|
In Pete Townsend's new autobiography, Whom Am I, he tells the story of a class he took at an art college in England in the 1960s. Of course, Townsend was-and still is, I suppose-the lead guitarist and main songwriter of the rock band The Who.
(The Who was my favorite rock band while I was in college at the University of Illinois.
Friday afternoons, my roommate and I would open all the windows of our corner second floor dorm room. We'd crank up what stereo we had just about as loud as it would go and blow "We Won't Get Fooled Again" out the windows. We sent its violent thrashings pounding off the courtyard walls and attacking the consciousness of every passer by.
It was our way of airing our brains out after a long week of classes and we loved it.
Unfortunately, we lived in a Catholic dorm and our room was situated directly over the living quarters of the man who ran the place...one Father Edward Duncan. More often than not we'd get a phone call...sigh.)
But I digress.
Townsend tells the story of a battle royale between the old ways of doing things and the new ways at Ealing Art College.
The first day of one particular art class the instructor was of the old traditional guard and he told his students to draw a line on the paper before them.
"We each drew a line," Townsend writes, "and were subjected to the harshest possible criticism from the lecturer, who pointed out that the first line should be north to south, six inches long, of uniform thickness and drawn with a 3B pencil without a rule; any variation represented self-indulgence unworthy of Ealing Art College students."
The next day, their second lesson was conducted by a member of the new guard. He also told them to draw a line. Well, they had seen this before, so each student drew a line exactly the same as each other as the first instructor had ordered. The second lecturer flipped. He stormed out and returned with an artist from down the hall.
"They started to rant around the room shouting at us," writes Townsend. "At one point (one of the lecturers) produced a small penknife and pricked his finger, dragging blood across a white piece of paper. 'That's a line. Do you understand?' Of course we understood. We were innocent victims of a struggle between the old and new."
The ageless struggle between old and new, traditional and creative, staid and cutting edge. It's an endless battle in which societies, religions and most organizations have been engaged since the beginning of time.
Certainly every business has.
Which side is right?
It would be presumptuous to say that either side is always right. Actually a fusion between old and new is usually best-you hang onto the best of the old, that which works, but continually seek to discover new and better ways of doing things.
However, it's important to note that any process that eventually became old was at one time new. So you figure every tradition was first established by creativity...by new thinking...by risk...by experimentation...by cutting edge mindsets.
It's important for old-schoolers to know where their traditions came from.
Indeed, somewhere back at their conception was a person doing the equivalent of drawing a bloody line across a white sheet of paper and saying, "That's a line. Do you understand?"
| 
