagnetic Mag,as well as playlisting at Apple Music and Spotify Joy Downer is soaring through new dimensions withPaper Moon.

Words: Jenna Dorn

Get down with Joy via her Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

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Joy Downer's Biting New Single "A Song You'd Never Want to Hear" Reminisces About Sappy Teenage Love Songs - Grimy Goods

Editors Note: This article is just over a year old, thus contains no mention of COVID-19; readers can add our awareness of the pandemic to the authors commentary.

ByLonnie Aarssen, Professor of Biology, Queens University, Ontario, via The Conversation

Homo sapiens means wise human, but the name no longer suits us. As an evolutionary biologist who writes about Darwinian interpretations of human motivations and cultures, I propose that at some point we became what we are today: Homo absurdus, a human that spends its whole life trying to convince itself that its existence is not absurd.

As French philosopher Albert Camus put it: Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is. Thanks to this entrenched absurdity, the 21st century is riding on a runaway train of converging catastrophes in the Anthropocene.

Discovery of self

The critical juncture in the lineage toward Homo absurdus was described by evolutionist Theodosius Dobzhansky: A being who knows that he will die arose from ancestors who did not know. But evolution at some point also built into this human mind a deeply ingrained sentiment that one has not just a material life (the physical body), but also a distinct and separate mental life (the inner self).

Theodosius Dobzhansky. Wikicommons

Human self-awareness led to the evolution of cognitive skills that were game-changers for gene transmission success. In our degree of endowment for these skills, our ancestors had the edge over all other hominids.

But the trade-off for this was self-impermanence anxiety a recurrent fear that, in bringing eventual material death, time inevitably also annihilates all that one has done and all that one has been, and that soon it will be as though one had never existed at all.

Buffering for a troubled mind

However, natural selection also gave our ancestors primal impulses that served to buffer the worry of self-impermanence. These involve two novel and uniquely human fundamental drives: escape from self and extension of self.

Both are reflected in a prescient passage from the great Russian author, Leo Tolstoy:

For man to be able to live he must either not see the infinite, or have such an explanation of the meaning of life as will connect the finite with the infinite.

Extension of self connecting the finite with the infinite involves what I call legacy drive: the desire to leave something appreciable behind that will endure beyond mortal existence.

Delusions of symbolic immortality involve three principal domains:

Parenthood: Shaping the minds of offspring to mirror the defining characteristics of ones own selfhood (i.e. values, beliefs, attitudes, conscience, ego, skills, virtues, etc.);

Accomplishment: Earning recognition, status, or fame through talents or deeds that evoke admiration, trust, respect, or astonishment from others;

Identifying with or belonging to something larger-than-self: Membership or belief in a particular cultural world view, one based, for example, on concepts like patriotism, political ideology or religiosity/spiritualism.

Escape from self

For those less driven to produce a legacy, there is escape from self Tolstoys not seeing the infinite. Most commonly, this is achieved through distractions, deployed through what I call leisure drive, an intrinsic disposition to be easily drawn to indulgence in opportunities for enjoyment.

Typically, these involve motivations that hack into the brains pleasure modules and have deep evolutionary roots associated with meeting core needs (e.g. survival, social affiliation, mating, endearment, kinship) that rewarded ancestral gene transmission success.

Modern domains of leisure drive are manifested in many cultural norms and products designed to trigger these pleasure modules like toys, stories, games, aesthetics, social entertainment, consumerism, humour, recreational sex, yoga, meditation, inebriation and psychedelics.

The essential consequence of these distractions lies in arresting the mind firmly in the immediate present, thus temporarily but effectively shielding it from the dread of the infinite, wherein the self ceases to be.

For some, placing the mind firmly in the present may be accomplished by simply keeping busy with purposeful toil or mundane routine. As American philosopher Eric Hoffer put it: A busy life is the nearest thing to a purposeful life.

Work hard, play hard

The delusions of legacy drive and the distractions of leisure drive both help to mitigate the worry of self-impermanence. Strong selection for these drives thus propelled copies of our ancestors genes into future generations.

But self-impermanence anxiety has always lurked stubbornly beneath the surface, repeatedly demanding more and better delusions and distractions. And so, from a long history of striving for an untroubled mind, the effects of natural selection ramped up in momentum, I suggest, like a runaway train.

These drives to work hard and play even harder have fuelled the frenzied and relentless march of progress that we call civilization. With this, our cultural evolution has generated a large menu of available delusions for chasing after legacy, and distractions for chasing after leisure. And this has given us a world of environmental catastrophes that are annihilating other species and their habitats at an unprecedented rate.

Sustained genetic selection for legacy and leisure drives then has generated two dire consequences for humanity: A civilization now moving ever faster toward collapse on a global scale, and an evolved psychology that is now breeding an escalation of human despair anxiety disorders, depression and suicide.

In other words, the growing demands of these drives (resulting from biological evolution) are starting to exceed the supply rate of available domains (generated by cultural evolution) for satisfying them. It becomes harder and harder, therefore, to meet an ever-increasing need for distractions and delusions, including those needed to buffer the mounting eco-anxiety from living in a collapsing civilization.

Living with Homo absurdus

How can we manage our human predicament, now that we are Homo absurdus?

I have suggested that a new model for cultural evolution might come to our rescue involving a kind of biosocial management, based on facilitating and implementing a deeper and more broadly public understanding of, and empathy for, the evolutionary roots of human motivations, especially those associated with our responses to self-impermanence anxiety.

Homo sapiens means wise human, but the name no longer suits us. As an evolutionary biologist who writes about Darwinian interpretations of human motivations and cultures, I propose that at some point we became what we are today: Homo absurdus, a human that spends its whole life trying to convince itself that its existence is not absurd.

We must learn how to successfully regulate our frenetic drive to convince ourselves that our existence is not absurd. And this requires that we at least understand how we came to be so driven.

Here is the original post:
Op/Ed: Dealing with the absurdity of human existence in the face of converging catastrophes - Rossland Telegraph

Vanderpump Rules fans slammed Jax Taylor after he raged at his pals and crying wife Brittany.

The Bravo newlywed also admitted how easily he's triggered and that hes been popping Adderall.

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VPR fans went off on Twitter: "The way I DETEST Jax Taylor more than anyone else on Bravo. Not a single redeeming quality. Not a single feud hes been in where I root for him. I dont know a W O R S E person. #PumpRules"

Others said: "Jax Taylor is cancelled forever."

Someone else tweeted: "Well Im glad @mrjaxtaylor apologized. But the erratic behavior is scary."

Others wrote: "GET JAX TAYLOR OFF MY TV SCREEN @BravoTV!!!!!"

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Jax's attitude began spiraling in last night's episode when he refused to come to new cast member Max Boyens' beach cleanup get together.

He sent the TomTom manager a series of nasty texts about how stupid his cleanup idea was.

Making excuses for her husband, Brittany said Jax's mean streak was probably due to "Mercury's Gatorade" instead of the astrological idea of Mercury retrograde.

Followers scoffed on Twitter: "Its 'Mercury is in Retrograde' not Gatorade."

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Jax later went off at Tom Sandoval accusing him talking about him to the group and uninvited him from his upcoming pool party.

He continued going after Max for crying to his wife because he cant come to his house.

But things really got ugly when Jax went after Kristin over rumors of a sex tape with someone other than her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Carter.

The altercation caused a major scene at Kristin's t-shirt pop up shop.

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Afterwards, Brittany was left in tears back at their house in fear the "old Jax" was back.

Jax admitted to Brittany: "I hear something, I get triggered. I have super highs and super lows.

"I smoke a lot, then I get hungry and I gain 20 pounds and I'm like, s*** I gotta lose weight, so I take f***ing Adderall. I can't win."

He went on: "We're not Leave It To Beaver. You want that? I can give you that.

"We're gonna have to move to f***ing Kentucky."

Brittany weeped: "I just don't want to see you start going back to your old ways.

"Breaks my heart."

Exclusive

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VPR followers continued bashing Jax online tweeting: "Who the f**k @mrjaxtaylor think he is for outing @kristendoute and making fun of @ariana2525 mental health issue and use the stigma of mental health as a defense?

"Dude is a cold stone loser. The only time he brings something to #PumpRules is when he is cheating."

Another added: "The nerve. The ordacity. The lack of self awareness. Its too much. #PumpRules #BravoTV."

The rest is here:
Vanderpump Rules fans slam Jax Taylor after he rages at pals and crying wife Brittany and admits hes popping - The Sun

Matt Berninger is calling from lockdown in his home in California. After a long to-and-fro about how the coronavirus crisis is taking its toll on the physical, mental and societal health of America, he admits that the necessary quarantine has given him the opportunity to process, slow down and chew on everything in a different way instead of chasing this one upward trajectory.

It seems that The National frontman is in the perfect mood to take stock and look back over the last decade for the upcoming 10th anniversary of the bands breakthrough album High Violet. (Though as he sagely notes with that familiar social-distancing-induced Groundhog Day confusion: Does time even matter any more?.)

10 years ago, The National enjoyed something of an Indian summer. 2010s High Violet was a landmark record for the band, elevating them from cult curiosity to chart-bothering festival headliners. The introverts opened up and brightened the corners of their black post-punk sound. In the words of the NME review at the time, High Violet was a sign of the band finally becoming fully grown-up, coloured in and going overground.

If they werent separated and trapped in their homes right now, The National would be prepping to celebrate High Violet by playing it in full at a run of shows peppering the schedule for the final lap of their tour for their acclaimed eighth album, 2019s I Am Easy To Find. There was an indiegasm across the internet when the anniversary gigs were announced along with the deluxe vinyl reissue. It was the kind of reaction reserved for one of those very special records. High Violet spoke loudly to the latest generation of kids who were never picked for the football team, who saw their own story in The Nationals tale of geeks longing to be heard.

Why did High Violet strike such a chord? All the songs Ive ever loved are fluid enough for me to sink into them and be the character, Berninger replies. You empathise and get inside their soul a little bit. Whatevers wrong in your heart or in your life, the record absorbs it like a sponge. Later, you play it again and all of that emotion comes out again. All the things we needed were always there in good songs.

The National formed in 1999 in Berningers native Cincinnati, Ohio before they moved to New York. The band endured a prolonged period of obscurity from their 2001 self-titled debut album and 2003s underrated follow-up Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers; while The Strokes were scoring touchdowns for NYCs garage rock revival scene, The National were stuck on the bench.

2005s Alligator, their third album, first perfected the combination of dark, raw-nerved realism and heart-bursting indie anthemics that make up the DNA of the band we know today. 2007s stately and opulent Boxer was showered with acclaim, but the indie darlings were still far from the arena-filling heights of many of their peers. Heading into their fifth album, The National had to figure out who they were, and who they wanted to be.

Wed just come off tour with R.E.M., remembers Berninger. Seeing a band that good continue to exist and evolve for that long made us realise that we had to go for that. Michael Stipe teased us saying, Why dont you guys just write a pop song? Why dont you write a radio hit? We were like, Weve been trying since day one! We dont know how! He told us, If youre going to be in a band that lasts a long time, you either have to write a lot of hits or none at all. At that point we were like, Oh shit, maybe were safer going down the none at all route

But, he continues, I didnt want that. I dont think any of us did. We wanted to be a big band. We wanted to reach everybody. Ive had manifest delusion since I was a kid. I wanted to be a rock star. I couldnt play piano, but I wanted to be Tom Waits, I wanted to be Leonard Cohen, I wanted to be Nick Cave. You just pose, you absorb and you try. You get out there and do your best.

Matt Berninger of The National perform onstage during Bonnaroo 2010 (Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic)

Fully aware of their status as a grower band (though Berninger laughs that that always felt like an underhanded compliment), they set about writing some songs that would connect straight away and on a huge scale. But first they had to iron out some of the creases in their creative process. Any band featuring two sets of brothers (twin guitarists Aaron and Bryce Dessner and drummer and bassist Bryan and Scott Devendorf) is going to have to deal with more tension than most.

We always fought, and we fought so much while making Boxer to the point where it had gotten unhealthy, admits Berninger. Wed been a band for 10 years and were exhausted through all the conflict personal conflict, creative conflict, touring life, living on a bus together for so long. Youve got all that shit going on but then you get into the studio and the record is how you connect it all back together again.

Another thing that Michael Stipe told us was: Remember you were friends first. That pops up in our heads all the time. High Violet was us following all of Michaels advice.

Michael Stipe teased us saying, Why dont you guys just write a pop song?

Feeling happy but depleted and desperate for this record to be good, they started work, then swiftly halted. Already exhausted from recently becoming a father, Berninger was struck down by a nasty bout of flu and then his grandmother died. On the plane back to the funeral, his eardrum burst under the cabin pressure, leaving him unable to hear in his right ear for a while. Sometimes something forces you to shut down for a while, says Berninger of his run of bad luck, and you come back and its an opportunity to remember why youre doing this.

United in their vision and ambition, The National would finish what might still be their most cohesive and complete album to date. High Violet, with a title inspired by overhearing talk of the threat levels in New York after 9/11 (high orange being the most severe), was the crystallisation of all that theyd previously sought to master but with a more accessible sheen.

You can feel this shift from first notes of opener Terrible Love: its there in the Dessners genius sonic textures, which are as rich as ever, but this time with a little more warmth, lift and release. The record may feature guest spots from indie glitterati such as Sufjan Stevens, Bon Ivers Justin Vernon, and Arcade Fires Richard Reed Parry, but they never distract from the record itself. Perfectly measured and never overblown, High Violet is the victorious sound of a band reaching ever upwards.

Lyrically, Berninger reels through his usual themes of trying to figure out who you are and if home is a place. With a number songs written with wife, longtime collaborator and former fiction editor at The New YorkerCarin Besser, the issues of family, time, movement, and the impact of fatherhood weigh heavy on his mind throughout the record. On Afraid Of Everyone he sings: With my kid on my shoulders I try not to hurt anybody I like but I dont have the drugs to sort it out. On England he addresses a missed loved one (You must be somewhere in London, you must be loving your life in the rain) and on Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks he makes the startling observation that all the very best of us string ourselves up for love.

I have so many songs about trying to find out who I am. I think thats a thread I always walk along

I have so many songs about trying to find out who I am, Berninger says. I think thats a thread I always walk along. I had been in New York for over 10 years [when we wrote High Violet], and I definitely felt I wasnt in Ohio any more. I was married, I had a baby and I was an entirely different person. The searching for who I was going to be and trying to figure out who I used to be was all part of that process. I was also wondering if Id make art and music for the rest of my life. I really wanted to so bad.

The album reached Number Five in the UK and Number Three on the US Billboard 100. The venues got bigger, the cult grew stronger and the music press lapped up the nearly-men done good narrative. They headlined the second stage at Latitude Festival 2010, with momentum swelling to such an extent that they returned to headline the main stage the following year. It was a whirlwind period, wonderfully captured in the documentary Mistaken For Strangers, starring and directed by Berningers brother Tom.

In typical National fashion, they couldnt simply savour the taste of success. We loved the record when it was done, says Berninger, but whole career was just a series of moments of going, Weve made it! Oh, no we havent! Never count your fucking chickens. Never. The second you do, its over.

We knew that we hadnt fucked up and we knew we werent finished. Did we feel like wed arrived? I dont think we ever feel like that. We never feel like we achieved what we wanted to do.

Berninger admits that touring was really hard until about five or six years ago, adding he used to battle within himself on stage, but is now far more comfortable in his own skin and less emotionally wrought. His vices of weed and wine are now more an aid to help him slip into the songs, rather than a crutch for anxiety and self-awareness. Even from this distance, though, he finds it hard to tell if he really enjoyed the original High Violet shows as much as you might expect.

Either way, the bands real pinch me moment arrived in September 2010, when they were invited to perform to 25,000 people before a speech from Barack Obama at a rally in Wisconsin. Meeting Obama seemed more important than being on any big stage, says Berninger. Now Im playing in front of these big crowds and realise how much more significant they are than having a few photos with Obama. But at the time [it was] hard to have any perspective on it.

Meeting Obama seemed more important than being on any big stage

In the Obama years, he says, the US exuded a sense of enlightenment, optimism and possibility. He adds: Obama winning was just like, Everything is going to happen now. America is finally going to stand up and be what its claimed and promised for so long but hasnt been. At the same time, there was so much division. Government had got so brutal and disgusting with Bush and even Clinton.

Looking back now, the beginning of an eight-year Obama presidency compared to what weve been living through now with four years of a fascist I mean wow, talk about perspective.

10 years later and whats going on in the White House now seems more backward and gross than ever imaginable. And guess what? The National still dont have a hit to their name. Stipe was right. Theyre still playing the long game and winning, with family and friendship at their core. The National now rub shoulders with Arcade Fire and The Strokes as a bonafide indie institution.

Berninger has just inked a record deal for his debut solo album Serpentine Prison (literally he signed the contract when NME reminded him on the phone). As well as writing songs constantly, hes also working on a sitcom TV adaptation of Mistaken For Strangers with his brother and Besser, as well as a sequel to the original film. Matt Berninger is now the polymath rock star he would pose as back when he was a kid.

While its tempting to trace that thread throughout his life, though, he insists: Im entirely different to the man I was when I made High Violet. We shed our skins, we change, we evolve. We all have the capacity to become whatever we want.

The National release the 10th anniversary expanded edition of High Violet on June 19. The band are raising money for their touring crew during lockdown here.

See the article here:
The Nationals Matt Berninger on 10 years of High Violet: We wanted to reach everybody - NME

Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They dont mean to do harm, but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves. T. S. Eliot

The shiny, white Maybach sped through Manhattan carrying the brash but charismatic 6-foot 5-inch CEO eyeing the passing urban scenery as if he were royalty silently signaling his approval to adoring crowds. The smell of marijuana and Don Julio tequila followed Adam Neumann onto his $60 million Gulfstream G650 as he celebrated the infusion of $4.4 billion in capital into his company from Masayoshi Son, CEO of Softbank. So powerful was Neumanns magnetic effect on people that Son reportedly made the investment after only a 12-minute walk around WeWork headquarters. For a company once valued at $47 billion, that moment marked both the apex of WeWorks rise and the beginning of its precipitous decline. For Neumannthe now famously dethroned founder of WeWorkthat was indeed a very good day. For the investors and employees of WeWork, it was but the first chapter in an unfolding tragedy.

Neumann is a true modern-day Icarus. His flamboyant and often highly questionable behavior that included egging employees on to take shots of expensive tequila at work and conducting middle-of-the-night meetings in the woods was only overshadowed by his grandiose ambitions. Neumann wanted an empire that stretched beyond WeWork into all aspects of human life, with lofty spinoff ideas named, WeGrow, WeBank and WeSail, among others.

The rise and fall of Neumann has been extensively chronicled, but the story of a narcissistic CEO taking investors for a very expensive and value-destroying ride is, sadly, not at all rare. One only need think of the recent headlines involving Uber, Wells Fargo and Theranos to start calculating the lost capital, the jettisoned employees and the toxic cultures to see how society suffers at the hands of self-centered and deeply insecure narcissistic leaders.

Many of the more productive characteristics of narcissismself-confidence, charm, the ability to boldly articulate a vision for a companyare valuable and should be rewarded. The attraction of the narcissistic business leader is not hard to understand. This is a compelling figure who exudes confidence and often personal charisma, is clever and tenacious and is able to use language eloquently and powerfully to inspire investors and employees alike. Usually a fearless and confident risk-taker, CEOs and executives with these characteristics can appear to have the potential to create financial value by breaking convention. They have the audacity to answer big questions and champion big ideas. They capture our imagination and often our allegiance. With distrust in government, religious and other social institutions on the rise, people are increasingly looking to business leaders for inspiration, even meaning. And narcissistic CEOs are happy to be in that spotlight.

While these personality traits can positively impact a businesss ability to thrive, what we also know is that narcissistic CEOs always have a dark side. The dark side of the narcissistic leader is far less well understood, yet some of business and societys greatest failures can be tied to these complex leaders. Investors and employees alike can lose money, reputation and careers because of this irresistibly seductive leader.

Preoccupied with visions of unlimited successand their own causal role in itnarcissistic leaders see themselves as unique and very special people. They are interpersonal alchemists who turn their own lead into gold, often appearing wounded and self-pitying if others dont appreciate their obvious genius and generosity. Such leaders are always over-promising. The combination of limited self-awareness and excessive arrogance is not only deadly for their investors, but CEOs with this personality type rarely learn. In fact, they are often markedly disinterested in learning. Their pervasive sense of entitlement and self-aggrandizement combined with an inability to apologize or admit a mistake can create bad business choices such as overpaying for acquisitions or driving M&A deals that dont make prudent business sense.

But it is behind the scenes with colleagues and employees where the real damage occurs. Narcissists get you to believe in them and their idealized vision for the future. They draw people in emotionally and intensely. This frequently leads to the formation of two camps: those who are skeptical of their promises and may leave, and those who will follow them absolutely anywhere. Often, the quality of talent in these two camps will also vary greatly, with top talent leaving and weaker talent remaining. When I suggested to an otherwise savvy private equity investor that his leading candidate to be CEO of a $2 billion consumer products company was a narcissist, he got very angry with me, ignored my advice and hired the executive. Six months later the new CEO was gone, the portfolio company was in dire financial straits and the board bitterly realized it had significantly overpaid for the asset.

Arrogant leaders with a compelling vision are nothing new. Global business is filled with them. What makes these senior leaders dangerous and puts investor capital at risk is a combination of traits that are very difficult to observe until youre looking in the rearview mirror. These include a profound lack of empathy for others, a desperate need for nearly constant praise and the inability to receive bad news. This last characteristic quickly creates a team of yes-people, undermining open dialogue and rendering the honest exchange of views impossible. One highly narcissistic CEO I worked with had a lieutenant who was so slavishly devoted to him that I was effectively given the choice of signing a loyalty oath or working elsewhere. I chose the latter option.

Narcissistic CEOs dont attract top talent because the best people need respect and freedom. In fact, these narcissistic CEOs and founders further diminish value creation because the cultures that develop around them often resemble cults rather than healthy, high-performance organizations. And as for sustainabilityboth for the leader and his or her organizationjust look at the WeWork example cited above.

Millions of dollars of value are destroyed every year because a narcissistic leader captures the imagination of people with a need to believe what is being sold and who unwittingly enable the flawed strategy. But you dont have to take the bait. Investors, boards and other C-level executives can guard against this deception in several ways:

Talk to former subordinates. This is NOT the time to trust your gut! Be sure to have honest, privileged conversations with former employees, colleagues, and CEOs. Ask about the candidates ability to learn, to admit and accept mistakes, to feel genuinely and compassionately for others. What kind of cultures do they create and what type of people follow them? Do they accept criticism well? Do they create a loyalty oath culture? Who leaves their organizations and are those leavers the very best performers? Very thorough and pointed reference checking is a powerful tool to see behind the ingenious marketing and self-promotion of such individuals.

Dont skip the pre-hire outside evaluation. For narcissistic CEO and senior executive candidates, the suggestion that they go through a pre-hire evaluation will likely create an angry, offended reaction. Good! That tells you a lot of what you need to know about their personality. Genuinely confident leaders have no issue with an evaluation; in fact, they welcome it. Leaders with an inflated sense of self-worth, latent insecurity or excessive arrogance are always offended. As with anyone you would hire into a critical role, utilize an experienced and well-trained assessment specialist to conduct a very thorough evaluation that focuses on the expanse of their career, their development, the choices theyve made and the impact theyve had. This is vital data in predicting what kind of leader they will be in the future.

Be hypervigilant to unethical behavior. Narcissists genuinely believe that rules do not apply to them, so act swiftly at the first sign of impropriety. At the first unethical or worse, illegal slip, consider termination or, at the very least, a thorough investigation. Narcissists play fast and loose with rules and consider themselves above the law. Only the little people pay taxes, Leona Helmsley famously said.

Dont let them control the narrative. Hold skip-level meetings, maintain contact with multiple layers of management, ensure that there are 360-degree reviews for all senior managers and empower a strongly independent chief human resources officer. The best CEOs welcome actions like these; those who have something to hide do not.

We are living through an epochal time of a pandemic, and CEO leadership is both on display and desperately sought out like it has never been before.

As weve seen, narcissistic CEOs cant take the spotlight off themselves, dont feel empathy and compassion for their people, and dont manifest the commitment to the core values common to all decent people. Thank goodness for CEOs who are not impaired with this condition: leaders such as Arne Sorenson of Marriott, Stan Bergman of Henry Schein, and Bernard Arnault of LVMH, to name but a few. These business leaders and others like them do the difficult work of balancing the hard realities of keeping their businesses alive by compassionately supporting their people and looking for ways to improve our common good.

Perhaps more than any litmus test we could devise, a leaders behavior during a crisis like the one we are currently in will truly reveal their character.

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Beware The Narcissistic Leader - Chief Executive Group

Warning: Spoilers ahead.

Never Ricking Morty puts the meta to the metal.

Returning after an unusual four-month hiatus, the latter half of the shows fourth season debuted Sunday night. The first episode, Never Ricking Morty, introduces itself as an intergalactic train caper before derailing itself into a series of split-off, meta storylines based on the trains passengers with varying degrees of success. The train, a literal narrative device, is a promising premise that quickly turns tedious as the metacommentary becomes more concerned with pettiness than insightfulness.

With the fourth wall reduced to rubble, the episode reads as a petulant middle finger to Rick and Morty fans a warning sign that the show has parodied itself beyond recognition.

Never Ricking Morty begins deceptively like any other episode. Passengers recount brushes with Rick Sanchez such as bizarre Christmas stories filled with evil lairs, third buttcheeks and embarrassing family dinners. Unbeknownst to them, however, a disguised Rick slips through the train to meet his grandson Morty before being accosted by a pectorally gifted ticket inspector.

Shattering the window with gas containers of Continuity, Rick and Morty watch as the inspector is bloodily bisected and sucked into space. Meanwhile, the overhead speaker warns that the train is losing continuity due to the breach the first event in the episode that actually matters.

[Related: Alumna author imbues fiction with scientific rigor, feminist principles]

None of the scenes leading up to this point are particularly important, a fact Rick is smugly aware of, as he says, stupid vignettes, imagine if thatd been the whole thing! in response to the passengers stories. And as the episode cuts away to an absurd amount of vignettes, it becomes clear that this schtick is indeed the whole thing. Creators Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland weaponize the meta nature of the storylines not to advance a character arc or provide meaningful growth, but to continuously one-up viewers with each added layer of irony.

However, from a world building standpoint, the meta elements are used to monumental effect. After both literally and symbolically breaking the Continuity of the story, Rick and Morty discover the trains path converges in an infinite loop meaning their stories will never stop unless they infiltrate the engine room and halt the train. The episode cleverly references classic story structures, like Rick crossing the threshold from Joseph Campbells The Heros Journey, to delineate the path the duo are expected to follow, heightening the stakes when they ultimately defy it.

But the shows world building has rarely been the issue. Atop the train, Rick asks Morty to think of a story that satisfies the Bechdel test a clear nod to criticism the show has sustained over questionable portrayals of women and male-dominated writing rooms.

Instead of using the episode to redress these issues constructively, Mortys narrative involves his mother and sister Summer discussing their periods and fighting bow-clad scorpions by shooting lasers out of their vaginas. Somehow, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg becomes involved, dismissively referred to as that judge lady. Yes, Morty is a dim-witted, idiotic teenage boy but his characterization shouldnt be used as an excuse to double down on the sexist tropes the show been criticized for in the past.

[Related: Party of Five Season 1 review episode 10: Diaspora]

After Mortys story satisfies the Bechdel test, the pair reach the engine room and encounter the Story Lord, the trains impossibly buff captain. He straps them to a machine in an attempt to break the fifth wall, hurriedly pushing buttons to control levels of Narrative Energy, Marketability, Broad Appeal and Relatability.

Again, the world building of the control panels design executes the meta narrative far more successfully than Ricks pointed remarks at the fanbase and insufferable omniscience. As Rick and Morty shift in and out of scenes with Birdperson musicals and Abradolf Lincler, the trains controls remind viewers of the precarious balance between artistry and carefully manicured optics that Harmon and Roiland must maintain.

Unfortunately, the episode quickly returns to its holier-than-thou stance literally. An intensely ripped Jesus Christ appears before Rick and Morty after they realize they can defeat the Story Lord by praying, framed as an action they would never do. In a hopeful glimpse of self-awareness, Morty asks Rick if a Christianity punchline is a cheap shot at fans. Rick, of course, brushes this off alongside any redemption of the episode.

While Rick and Morty has always tested the flexibility of the sci-fi genre often in hilarious and visually captivating ways it rarely must contend with itself and its place within the genre. In Never Ricking Morty, however, Rick and Morty are relegated to shotgun side characters in their own story while Harmon and Roiland steer the train perhaps into the ground.

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TV review: Layers of irony in 'Never Ricking Morty' derail narration, criticize show's fanbase - Daily Bruin