You've certainly made your mark on the world when your name becomes an idiom, synonymous with charm, charisma and roguish good looks. And when songwriters want a short-cut metaphor for all of the above... Robert Redford is an obvious name-drop.
You're just a Coca Cola cowboy
You got an Eastwood smile and a Robert Redford hair
None of those really compare with the greatest ever lyrical reference to Bobby Redford, courtesy of... Lee Majors?!?
I might fall from a tall building
I might roll a brand-new car
'Cause I'm the unknown stuntman
That made Redford such a star
Strangely though, that wasn't the first song which popped into my mind when I heard about the passing of Robert Redford. Although some might argue this is more of a Paul Newman song... still, for me it marks a sunset for Sundance...
In last week’s post, I mentioned my frequently expressed
hatred of Audi drivers. Martin responded that he used to drive an Audi. Don’t
worry, Martin, we all did things we regret in our younger days. It’s good that
you can own your past transgressions, that you now see the error of your ways,
and I’m sure you’ve spent the time since making up for it – being kind to small
animals, giving more to charity, occasionally letting other drivers have their
right of way.
My reply to Martin was rather flippant, I’m afraid, and I feel I should apologise for that. I said, “And you’re also a cyclist! And yet, I still
like you. So you must be doing something right.”
I need to make it clear that I
don’t put cyclists in the same bracket as Audi drivers. Not all cyclists are
bad, but I do reserve a particular disdain for the selfish and arrogant ones,
usually MAMILs, who believe their hobby / exercise routine trumps the rights
and priorities of all other road users. There are times I feel like setting up
a desk in the middle of a cycle lane and writing my blog there, or taking the
ironing board out onto the Transpennine Cycle Trail and standing smack dab in
the middle of it while I press the creases out of my smalls. But such behaviour
would be petty. Far better to manage my grievances through mentalisation.
On the first week of my new job, just over two years ago, I
attended a course that introduced me to the concept of mentalisation. It’s not
the best of words, since whenever I hear it, I immediately think of Alan Partridge running away from his obsessive fan, or else I conjure up an image of this guy…
Mentalisation has nothing to do with either of those weird cultural reference points. Science Direct tells us…
“Mentalisation is the ability to think about states of mind
(e.g., thoughts, feelings, intentions) in the self and other people.”
Mentalisation is used a lot in therapy, but it’s also encouraged for
teachers, business people, anyone who might find themselves in a situation of
conflict with another person who appears to have opposing views, plans or
wishes to yourself.
The idea is similar to empathy, but empathy that you think about
and apply to a situation, rather than empathy that comes naturally. A quick
word on the difference between empathy and sympathy, since it’s something I get
asked a lot by students...
A friend of yours tells you what a bad time they’re having
since they lost a loved one. You can sympathise as above, without really
feeling their pain. Or you can empathise, because you care about them deeply,
you knew the person they’ve lost, or because it reminds you of a loss you
yourself suffered.
The other different between empathy and sympathy is that you can have empathy for positive emotions. Sympathy's all about the negative, "feeling sorry" for someone.
OK, mentalisation isn’t quite the same as either of those
things. It’s more cold and logical. It’s the Mr. Spock version of empathy. It asks
you to carefully assess the actions of another, to try to appreciate why they’re
acting the way they are, thereby controlling your own reaction to it.
Imagine you’re going into a difficult business meeting with
someone you know has very different goals and objectives to you. If you think
beforehand about their aims and intentions, try to understand where they’re
coming from, then you’re less likely to get pissed off when they refuse to play
ball with your plans, and you might be more willing to find a compromise that
suits everybody.
As a teacher, it’s useful to try mentalising my students. Why is little Timmy throwing his chair through the window? What’s he got going on in his life, at home or elsewhere in school? Is it a cry for help? Or did he just have George's Maths lesson the period before mine?
Let’s try and apply mentalisation to my frustration at being stuck
behind a cyclist on a narrow country lane. At five miles an hour in first gear up a steep Yorkshire hillside.
With no passing places until you get right to the top. And I’m in a rush,
because I’m late to pick Sam up from the school because the traffic has been
really bad tonight.
If I concentrate my thoughts on me in this situation – my goals,
my annoyance, how I wouldn’t have the audacity to keep on riding my bike in
this situation if there was a queue of ten cars behind me – I’m just going to get more wound up.
Instead, let’s try to mentalise that cyclist. Maybe he had a
heart attack last year and his doctor told him cycling is the best
exercise if he wants to see the other side of 60? Maybe his wife left
him a few months back and cycling is the only thing that takes his mind off his
loneliness? Maybe he’s in training for a charity bike ride to earn enough money
to fly his young son to the States for an experimental medical procedure that
might save the boy's life?
Now, admittedly, this is speculative mentalisation, since
I’ll never know the truth, and likely none of them come anywhere near the truth
(and maybe the truth is, that cyclist really doesn’t give a shit about anybody
else on the road since they’re completely devoid of empathy or the ability to
mentalise the needs of others; i.e. maybe they’re also an Audi driver), but it’s
the process that matters. It’s certainly healthier to try to mentalise
in this situation. And anger
is pointless, apparently. But we’ll get back to that another time. The main thing is to try to imagine yourself in someone else's shoes. These songs, from the perspective of cyclists, help me feel the other side of the story...
If none of that works, maybe I can try to imagine that
cyclist is a friend of mine. What if it's Martin? If I imagine that, then I know he’s
not doing this out of malicious intent, he’s just doing what he needs to do. If
I imagine it’s someone I know, someone I like and respect, then suddenly I
feel far less animosity towards them, because I know they're not doing it on purpose just to piss me off. (To be fair, some of my friends would do it on purpose just to piss me off, but that's OK when it's your friends.) Suddenly it becomes much easier to mentalise
them. There’s probably a psychological name for doing this, but I haven’t come
across it yet. I’m no expert, just a layman trying to make sense of
it all to help myself.
I take a few steps back to gain perspective, perspective, And kid myself that I can be objective, objective
Only because I missed it out a couple of weeks back.
To be fair, it's not much of a track on its own, just the opener to an album of the same name. But it stopped me having to include Good Morning, Good Morning by The Beatles, which I find rather annoying.
I ended last week's post by suggesting there was an obvious choice for this week, which seemed to cause a fair bit of head-scratching across the community. Some of you identified it, but only Swiss Adam seemed confident that it was the undisputed champion.
What else was there?
Lynchie drop-kicked off the suggestions with these...
The Dropkick Murphys - 1953 "Which," he points out, "doesn't mention 1953 at all in the lyrics - only the title." Not that that would stop me.
The National Parks – 1953 "Very wimpy love song," says Lynchie, "I doubt if it's that one." Not that that would stop me.
What you need is a dog, some goldfish or a cat A boa constrictor and a laboratory rat The end is at hand now and you have the means A roll of toilet paper and the right magazines Your parents are dead now and your kids are full grown You're 53 now, you're 53 now, you're 53 now You're living alone.
C was up next, offering a fine runner-up for this week which was seconded by Rigid Digit and Alyson...
However, this week's 53 isn't a year... or an age... it's a street number. 53rd Street in New York City, exactly where it crosses 3rd Avenue to be precise.
The sight of blood dispersed the gang A crowd gathered, the police came An ambulance screamed to a halt on fifty-third and third
But the biggest crime to be committed at this specific intersection came from Rigid Digit, breaking My Top Ten's strict NO U2 rule... but getting away with it (just) by suggesting one of the few U2 songs that doesn't make me want to take a pair of rusty pliers to Bono's nostrils...
Birdland on fifty three The street sounds like a symphony We got John Coltrane and a love supreme Miles, and she's got to be an angel
(You know what that one sounds like. You really don't need to click on the link and give Bono an extra 0.00000007 pence or whatever he gets per youtube view. He has enough money to last him a lifetime.)
This week's winner though... well, by now it should be obvious, even if it wasn't at first. The Ramones will always stand a good chance on this blog because they understood that punk music - and pop music - is essentially rather silly and therefore should be fun.
I hope you had the time of your life playing Saturday Snapshots yesterday. And that none of you ended up a Basket Case...
A Saturday night powercut means I'm setting this to post via my phone so can't add my usual commentary congratulating the winners. Just hoping this will still post on Sunday morning as planned. I'll try to add comments later on Sunday but thanks for playing as always.
10. Je t'aime a tiny city full of serial killers.
Je t'aime is French for 'I love you'.
A tiny city full of serial killers would be a mini Ripper-town.
