Personal essays
A song reaches out and taps me on the shoulder
Number three
Last week I was in Folkestone, England on the English Channel to give the opening keynote at the Swift Craft conference.
My keynote was about how my training as a mathematician helps me choose which Apple technologies to adopt each year.
This was my third talk at a third conference in a little over three weeks and each talk was different. I gave technical talks in Chicago and North Macedonia but this was a keynote.
That means that it has to be personal, filled with stories, and each audience member should leave with something to think about - something they want to do.
It had been fifty years since I’d looked out on the English Channel. My family had visited Dover when I was 14 years old and we spent the year living in England.
I wanted to talk about how important that year of schooling was. It changed the way I think about math. In the US we teach a year of Algebra, then a year of Geometry, then another year of Algebra and then trig and other topics and then Calculus.
In England they call the class “Maths” not “Math” and the topics are taught - or at least they were fifty years ago - in an integrated curriculum.
I wanted to start my story with that and I wanted to take the audience into the mind of a 14 year old boy so I gestured down towards the White Cliffs of Dover and mentioned that at fourteen, they were my third favorite Dover.
Number two was Ben Dover.
Number one was Eileen Dover.
If I had been addressing a middle school I would have had them rolling in the aisles.
Location
I came down to breakfast early the morning after my keynote.
I love a good hotel breakfast.
Eggs, sausage, bacon - the kind they have in the UK, toast, fruit, yogurt - I could go on. And I did.
As I looked out the window at the water I became aware that an organ had begun playing opening churchy like chords.
It was one of my all time favorite songs.
There had been music playing quietly in the restaurant area, but this one reached out and grabbed me. It told me to put my coffee down and look across the water to where you could just make out the shores of France.
Jimmy Cliff sang, “Many rivers to cross, but I can’t seem to find my way over.”
If you don’t know the song, you don’t know there is a pause after find. It makes a difference.
I shivered because I knew what was coming next. I’ve heard this song from so many places in the world - but never from here. Right here.
“Wandering I am lost, as I travel along White Cliffs of Dover.”
I feel that.
It’s the time of year where I ask myself what I will do for the next year. I kind of know.
Several conferences have invited me for the fall, I’ll probably write a book, but this year in particular with so much on the line at our next election - there is so much unknown.
Jimmy says dig deep.
You
These newsletters, my blogs, books, presentations, keynotes, … they’re about me but they are really about you.
When I first saw the movie “Up”, I was sure it was about one part of my life, ten years later I was sure it was about a different aspect.
The White Cliffs of Dover hadn’t really changed in the fifty years since I’d last visited, but I had.
You can be in the same place and not be in the same place.
Jimmy Cliff was a young man who was struggling. He’d had early success and had traveled to Europe with dreams of making it big.
As the British say, things weren’t going to plan.
Jimmy looks at the many rivers he has to cross and sings, “it’s only my will that keeps me alive.”
He talks about the challenges he’s faced and looks around him at those rivers and wondering where to begin.
I haven’t felt the specifics that Cliff sings about but I’ve felt “licked, washed up for years” and I’ve known “that loneliness [that] won’t leave me alone.”
The song is about him and it’s about us.
It took me more than a week to write my one-hour keynote and there was a life’s worth of experience in it.
Jimmy cut a vein and bled into our ears.
As long as we can reach in and find those true expressions of self, I’m not afraid of AI.
AI won’t look at the many rivers to cross and say, “But I can’t seem to find my way over.”
No way it comes up with the word “seem”.
No way it knows to pause after “find”.
No way it creates its next up-tempo Reggae hit as a contemplative gospel song instead.
No way I paused to listen to the song more than fifty years after it was released and find that it transports me from this place to other places I’ve stopped to hear, really hear.
To this place along the White Cliffs of Dover which is now my favorite Dover - better than Eileen - better than Ben.
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 218. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe