📚 Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma

I recently finished reading Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma by Claire Dederer, a wonderful exploration of the question of ‘what do we do with great art by bad people?’

It’s a perennial topic. It comes up in conversation at our monthly Album Club all the time. Is there something about society — us — somehow weighing the quality of the work against the wrongdoing of the artist, reaching a verdict of whether the art can still be enjoyed?

The book explores different angles through a number of public figures: Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, Michael Jackson, J. K. Rowling, Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, Richard Wagner, Virginia Woolf, Willa Cather, Vladimir Nabokov (wrote fiction about monsters, with no evidence that he actually was one), Carl Andre, Ana Mendieta (died after falling from her apartment window during an argument with her husband, the aforementioned Carl Andre), Doris Lessing, Joni Mitchell, Valerie Solanas, Sylvia Plath, Raymond Carver and Miles Davis.

As much as the book is about problematic characters, it is also about the audience and each person’s response to an artist’s work:

Consuming a piece of art is two biographies meeting: the biography of the artist that might disrupt the viewing of the art; the biography of the audience member that might shape the viewing of the art. This occurs in every case.

For me, wrestling with the question of whether you can separate the art from the artist has mainly been in the context of listening to music. Artists I’ve enjoyed, artists I’ve loved; when I read about something that they have done, hearing the music will never be the same experience again. Ryan Adams is someone whose work I had been enjoying exploring over a long period of time. His album Cold Roses contains an incredible set of songs which I had been playing a lot back in 2018. Around that time, according to Wikipedia:

…The New York Times reported that seven women (including Phoebe Bridgers and ex-wife Mandy Moore) said Adams offered to assist them with their music careers, then pursued the women romantically. They also claimed that Adams retaliated when they spurned his advances, hindering their careers and harassing them in text messages and on social media.

BBC News has a broader summary:

Several women have accused alternative rock star Ryan Adams of emotional and verbal abuse and offering career opportunities as a pretext for sex.
A report in the New York Times, external outlines a pattern of manipulative behaviour, including accusations of psychological abuse from his ex-wife, Mandy Moore.
Another woman said Adams sent explicit texts and exposed himself during a Skype call when she was a teenager.
The star, who rose to fame in the early 2000s, has denied the allegations.

I don’t think I’ve played that record since. I can’t hear the music without immediately thinking about the artist, and then about the stories surrounding him. I get annoyed that I can’t enjoy the music that I loved, but then feel guilty as I know that the pleasure that I’m denied is petty relative to the experience of the people that he has hurt and damaged.

A similar thing happened a little while later with accusations against Mark Morriss, lead singer of The Bluetones. The band’s music had been very important to me since my university days. My weeknotes tell me that I’d bought a box set of their first album in October 2021, a few months before these accusations appeared. I read the accusations with a sinking heart. Given how the scales of society are tipped, my instinct is to believe the woman’s side of the story. Morriss eventually posted a response. Who knows what actually happened? Again, I haven’t played their records since.

Despite not reaching for these albums, I find myself playing mind gymnastics with what would be ok. If I have a vinyl record and I play their music in my own house, just to myself, is that better than listening to them on Spotify where the play counts get registered and they receive a teeny bit of financial reward for my listen? Does it matter if my plays are recorded on last.fm for the world to see? What about records that they recorded at the start of their career, before the alleged offences?

Dederer’s book introduces the concept of ’the stain’, where something that someone has done at a point in their life colours to everything before and after it.

The stain begins with an act, a moment in time, but then it travels from that moment, like a tea bag steeping in water, coloring the entire life. It works its way forward and backward in time. The principle of retroactivity means that if you’ve done something sufficiently asshole-like, it follows that you were an asshole all along.

I loved the exploration of ‘the stain’ through a text message from the author’s friend:

These shortcomings of the word “monster” were clarified to me one day when I was messaging with a historian and music critic friend about the Michael Jackson problem. He wrote (in a telegraphic message-language that seemed elegant to me): i am currently trying to do the aesthetico-moral calculus thing re. MJ’s music, like, is the Jackson 5 stuff okay? oh but then in a different sense that also involved child abuse or exploitation too—michael himself. how about the ‘don’t stop til you get enough’, ‘rock with you’ era—surely he wasn’t at it then? but does the stain work its way backwards through time? I expect in practice it’ll be hard to resist the pull of the music when you hear it out and about.

Whether the stain seeps backwards and forwards in time through an artist’s work depends on the individual that is experiencing or interacting with it. Many people will hear Michael Jackson on the radio and not give it a second thought. Conversely, I’ve also been at an event where people have shouted to have his music turned off when it turned up on a playlist.

Jackson’s case fascinates me. From what I can make out, the release of the documentary film Leaving Neverland in the first week of March 2019, in which Jackson was accused of sexual abuse of two young boys, resulted many radio stations around the world removing his songs from their playlists. From Wikipedia:

Leaving Neverland led to a media backlash against Jackson. Commentators suggested Jackson’s music could fall from favor, similarly to the work of convicted child sexual abuser Gary Glitter. […] All Cogeco-owned radio stations in Canada pulled Jackson’s music from their playlists […] NH Radio in the Netherlands and MediaWorks New Zealand, New Zealand Media and Entertainment and Radio New Zealand also pulled Jackson’s music […] A 1991 episode of The Simpsons guest-starring Jackson, “Stark Raving Dad”, was pulled from circulation; the co-writer, Al Jean, said he believed Jackson had used the episode to groom boys for sexual abuse. A London concert produced by Jackson’s collaborator Quincy Jones removed Jackson’s name and album titles from its advertisements; the organizers said the modified artwork reflected the show’s inclusion of Jones’s repertoire unrelated to his work with Jackson. “Weird Al” Yankovic dropped his parodies of Jackson’s music from his Strings Attached Tour.

Lawsuits between the Jackson estate and HBO, the distributor of the documentary, followed throughout 2019 and into 2020. Putting aside whether the allegations of the film are true or not, I find it interesting that the popularity of Jackson’s work increased at the time of the film’s release. Wikipedia again:

Despite the negative publicity, Jackson’s honors were not rescinded, as had happened following sexual assault allegations made against Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein, and there were no mass calls to stop playing his music, as had happened following allegations against Gary Glitter and R. Kelly. Jackson’s combined music sales, including his work with the Jackson 5, increased by 10%. Streams of his music and videos increased by 6%, rising from 18.7 million between February 24 and 26 to 19.7 million between March 3 and 5. His videos were viewed 22.1 million times, an increase of roughly 1.2 million from the week prior, and three of his albums re-entered the UK iTunes chart.

Is there something about the collective perception of the quality of the work that repels the stain? Can we ‘separate the art from the artist’ if the art is good enough to warrant it?

Dederer discusses how the public perception of someone — usually male — as a ‘genius’ is sometimes sufficient for them to have their stain diminished or ignored. Some of the acts described in the book, such as Picasso stubbing out a cigarette on his partner’s face, or the details of Hemingway being “a hitter, a beater-upper, an insulter”, are shocking to read. I had never heard about them before, perhaps because the stains had been sufficiently erased by the perceived weight of their respective works.

The author then spends time examining herself. She asks whether she is a monster, even in part, mainly for working while she has children. “This is what female monstrousness looks like: abandoning the kids. Always.” I read this part of the book in my hotel room when I was on a two-week business trip, having left my wife back in the UK to run the household. The circumstance was not lost on me.

My friend was intimating something about the continuum of abandonment. There’s a spectrum. Here are some ways to be judged an abandoner of children:
Shut the home office or studio door against the child
Depend on the other parent to do the lion’s share of the childcare
Let a grandparent or a nanny or a babysitter watch the child
Put the child in day care
Go away for work for days or weeks or months at a time
Get a divorce and let the other parent have majority custody
Give the child to your parents to raise
Flee the family home
And perhaps: give the child up for adoption at birth
Add your own! The thing is, each of us can draw a line across the page at any point on this list, and say: Here. Here is where abandonment begins. Where is that line for you? Day care? Surrendering custody? Flight? Why is that the line, for you? Is it an ethical thought, or a moral feeling?
Please note that none of these behaviors count as abandonment if practiced by men. This is extra-true if the men in question are artists. As Jenny Diski so rightly points out: men do this all the time.

There is definitely truth to this. Generally, I get to go to a room and work without being disturbed. This isn’t a luxury afforded to women in equal measure.

I love the author’s writing style, which made the book a joy to read and contemplate. It’s stuck with me since I finished it and sparked some interesting conversations with friends.

Although the book focuses on artists, similar questions can be raised of monsters in other fields. If you think Elon Musk is a monster, should you never buy or use one of his products? Will you never own a Tesla or use Starlink as your Internet service provider? Perhaps the choice is more clear-cut when there is a financial transaction involved. Buying another Bluetones or Ryan Adams album feels like a bigger step than listening to records that I already own.

It was interesting to hear my two favourite information security podcasts talk about Cloudflare. In March 2019, Risky Business had an episode that was literally called Stop giving Cloudflare Money, protesting that the company was continuing to help keep an awful website live that had been used to post links to the live stream of a mass shooting in New Zealand. Fellow antipodean Troy Hunt’s weekly podcast had mentioned Cloudflare many times; he had also written extensively about how he has used their technology to optimise his services in fascinating, clever ways. From memory, Hunt made no mention of the story on his podcast. I don’t know what the right answer is — drop the Cloudflare service and do things a different way or continue to use it — but I remember at the time being fascinated by the contrast between the two podcasts.

What about the people you work with who have done something terrible in their personal lives? What about family members? Dederer asks this question and answers it:

We’ve all loved terrible people. How do I know this? Because I know people, and people are terrible.
[…]
What do we do about the terrible people in our lives? Mostly we keep loving them.

Back to the point at the start of the book — it is always two biographies meeting, in every case. How we feel about a particular person and their work isn’t just about them alone, but about us as well.

Weeknotes #294 — Half marathon

An exhausting week. Despite getting a big sleep on Saturday night, it took me a couple of days to get over the jet lag from my New York trip. I found myself barely able to keep myself awake on the trains home. I hadn’t planned to spend four long days in the office, but as the week unfolded it was clear that I wouldn’t be able to work from home. Our divisional CIO came to town for a couple of days and then our new regional CEO hosted a welcome event with drinks afterwards. Friday was a very busy day, but it was good to work from home again for the first time in three weeks.

5°C when I started, 7°C by the time I finished

On Sunday I ran the Royal Parks Half Marathon. This was my first competitive half marathon event and only the second time that I’ve run this distance. A friend had an entry but could no longer make it, so he kindly offered me his place. The entries aren’t officially transferable this late in the day, so I raced without a name on my race number and he ended up getting the text message with ‘his’ official time. I was in the first wave and got sucked along with the crowd at a fast pace. This was fine until around the five mile mark, when my right calf started complaining and feeling stiff. I adjusted my style so that I didn’t put too much pressure on it and managed to hobble my way through the remaining eight miles. It’s now very sore and I’m hobbling around, but I’m hoping it will pass in a day or two.

A clear visual of when my calf started playing up, my pace dropping by around half a minute per kilometre

This was a week in which I:

Formally agreed to close the project for our New York office move. We still have a few items on the snagging list, but they will be picked up as ‘business as usual’ items. It’s a big success.
Refocused on the remaining work for the final big project of the year. We only have four weeks to go until the bulk of the delivery is complete. There are a lot of moving parts, with many companies and people involved, making it a complex beast. I’m now quietly excited about the changes that it will bring for our staff.
Took our divisional CIO for a site visit to show him how things are shaping up.
Had our regular programme and project meetings.
Prepped for and chaired our programme Steering Committee meeting.
Received an update on works that will be going on in one of our buildings for a number of years and started to plan for how we will manage this for our staff.
Took part in the monthly payment valuation meeting for the work done so far by our main construction project vendor.
Attended an internal data-focused webinar with a guest speaker on the now perennial topic of AI. As with so much stuff that I read and hear about AI, I found myself thinking about how problematic the words in this space are. ‘Understanding’, ‘learning’ etc. should always be in quote marks in the context of AI.
Met with colleagues to discuss our approach to running an experimental Generative AI forum, focused on Microsoft Copilot. Whilst I think that the technology has many problems, I’m interested in how our staff can use it in interesting ways. The focus will be on ‘15% solutions’ as opposed to transformational change.
Took part in our monthly operational risk review meeting.
Had the quarterly meeting with our account manager from our technology advisory firm.
Had a ‘random coffee’ with a colleague who has recently joined the company, her first time working at a financial services firm. It was fascinating to hear about her career journey so far and to explain a bit how I understand a typical investment bank works.
Met with an ex-colleague and heard about his new role at a consultancy firm.
Had a catch-up with a friend who used to work in our team. Since she left we’ve kept a regular diary date that often gets moved around, but we eventually find time to meet up. It’s always lovely to find out what’s been happening with her.
Had a video call with another ex-colleague to talk through what she’d been doing since she left us and the potential next steps in her career. It was so lovely to have a check-in.
Learned that I take for granted how easy it is to find and attend a meetup in the western world. In other countries, people can be nervous about going to events; they need to make sure that they are the right kind of events and their attendance won’t get them into trouble down the line.
Had an evening out at the local tennis and squash club for a charity Rock and Roll Bingo evening in aid of Teenage Cancer Trust and Sarcoma UK. It’s a simple concept, with everyone getting bingo cards with songs on them instead of numbers, crossing them off as the songs are played. A fun night.
Had an impromptu drink at The Electric Bar at The Ned. I haven’t quite got my head around how The Ned operates, with its centrally located musicians and various bars and restaurants scattered around a gigantic room. We turned up early enough to get a nice table to ourselves and enjoyed a couple of drinks and snacks.

For the first time in what felt like forever, we had friends over for dinner at our house. We are well out of practice due to the pandemic and busy, structured weekends (my brother often jokes “Where is it you live now?”), but have resolved to try and entertain a bit more.
My eldest son passed his driving test on his first try. I’m so pleased for him. He was more than ready and I’m glad it all went well. We’ve now moved into a different phase of worrying about him as he’s off driving himself here, there and everywhere. The change to our car insurance was a surprisingly low £200 which was an unexpected surprise.

Media

Articles

Back in January I wrote about Matt Mullenweg that “I use loads of his products — WordPress, Jetpack, Pocket Casts — and I’m so pleased that he’s successful. He seems like one of the good guys with a good philosophy.” Reading blog posts like this one over the past week, I really hope that my words remain true.¹ I remember thinking about the words as I wrote them as so many people have let me (us?) down over the years.

Video

Continued enjoying Kaos on Netflix. Disappointed to hear that they have already cancelled the show only a few weeks after season one was released.

Books

Continued reading Taming Silicon Valley: How to Protect Our Jobs, Safety, and Society in the Age of AI by Gary Marcus, ahead of my presentation on Generative AI to one of our company boards on Monday.

Next week: Recovering from my run, giving my AI presentation to a board of directors, and relaxing at a couple of Album Clubs.

There’s a summary of the situation at CNBC. ↩

🎶 Mix from May 2006

One of my friends recently stumbled across a mix CD that I put together back in 2006, filled with songs that I had been listening to at the time. Through the marvels of modern cloud services, I’ve recreated it as a Spotify playlist. I think the tracks and the sequencing both hold up pretty well.

There are videos of the tracks along with a bit of commentary below.

Flying — Faces

I’d been a big Small Faces fan since I was a teenager. But I hadn’t explored much of their post-Steve Marriott work, when they rebranded as Faces and brought Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood into the band. Flying is the first track on the ’best of’ Faces compilation Good Boys… When They’re Asleep…. It’s such a different-sounding song to the rest of the compilation that including it as track one made sense. Maybe that influenced me into including it as the first track here. I put the studio version on the CD, but this live version is a cracker.

Wrap It Up — Sam & Dave

Sam & Dave’s greatest hits became familiar to me when I explored 60’s and 70’s music as a teenager. But I probably first heard this song via the Eurythmics cover version on their album Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This). The original is clearly the best, with an incredible sound. I can’t believe that this was just a B-side.

Coconut — Fred Schneider

Being a B-52’s fan led me to Fred Schneider’s solo album Just Fred. It’s much punkier and thrashier than the B-52’s albums. Despite getting very familiar with this song, even after all these years I still feel that the record is on my ‘to listen’ pile. When I heard the song Coconut, I had no idea that it was a cover of a Harry Nilsson track. I think I still prefer Fred’s version.

Somethin’ Else — Eddie Cochran

I love simple, catchy rock and roll. There’s something about this one where the sound is propelled along by Cochran’s singing. It feels so heavy by the standard of the early rock and roll songs, and hits like a punch. This video from 1959 is amazing, a chewing-gum sponsored TV programme where everyone in the audience seems to be clapping and masticating to the sound of the music.

Gin & Juice — The Gourds

Probably included on the compilation to raise an unexpected smile. If you don’t know what you’re listening to, it probably takes a few bars to realise that it’s a cover of a Snoop Dogg track. This cover was built for YouTube reaction videos, like the one below. It’s great fun, but it’s not something that I reach for or get excited about when it gets randomly thrown up on a shuffled playlist.

Rene — The Small Faces

We started the playlist with a Faces track but now go back to 1968 for a song from their incredible Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake album. I love this song, with its cheeky cockney singalong lyrics and brilliant outro that takes up two thirds of the track. The box set of this record comes with both the stereo and mono mixes which are very different to each other; the mono has an overall better sound but the vocals on this track are buried and more difficult to hear.

Out The Blue — John Lennon

The Beatles were my first musical obsession as a teenager and I spent (or rather, am still spending) many years afterwards digging through their solo works. Mind Games isn’t Lennon’s finest album, but this song became an earworm for me. It could easily have been a single.

Old Man — Neil Young

A friend introduced me to Neil Young’s Harvest album while I was at university in the late 1990s. It’s a fascinating record, with more straightforward pop songs next to tracks that have much more complicated structures. This is the one that I latched onto. The live acoustic version below misses a bit of the delicate instrumentation and backing vocals of the album track, but it still gives me goosebumps.

Get Thee Behind Me Satan — Ella Fitzgerald

Of all of the songs in this playlist, this is the one that I’ve found myself singing over and over since I re-listened to it all. This is a beautiful song, written by Irving Berlin, about trying to resist the temptation of someone you’re attracted to. The reference to the devil in the title and lyrics probably means that it isn’t as frequently played or as well-known as it could have been, and hasn’t turn up on many ‘American Songbook’-type albums. I first heard it sung by Harriet Hilliard in Follow The Fleet (1936) as I made my way through all of the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers films. An introduction on the DVD told me that for the UK release of the film, the frames where she sings the word “satan” were jarringly cut out. So the title of the song must have been controversial even in the 1930s.

Years ago, my friends bought me a copy of The Complete Ella Fitzgerald Song Books as a birthday present and it’s a cherished possession. Her version of this song is outstanding.

He Needs Me — Nina Simone

My discovery of Nina Simone was through the re-release of My Baby Just Cares For Me when it shot up the UK charts to number one in 1987. I was ten years old. Simone is still on my list of artists to spend more time with. Here she is being amazing with her singing of He Needs Me in 1989, 40 years after she first recorded it.

Something In The Way She Moves — James Taylor

I think I picked up a James Taylor ‘best of’ CD off the back of having read about the probable inspiration this song gave to George Harrison to write Something. I never got into Taylor’s work very deeply — there’s something about it that is a teeny bit too syrupy for my taste — but I liked this track.

Superwoman — Stevie Wonder

In my teenage years, if you’d asked me to name my favourite album, Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions might have been the reply. Wonder’s albums in the first half of the 1970s are extraordinary and I loved exploring them. Superwoman is the second track on 1972’s Music of My Mind and it’s stunning. I am guessing that two songs have been stitched together, giving this track an epic eight minute runtime. From Wikipedia:

In essence a two-part song, there is a coherence in that it tells a story of the singer’s relationship with “Mary”. The first part covers her desire to be a star, and to leave behind her old life to become a movie star. The second part covers the narrator’s wondering why she had not come back as soon as he had hoped. The second part of the song is also a reworking of the song “Never Dreamed You’d Leave in Summer” from the 1971 album Where I’m Coming From.

The song, both in its sound and length, was a change of pace for Wonder, who was trying to establish his own identity outside of the Motown sound. Besides its floaty ambience, it featured the singer as a virtual one-man band.

Honeysuckle Rose — Fats Waller

Fred Astaire was my gateway into music from the pre-rock and roll era. (Well, that and my mum singing very old songs to me when I was little.) Many great songwriters such as Irving Berlin and George Gershwin wrote songs specifically for Astaire, and I can understand why; I love listening to those recordings from his films almost a century later.¹ I’ve always thought that the fidelity of a recording doesn’t diminish a good band with a good song. This brilliant Fats Waller track is from wonderful compilation Hits of ‘34. I’ve got a few of these CDs from the Living Era label as well as many more on my want list. They are well worth checking out if you enjoy this kind of thing.

Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag — Georgie Fame

A cover of the classic James Brown song that I prefer to the original. My wife, some friends got to see Georgie Fame play at Ronnie Scott’s back in 2004 and he was still incredible even then. The final “bag” that he bends upwards at the end of this song brings a smile to my face every time.

Bust A Move — Young MC

For ages, iTunes told me that this was my most played track. After my wife and I got married in 2004 we bought a car and went hunting for a place to live outside of London. This song accompanied our journeys as we tried to bust our own move. I first heard this as I watched Uncle Buck (1989) in the scene where John Candy’s eponymous character is looking for his niece at a house party, spurring me to find out what it was. My boss of 20 years ago told me that the whole Stone Cold Rhymin’ album was worth hearing so I picked up a copy. He wasn’t wrong. I love ‘singing’ this one at karaoke.

¿Do the Digs Dug? — The Goats

Back in my teenage years I used to buy and read so many magazines, usually related to computing or music. Working as a paperboy, I got to see new magazines on the shelves when they came out and started picking up titles such as Mojo and Vox from their first issues. The ‘Bob Muslim Mix’ of this Goats track appeared on a Vox magazine cover CD in 1993, with hilarious album art that parodies Roxy Music’s Country Life . I loved this tune from the moment I first heard it.

The Goats were a politically-focused rap band from Philadelphia. The songs on their politically-charged first album, Tricks of the Shade, are superb, but I’ve had to create a playlist that excludes the ‘skits’ that feature inbetween many of the songs.

What’s Going On — Taste

I hadn’t heard of Rory Gallagher when I first encountered him on an Old Grey Whistle Test DVD at the turn of the century. His performance was electric. This song, What’s Going On is actually from his time with the band Taste. I think I mislabelled it as I heard it on a ‘best of’ compilation that I had bought and ripped to listen to on my iPod. Some of his music is borders on being too heavy for me, but I know that guitarists love him. This song is excellent.

Who Are You — The Who

If The Beatles were my first obsession, The Who were the second. Back when I used to drink we used to have people over our house for dinner and inevitably, if it was very late in the evening we were talking about music, I’d end up asking if they had seen the Won’t Get Fooled Again footage from The Kids Are Alright (1979). If they hadn’t, I would persuade them to retire to the lounge to watch it on my DVD copy. I think that this brilliant ‘rockumentary’ introduced me to Who Are You, a song recorded just before drummer Keith Moon sadly passed away.

The compilation Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers At RKO is superb. ↩

📷 East 53rd Street, Manhattan, 28 September 2024

📷 Cloud blanket over New York, found as I ran around the reservoir in Central Park.

Weeknotes #292–293 — Open office

Imagine opening a new office in New York City

A double-helping of weeknotes. I spent the last two weeks in New York City, working with our team to open our new office in Midtown Manhattan. This was the culmination of years of work that started with the search for new premises as we approached the end of our previous lease. On my first day in New York, I had a one-day handover with another colleague from London who had been leading our team on the technical fit-out, working on the physical and logical setup of the equipment. They had made massive progress, with the office at that point already meeting the minimum standard that we required to allow our colleagues to come in and work.

Last-minute prep to make the office as good as it could be

It was wonderful to see our planning and preparation pay off in such a big way. On 1 October, our New York team walked through the door for the first time, found their desks and set themselves up for work. It was seamless. We’ve moved from an office that we shared with another company that had inadequate space and technology, to one that gives our staff a wide variety of types of places to work depending on what they are doing and who they happen to be working with. The day had a ribbon-cutting, breakfast and drinks, a team lunch and an evening cocktail reception.

There are still many things on the snagging list, but all of the major items were dealt with. It feels great to get one of this year’s big projects over the finish line. My focus will now turn back to another of our offices that is undergoing major renovation. By mid-November this project should be largely complete as well. I have my fingers crossed that it will be just as smooth.

This was a week in which I:

Started to feel ill before I left for my flight to the US. I had been boasting about how many people I had hugged and kissed at my parents’ 50th anniversary without catching anything, but spoke too soon. A scratchy throat developed into a full-on head cold, which required tissues, Tylenol¹ and lozenges. I tried to ignore it, going for a run in Central Park on Monday morning, but it made the first few days exhausting.
Stayed at the CitizenM hotel just off of Times Square. The UN General Assembly meeting in the first week meant that hotel rooms were hard to come by and expensive, which meant that I was relegated to staying much further from the office than usual. One of the photos on their website shows the hotel being right next door to the ‘Bare Essentials gentlemans club and lounge’ and the ‘Mixed Emotions adult video store’, remnants of the Times Square of decades ago and both of which were thankfully closed. The hotel turned out to be fine, with very small but clean rooms. Upon arrival I found out that there were no ironing boards in the rooms, but I was “welcome to use Ironing Heaven on the second floor.” I found that Ironing Heaven seemed to be overplaying its hand a bit when it turned out to be a small room with a single ironing board. The rooftop bar was lovely, with great illuminated views over New York.
Spent Sunday working in the office, getting a bunch of things off of my plate in the knowledge that the following week would be difficult to get any focused work done with so many staff and visitors in the office for the opening.
Tried out all of the meeting rooms in anticipation of them being used by our staff on day one. The team have done brilliantly in designing and equipping a wonderful variety of spaces for staff to use.
Met with the building contractor and landlord’s project manager to go through our snagging list. As the week went on we refined the list down to a more manageable set of critical things in order to increase our chances of getting them done before we opened.
Prepped for and ran the programme Steering Committee meeting.
Drafted a narrative for the New York CEO to use as input into his opening speech. I discovered that 2024 marks the start of our fourth decade in the city, and our fourth address, after the return of our company to the US post-apartheid in 1994.
Created a communication for our staff to help them get started with using the features of the new office, such as our Microsoft Teams Rooms.
Interviewed another candidate for the Digital Solutions Developer role in my team.
Met with my executive partner at our industry analyst firm for a reflective conversation about my career and where I want to go.
Discussed our plans and approach for getting a Microsoft Copilot working group up and running. We now have a small number of licences that we will deploy with the most enthusiastic members of staff that are ‘pulling’ on us to get started.
Had the regular programme and project meetings.
Watched half of the vice presidential debate from the Work Café at our new office. I called it a day and headed back to my hotel halfway through, catching up in the morning with what the media thought Alex Andreou on the Quiet Riot podcast.
Attended the book launch for The Tech Coup by Marietje Schaake, hosted by Esther Dyson with Alondra Nelson. Chatting with Esther Dyson at the post-panel drinks, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone look at me with such incredulity as when I casually asked her where Princeton is. (I’d heard of it, but being from the UK I had no idea.) From her dad’s Wikipedia entry:

In December 1952, Oppenheimer, the director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, offered Dyson a lifetime appointment at the institute, “for proving me wrong”, in Oppenheimer’s words. Dyson remained at the Institute until the end of his career.

Social media advert and photo of the panel event for the launch of The Tech Coup by Marietje Schaake

Ate a couple of times at PS Kitchen, a good vegan restaurant a couple of blocks away from my hotel that gives all of its profits to charity. Their winter walnut soup was just the thing I needed when I was feeling under the weather. When I returned for the second evening I found a GIGANTIC fearless rat roaming around the tables outside, so I quickly opted for indoor dining.

Linguini Alfredo with crispy ‘chicken’ at PS Kitchen

Out for dinner one evening, got randomly chatting to the mum of Brighid Fry from the band Housewife who is currently touring the UK.
Ate at some lovely restaurants including Spicy Moon (delicious vegan Szechuan), Benoit (upscale French for a pre-go-live team dinner), Cafe Luce (lovely pasta in a cosy Italian), Salinas (delicious Spanish tapas), Simò (pizza for one), Bill’s Bar and Burger, Naya (falafel salad), Toasties (eggplant Parmesan sandwiches with wonderful marinara sauce) and the Carnegie Diner (Sunday morning waffles made with organic eggs, with fruit and granola). I didn’t starve.

Waffles with fruit and granola from Carnegie Diner

Enjoyed lots of morning runs around Central Park, sometimes just as far as a loop around Stephanie and Fred Shuman Running Track at the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir and other times covering a full loop of the road track. I had two good runs with my friend and colleague Paul who has offered me his place at the Royal Parks Half Marathon next week as he can no longer make it. I’ve only ever run one half marathon distance before, but I’m hoping it should be achievable.

Two sweaty runners on two different mornings

Signed up to the London-Wales-London Audax ride scheduled for the start of May next year. It will be by far the longest ride I’ve ever done in one stint. We start at 6am and have 27 hours to complete the route.
Enjoyed a lovely stroll around Central Park with a colleague. You would think that running the whole length of the park would give you a sense of scale, but it was actually wandering around the insides of the park and stumbling across its various delights that makes you realise how big it is.
Had a fabulous night out at Union Pool in Brooklyn to see Katie Von Schleicher. It was brilliant to finally get to see her play some of her own songs after having previously seen her as part of Julie Byrne’s band in London last year. As we had a drink in the bar, we heard music drifting in and thought that the gig had started; we stumbled into the back room and watched her and her band run through their sound check, only realising our mistake when we went to order a drink and were told that they weren’t open yet. The next two artists, Sima Cunningham and Adeline Hotel, were both launching their new albums that evening, the latter of which was produced by Katie Von Schleicher. Sima Cunningham’s drummer Dan Knishkowy morphed into the lead singer of Adeline Hotel. The net result was that the whole event gave the impression of a big musical love-in. The venue was brilliant. After the gig finished it filled up with very cool young Brooklyn hipsters, leaving me feeling a little old and out of place.

Katie Von Schleicher at Union Pool, 27 September 2024

Sima Cunningham at Union Pool, 27 September 2024

Adeline Hotel at Union Pool, 27 September 2024

Tried Sweetarts and Lemonheads again, both of which made my tongue sore.
Managed to catch the Formula One race on my flight over, paying £18.99 for streaming from the moment I sat in my seat. It wasn’t perfect — I had to restart the stream a bunch of times — but it blows my mind that I can do this as I cross the Atlantic.

F1 Singapore Grand Prix streamed on-board a transatlantic flight

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