Canine Connections

 Speaking of Connectors, last Saturday, the 18th, I had the pleasure of attending a show at The Green Briar in Brighton. My friend Cage was opening for Lulu's In Crisis. Cage invited our friend Conor Shanhan to play for part of his set. After Cage played for a few minutes he called Conor up on stage and I watched the two of them raise their pint glasses and smile as they traded places at the microphone.

Cage is a major Connector. He has worked a wide variety of jobs, and lived in, and traveled to many places. He makes friends (and acquaintances) quickly and easily, and keeps contact with them.  He's been doing it since before online social networking was a thing, and the existence of MySpace, and now Facebook has only made it easier for him to create fabulous new connections. Cage can sometimes make me look like a hermit by comparison,* but I'm still pretty good.

When I was in The Diary of Anne Frank in 2001 at Riverside Theater in Boston, Cage played Mr. Frank to my Anne. We became very close that year, and he became like a father to me after my own father passed away in 2003. Meanwhile, I had met Conor S. when I was a freshman in college. He was in the sketch troupe, and I was in the improv troupe. By 2005 we would be roommates in a 3-apartment farm house with seven other friends. Now Conor and Cage are friends through me, and this is the second performance gig Cage has arranged for Conor.

Just as I was patting myself on the back for making this obviously perfect introduction, Conor took the microphone in hand between songs and offered an explanation for how he'd come here. 

And I started to laugh.

He recalled how a really special spirit had aligned him and Cage. He had  lived with me, and I lived with... a beagle. Lucy was actually one of Cage's two beagles. After Christmas that year Cage gave me the beautiful gift of sending her to live with me, to chase away the Pioneer Valley Winter Blues.

Lucy quickly became the Queen of the house and of our circle of friends. She had many fans who would stop by the house just to say hi, or to ask if they could take her out for a walk. Conor started a facebook group called I Love Lucy, and many of our friends joined in order to upload photos of videos of her. Cage joined the group as well, and identified himself as Lucy's dad. Conor sent a message to him right away, thanking him for allowing Lucy into our lives.

That message was the beginning of many messages back and forth between Conor and Cage. They met in person one time after that, and have been friends ever since.

"Lucy is no longer with us," Conor informed the crowd somberly. "But her amazing spirit lives on. This is for Lucy," and he bowed his head and began a heartbreaking rendition of Tom Wait's "Picture in a Frame."

Later on Cage mentioned to me not for the first time, how talented Conor is. He plans to get Conor a spot playing in Boston more often. Later I saw him introducing Conor to the owner of the bar, and I felt a surge of happiness, and some pride at having a hand in this chain of events.

Then I realized that in this case the Connector was actually a small and gregarious beagle named Lucy.

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* Although his secret seems to be that on Sundays he sometimes refuses to pick up the phone or allow any visitors, preferring to sit alone in his house watching football with his dogs.

** You may have read or heard me  refer to Cage as Pim, which is what Anne Frank called her father. This way Dad and Pim each get a name.

Connecting

Lois Weisburg ran a drama troupe in Chicago in the 1950s. From there, her love of George Bernard Shaw led her to start publishing a newspaper devoted his work, which became an underground weekly. When that paper went under she got a job doing PR for a rehab program. From there she got work at a public interest law firm and then became so aware of some of the issues facing the community that she began lobbying for Chicago's Parks first, and then for the South Shore Railroad. She worked for the government for a while, then quit and ran a flea market stand. She later went on to become the Commissioner of Cultural Affairs for the city of Chicago. 

Lois Weisburg is one of my new personal heroes. That synopsis of her life is wildly abbreviated. When I am in my 80s, I want the list of things I've done to look like that. I want to start now.

In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell discusses the way social epidemics (trends in consumerism, fashion, and other aspects of pop culture) come into existence. Along the way he touches upon the critical involvement of three categories of people: Mavens, Salesmen and Connectors.

Connectors know a lot of people. They have "an extraordinary knack of making friends and acquaintances." *

But, Malcolm points out, Connectors are important because of the may different types of people they know. They do not , for example, just know hundreds of people who do what they do, but they have contacts in many different areas of specialty and niche, and can connect them with great results. As he puts it "by having a foot in so many different worlds, they have the effect of bringing them all together."**

 He goes on to point out that "weak ties," or acquaintances,  (as opposed to close friends), are more important when it comes to networking and connecting. This was shown in a study by sociologist Mark Granovetter in 1974 called Getting a Job. The reason is, as Gladwell explains, your acquaintances are likely to know people that you don't know, whereas your close friends occupy the same world that you do.

Connectors are important in the spread of social epidemics, professional networking, and - as seen in Weisburg's work - community change.

The Tipping Point was published in 2002, which predates online social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. These sites are in and of themselves a social epidemic (why not orkut?). But, besides that, with the ease of "friending"  and "following" so many different people, I suspect that many people may find themselves in the position of being a Connector who otherwise wouldn't have been.***

Regardless, I do believe there are many Connectors out there who would be doing their thing with or without social media technology.

I consider myself a Connector. I have many friends whom I recognize as Connectors. The whole "extraordinary knack of making friends..." thing comes easily to most performers. Plus most performers who also have a day job have the advantage of a foot in at least two different worlds right there.  The more odd jobs we do to pay rent, and more strange gigs we take on in the name of love of our craft, the more worlds we can be a bridge to.

Lois Weisburg, Gladwell says, is a "classic connector," because she lived in so many worlds and brought them together. That was the key not only to her success, but to the success of every program and project she launched.
I wonder if, when The Paper went under, did Weisburg stress and angst over whether to start another newspaper or whether to just go for the PR job? Or did the decision come easily to her, the obvious next step?

I have a lot of trouble sometimes deciding whether to identify as a performer or a healthcare worker. But my strength comes from involvement in both these two worlds, as well as the many others I dabble in and visit.

My ability to make and keep connections, and to share connections with others has yielded some wonderful collaborations in my life so far. Modest collaborations, for sure, but the patterns are heartening nonetheless.
 I hope to create positive social change by utilizing the energy and power of the multiple worlds I live in, instead of feeling pressured to fit myself into one career path at the moment. With the right forces behind me, maybe I can follow in the meandering footsteps of Lois Weisburg.

And in the meantime, you and I should get a cup of coffee. Text me later.

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*The Tipping Point,  page 40
** The Tipping Point page 51; also... you have to have a LOT of feet to be an awesome Connector.
*** Likewise websites like Yelp.com give a voice to people who otherwise would not have become Salesmen. And shouldn't have.