This chapter shows the rise of Motown coming to fruition, the last line of the chapter struck me, though:
"Motown would do a lot of new and different things in the coming years; they just wouldn't do them as well as they used to."
Foreshadowing the fall of Motown, and with this quote, it had me thinking about past experiences about trying 'new and different things', like a morning routine or working habits.
With that said, was there a time in your life where you tried something 'new and different' and it ended up actually doing more harm than good just like Motown's fall?
Alex –
ReplyDeleteThis is really a wonderful question. I apologize for taking two months to actually get to it. ☺
Usually, “trying something new and different” turns out to be the best option. Otherwise, an activity can easily become stale or ineffectual. So, most times, I strive to allow other perspectives or new ways of approaching an activity.
However, there have been (rare) times when “trying something new and different” have failed miserably. The one case that quickly came to mind was during ancient times when I was in graduate school at Michigan State. One of the plays I directed was for preschoolers, based on the “Peter Cottontail” story. For the makeup, I had the “new and different” idea to get a makeup artist to create fairly realistic looking animal facial features for the actors. I learned the “hard way” that this was a bad decision.
Young children cannot easily distinguish between real life and fantasy. So, when these adult sized people would come onto the stage (in an intimate theatre), there would always be children who would scream at the top of their lungs when these “creatures” would appear. At one performance, one kid was so terrorized he “wet” his seat. There were 27 performances of that show that particular summer. After the first few shows, I had the makeup toned down drastically, but there were always a few kids with issues dealing with these characters.