Weekend Reading #76
This is the seventy-sixth weekly edition of our newsletter, Weekend Reading, sent out on Saturday 11th July 2020. To receive a copy each week directly into your inbox, sign up here.
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What we're doing.
In recent weeks we’ve had much to celebrate, with plenty of highlights as our products were launched into the market. As we got up and running, we all rode a wave of excitement. This week was rather more laborious as we were focused on pure execution. More mundane, sure, but no less important.
During weeks like these it becomes increasingly clear that before long we will be searching for a new office for the next leg of our development as a company. This week, as a team, we began to feel the limitations of working remotely. It's wonderful to be near our families and to save countless hours without a commute so that we can be more productive, nevermind staying in pyjamas all day long and not wearing shoes for weeks on end!
But the essence of every business is its collective consciousness – that gelling of individual personalities and idiosyncrasies that makes up the spirit of every group of people. We have worked incredibly hard, not only on our business ideas and our execution, but even more so on building a close team of people who, as a whole, will go on to do something really special together.
Being apart from each other definitely affects this dynamic and despite being very aware of this each day, we still struggle sometimes to keep it in mind when dashing off another email, Slack chat comment or Zoom conversation. We look very much forward to having our group space again as soon as is practicable.
What we're reading.
We’re all fascinated – and, if you’re of a certain age, a little bewildered, perhaps – by TikTok. Its surge in popularity has seemed inexorable, especially during lockdown when its brand of meme-led, harmless fun provided a little escape and a sense of collectivism and connection for its millions of users around the world.
But what started out as a bit of fun seems to be lurching towards something different, and perhaps a little darker. This week, the app allowed the sharing of US protest videos, got itself banned in India and pulled out of Hong Kong because of a new security law that could have forced it to upload user data to the Chinese government. On the other side of the world, it is also coming under fire in Washington because of the way its parent company, Bytedance, handles user data. Throwaway memes, these are not.
With an American CEO, Kevin Mayer, formerly chairman of Walt Disney, in position, and growing offices and teams in London and San Francisco, TikTok clearly wants to cement its place amongst the giants of Silicon Valley. But it will be fascinating to see how it navigates the next stage of its evolution. This explainer piece from the Wall Street Journal lights a little of the darkness around one of the world’s most popular apps.
WIRED magazine has been an ever-present commentator on the digital revolution that we’ve all been swept up by over the last few decades. In fact, there was a time not too long ago when the magazine looked at little else other than technology, with subjects like physics, biology and medicine being left to other outlets and publications. But the current pandemic has broken down some of these boundaries, with the crossover between the digital and physical growing and the disconnect between biology and technology diminishing.
Back in 1995, in a rare foray into biology, WIRED published a report that imagined the future in 25 years, i.e. today. The article, “The Plague Years,” reads like a report from the current pandemic. Drawing on learnings from that piece and from what we’ve all been subjected to during the first 6 months of 2020, WIRED describes how Covid-19 is accelerating human transformation in ways that we previously couldn’t imagine and how now’s the time to put lessons from the Digital Revolution to use.
As the article states:
"It’s remarkable how fast science can happen when everyone is focused on the same problem. This devastating pandemic, with all its worldwide chaos and horror, has at the same time created a perfect alignment of technology, science, need, and opportunity. The global impact of Covid-19 could change science forever."
Away from the real world is the world of art, a place where you can escape events like pandemics. Museums are slowly reopening and, as one of life’s little luxuries, it will feel tremendous to be back nestled in the hush of one of London’s world-class galleries.
No person has shaped modern art more than Andy Warhol, and a new biography by the critic, Blake Gopnik, Warhol: A Life As Art, is a wonderful exploration of both the peculiar, individual genius called Andy and the mighty beast that is the modern art industry, a business that has changed and spread throughout the world over the last 50 years.
This evolution means that Warhol’s story is about way more than just art. It is about capitalism, globalisation, culture, celebrity and modern history. To better understand the way that popular culture (pop art) has shaped our world, Warhol’s story needs to be understood. This 1,000-page account of his life, loves, losses and his immense body of work tells the story not of one man but of the world around him that he chose to depict. And that makes it a biography more important than most.
There is nothing quite like Harry Potter. Remembering reading the books as youngsters brings back all the wonder of JK Rowling. One of life’s great pleasures has recently been reliving that experience to some degree by reading it with our own kids. Decades later, seeing the look of sheer delight on (very) young faces as we experience the story together has been pure nachas.
What we're watching.
As we continue to re-emerge from lockdown and life begins to trickle back towards a semblance of normal, the sight of competitive international cricket being played on our televisions has been greatly appreciated.
White kit and a red ball on green grass is a staple sight of the English summer and one we’ve been prevented from seeing until now. But the West Indies are in town and, despite being in front of a drizzly, empty Ageas Bowl in Southampton, the battle between willow and leather has made us think that a slightly more normal-looking summer might be just around the corner.
As we type this, the West Indies are bowling very fast, England aren’t doing very well and it’s raining, and all of that is reassuringly familiar, too.
What we're listening to.
We’ve been listening to nothing else but Ennio Morricone this week, following the news that he had passed away in Rome aged 91.
The prolific composer pretty much created the soundtrack to the cinema of our age. He was known simply as "Maestro Morricone" in his home city of Rome, and for good reason, having created the score to more than 500 films over seven decades. Prolific? Yes. And, like Warhol, the immense volume never diluted the quality of his work.
Like Warhol, too, Morricone will be remembered for inventing a new genre of his art, a form of music that is as inimitably his as any other created in the last century. He was best known to moviegoers for blending musicianship with sound effects for Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns of the 1960s. A horn section would be melded with the whistle of a bird or the sound of the wind. A section of strings would be brought to a halt by the crack of a gunshot or even what sounded like the neigh of a horse. Plain old music, this was not. This was so much more.
Morricone worked with everybody who mattered in cinema, creating soundtracks to accompany comedies, thrillers and dramas by Bertolucci, Leone, Malick, De Palma, Levinson, Nichols, Tarantino and a host of other auteurs and filmmakers. His discography includes A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Days of Heaven, The Mission, Cinema Paradiso, The Untouchables and, most recently, The Hateful Eight.
Sure, these are great movies in their own right, but how great they would have been without Morricone’s music? It’s impossible to say. And that’s the power of a movie soundtrack. It is inseparable from the brilliance of the film. One goes hand in glove with the other and, given the linkage between our senses, it is incomprehensible to think what one would feel like if the other weren’t there.
To try to distil this vault of work down to one recommendation would be futile, but, for us, no truer reflection of his work can be found than the soundtrack for Once Upon A Time In The West, with the main theme being one of the most haunting and memorable motifs in cinematic history. Even if you haven’t seen the film, closing your eyes to listen to Morricone’s soundscape brings vivid imagery to mind which, as if by magic, is likely not too far away from the film that Sergio Leone created for us to see with our eyes.
Plain old music, this was not. The Maestro’s work was so, so much more.