THE FIERCE INTENSITY OF NOW

This wonderful line came from Martin Luther King’s lips. He was talking about that tipping point when it’s suddenly exactly the right time to go for it, what Shakespeare in Julius Caesar described as high tide:

“There in a tide in the affairs of men                                                                                                           which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune”

Poetic it may be and none the worse for that because poetry manages to dramatise, synthesise and distil all at once. A friend once called me “a marketing poet” which alternately upset and, then, pleased me. I think (I hope) he was referring to my EQ and the fact that I passionately believe that marketing is only about people and how they make up their minds about things and how we marketers manipulate that.

The intensity to which Martin Luther King refers seems especially apt in our fast moving-ball-game of life. We live in a high-drama-present – from the Olympics to the US Open to the Ryder Cup we are in a constant state of breathlessness. In a world so full of speed, making any business decisions has to be done fast relying on intuition not on “give me two weeks to think about that.

Nicolas Colsaerts playing one of the best Ryder Cup rounds ever seen on Friday afternoon at the Medina Club, Chicago.

We are living in the present and that is the only place to live.

In Britain we used to live in the memories of the past. No more.

The Americans have always lived for “now”. An American I knew would say “Richard I’m starting a fantastic briefcase business”. A year later I’d see him and with a flourish he’d produce spectacles from his pocket saying “Fashion spectacles, the next big thing. I’m going into this in a big way”. When I asked about briefcases he’d look puzzled as though trying to remember and would say:- ”Briefcases. No. That was a terrible idea. I got out of that ages back.”

Gurus, meanwhile, try to live in the future, where nobody has any idea what’s going to happen, so they are pretty well bomb proof.

William Sieghart, the founder of National Poetry Day, tried something at a recent literary event. He set up a poetry pharmacy. People would come up and see “I feel depressed” and he’d prescribe a dose of Keats. Or it would be lassitude - “try a spoonful of Milton”. Or for someone who’s lost all hope – “two Emilies twice daily” and it worked apparently.

Well poetry (hopefully) does work.

Especially when poets are trying to manipulate their girlfriends – “Come live with me and be my love” and other such - but I think we know what they’re after – a bit of “fierce intensity of now”.

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