Owning Your Shit

I picked up a book for pennies the other day - a secret Michael Crichton novel called Binary. It’s a secret because he was writing under the name John Lange, but hey, it’s Crichton so you know it’s going to be good. (For those of you who have never heard of him, he wrote Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain, Congo, created E.R. and a bundle of other great stuff.)

I’ve often wondered how the original publisher thought they could sell it under the name of a nobody. Maybe Crichton didn’t think it was his best work but he was getting paid anyway, so what are you gonna do. Or maybe he was under contract to another publisher and the only way to sneak a book out is in this way. I guess there’s a million reasons you might want to hide yourself away.

Stephen King did the same thing, writing as Richard Bachman and I know they’re not the only ones. Hell, everybody was at it at some point but pickings are slim these days and I don’t think it happens anymore.

I used to think it was the equivalent of doing a poor job on the washing up and blaming your sister for it but that was before I figured out that money was probably involved. Money, my friends, changes everything.

Once you get into the corporate world - and make no mistake, book publishing, record companies, movie studios are all corporate with huge amounts of money at stake - things change.

See, back in the late 60s, Crichton was studying to be a doctor at Harvard. Publishing pulp thrillers with sexy covers and fast plots wasn’t exactly in line with the image of a respectable young doctor-in-training. To put it in context, he certainly wouldn’t have thought people would still be reading trashy pulp 50 years later.

Enter the trapdoor:

Nobody thinks anything they do when they’re young might echo in eternity.

Imagine the scenario. Two young guys with nothing better to do, decide it might be a gas to record the most inane song of all time and maybe make some money to buy a few beers and some clothes. Surely nobody would still be playing a song called Agadoo more than a week later... would they?

I went digging, as is my wont. Apparently Black Lace were a legit band once upon a time and represented the U.K. in the Eurovision in 1979. With success very far from their fingertips, they did their own digging and found a French song called Agadou which they took and made it into what we know - I’m not brave enough to go and see what original is like. Sounds like an adventure that might need copious amounts of coffee.

It became a hit in 1984 and reached number two in the charts. Go figure. That means thousands, maybe millions in ‘84, of people paid actual money for it. The BBC actually banned it when it first came out and the reason they gave was “it’s too silly”, but DJs at weddings and parties kept playing the damn thing and it gained some serious momentum.

I know what you’re thinking... is this the world we created? Do you even know anybody who bought it? I don’t.

But the point of this little detour is, Black Lace leaned into it. They owned that fucker hook, line and sinker. Dressed up for it, did the dance, performed it wherever they were asked... totally owned it and ultimately, I guess they paid their own bills and got on their knees everyday thanking the Gods of dumb as hell songs they didn’t work in an office.

On my travels, I also saw that one of the duo got killed in a bus crash in the mid 90s and the other one died last year sometime, so endeth that part of the tale.

If you ever had a dream to be famous, this story is either proof that it’s possible even when you’ve got nothing to offer but a song you stole from France or fair warning that you should be careful what you wish for. Maybe the guys were happy as larks... who knows. Some people have no shame.

But this is about neither Crichton nor Black Lace. It’s about owning your shit. If you’ve ever known a punk, or a glam rocker (hello!) or a goth who was all in on owning it, you’ll agree that you can’t imagine those people looking any other way because when you own it, it becomes you.

There’s a scenario in which a friend who is not a goth decides to go out with the goths to see Fields of the Nephilim. They borrow authentic goth clothes and get said goth friends to apply goth make-up but no matter how hard you try, nothing can disguise the fact that you’re not a goth and never will be.

It’s not a game of dressing up. The outward look is a reflection of what’s going on inside and you can’t fake that.

It works in everything. Regardless of what you think of these people, Margaret Thatcher owned being Prime Minister, Bjorn Borg owned tennis and Stephen King owns horror... because they went all in on their thing.

And there’s one of your answers to life: whatever it is you want to do - selling cars, golf, stripper, picture framer, performing a stupid song for your whole life... you can’t fail to get somewhere with it, if you commit.

The universe loves a bit of commitment because it means it doesn’t have to worry about you. It’s a bit like being a teacher and having 40 kids in your class. One of them knows stuff and plays with the guts of it. The other 39 haven’t got a clue. As the teacher, who are you going to worry about the least?

And if life doesn’t actually work like that, paint me black, cover me in feathers and staple me to a Michael Crichton writing as John Lange novel before dumping me in a public toilet.

Footnote: I went to track down that French version because I was curious as to what they had to do with it to make it into what we know today. The damn thing is almost exactly the same but with a French accent. No work required at all. There are also loads of cover versions of it for some reason - and I mean loads.

In the end, all that I learned today was how to break your own algorithm. If I’d been able to do it under a pseudonym, I’d have dug a bit deeper.