Ground Zero
Hitting pay dirt
Introduction to The Art of the Interview: Conversation as a Tool to Make Sense of the World, Part 1. The topic revolves around what I used to do in organizations. I’ve edited and updated the chapter to my current understanding.
THE ART OF THE INTERVIEW: Conversation As a Tool to Make Sense of the World
Ground Zero: Hitting pay dirt
It was the late summer of 1965. Nora Ephron and Susan Edmiston sat down to interview singer songwriter Bob Dylan.[1] The conversation took place in the office of Dylan’s manager Albert Grossman.
Dylan had just been booed on stage. He was playing at the historic Forest Hills concert and people didn’t like him using electric accompaniment. It felt like he was abandoning what they considered ‘folk purity.’
Decades before the special citation from the Pulitzer Prize Jury (2008) for “his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical composition and extraordinary poetic power,” and the Nobel Prize in Literature (2016) “for having created new poetic expression within the great American song tradition,” Dylan was booed on stage.
On that particular day, he was wearing a red-and-navy pop-art shirt, a navy blazer, and pointy-heeled boots. His face, as Ephron and Edmiston remarked, so sharp and harsh when translated through media, was infinitely soft and delicate up close. His hair was not bushy or electric or Afro; it was “fine—spun soft froth like the foam of a wave.”
According to Ephron and Edmiston, “he looked like an underfed angel with a nose from the land of the Chosen People.” Of course, writers and journalists would use such a rich description for someone who was an influential figure in popular music. Dylan’s influenced culture for more than five decades.
American folksinger Carolyn Hester called Dylan’s music ‘folk rock,’ liberating, a bit like ‘pop gospel.’ Hester’s comments got the conversation going. Dylan played with the words, “Folk rock. I’ve never even said that word. It has a hard, gutter sound. Circussy atmosphere. It’s nose thumbing. Sound like you’re looking down on what is... fantastic, great music.”
Ephron and Edmiston pressed on with the most frequent definition given of folk rock as the combination of the electronic sound of rock and roll with the meaningful lyrics of folk music. “Does that sum up what you’re doing?” they asked.
What he says next led to the insight that electric accompaniment started a new phase of Dylan’s music. With the insight also came a more revealing Dylan. His thought process that “It’s very complicated to play with electricity” led to the idea that “You play with other people.”
Playing with other people means you’re dealing with them, and, “Most people don’t like to work with other people, it’s more difficult. It takes a lot.” The insight comes at the very end, “Most people who don’t like rock and roll can’t relate to other people.“ It reveals the degree to which Dylan observed and explored relationships.
Ephron/ Edmiston and Dylan go back and forth about the real Mr. Jones in ‘Ballad of a Thin Man,’ California people who are so real you want to kiss them because they wear non-boring things like hip East Side people and unlike uptight Hollywood types. Then comes the question to kick off a review of Dylan’s creative process: “Do you consider yourself primarily a poet?”
More a trapeze artist, it turns out. One by one, bits of information shed new light on the artist. How he’d rather sing than talk the words, his upcoming book, and how he used to play the rock and roll piano and a country piano, too. Contradictions, watermelon, clocks, everything contributes to forming a picture of the man and his creative expression, even chaos.
On the back of an album, Dylan had written, “I accept chaos but does chaos accept me.” He explained that for him truth is chaos, maybe even beauty is chaos. They talk about his collection of monkey wrenches and that leads to why he made the change in his music. Dylan:
“I was doing fine, you know, singing and playing my guitar. It was a sure thing, don’t you understand, it was a sure thing. I was getting very bored with that. I couldn’t go out and play like that. I was thinking of quitting. Out front it was a sure thing. I knew what the audience was gonna do, how they would react. It was very automatic. Your mind just drifts unless you can find some way to get in there and remain totally there. It’s so much of a fight remaining totally there all by yourself. It takes too much. I’m not ready to cut that much out of my life. You can’t have nobody around. You can’t be bothered with anybody else’s world. And I like people.
What I’m doing now ― it’s a whole other thing. We’re not playing rock music. It’s not a hard sound. These people call it folk rock ― if they want to call it that, something that simple, it’s good for selling records. As far as it being what it is, I don’t know what it is.
I can’t call it folk rock. It’s a whole way of doing things. It has been picked up on, I’ve heard songs on the radio that have picked it up. I’m not talking about words. It’s a certain feeling, and it’s been on every single record I’ve ever made. That has not changed. I know it hasn’t changed. As far as what I was totally, before, maybe I was pushing it a little then. I’m not pushing things now. I know it. I know very well how to do it. The problem of how I want to play something ― I know it in front. I know what I am going to say, what I’m going to do. I don’t have to work it out. The band I work with ― they wouldn’t be playing with me if they didn’t play like I want them to.”[2]
A new way of doing things is how Dylan’s truth emerges in the conversation. Dylan says it came from observation of reality, which led to the desire to give back to it by participating, being immersed in it.
Great paintings should be where the people are, so they can enjoy them—in restaurants, gas stations, dime stores, and so on. But they’re in museums or private collections, he says. Contrast that with music, which “is the only thing that’s in tune with what’s happening.”
Interviews are fleeting moments in time. Speaking and listening are transient forms of expression, like performing arts. The sound is here one moment, gone the next. Ephron and Edmiston are a good example of being in tune with what’s happening and emerging in the conversation.
They use comments that draw from the experience of contemporaries to assess what’s really going on in Dylan’s mind. They ask follow up questions to enter a deeper dimension, where the songwriter’s art connects with people. By doing the work to discover what’s going on, Ephron and Edmiston help us imagine a world in which art is as accessible as music. They paint that world.
Don’t we all aspire to that feeling of vitality we get from the act of creation? Everyone wants to do work that contributes something memorable, to share inside knowledge of their chosen field.
The difference between going direct, publishing your thoughts, and talking about our experiences with someone else is that the conversation generates a special kind of attention. In an interview, someone draws out and expands on what we’re saying on a broader canvas. They witness our work, reporting what they see, and helping us appreciate our accomplishments through an outsider’s perspective.
An interview may lead to anecdotes. In most cases, it yields good information. But with some interviews we hit pay dirt: A revelation. In rare instances, our conversation opens the door to transformation — one or both participants are changed from that point on.
It’s near impossible to predict the type of interview we’re going to have. Because the weaving happens in conversation with one or more persons. But preparation helps you stack the odds in favor of a meaningful exchange.
A meaningful interview requires emotional presence; people partner with you when they feel heard, that’s how you make your way to a truth. Presence is a big part of intentional practice. Coaches will tell you that presence is more being than doing. To develop the kind of self-awareness that allows for the continuous improvement of this aspect of the interview takes time.
The benefits of presence are many. From the observations of others, we can find out how they set their goals, how they think about problems from their point of view or role, how certain situations trigger reactions rather than responses, and much more.
Getting to insights involves interpreting, synthesizing, and integrating the information in a simple conversation. Insights, in turn, help us find gaps to explore, form ideas and find new paths forward.
Interviews are also the gateway to potential breakthroughs that help uncover strategic opportunities to create better experiences, get revelations that lead to new outcomes, and in some cases lead to transformation.
To improve interviewing skills, we can practice building our conversation skills…
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[1] Source: Interferenza
[2] Source: Interferenza