The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living (10 page)

A friend of mine recently unloaded his company for a prodigious pile of cash. His share was more than $50 million. Celebrating with him in Saba, a knobby rock in the Caribbean once owned by the Dutch and now a mecca for divers, we toyed with the question of what he should do next. The only idea to consider, he insisted, was to start another business. What business? He had no clue and didn't seem to care, so long as it allowed him to measure his success by tallying the numbers. Free forever from financial worries, he could think of nothing better to do than to amass more money. This from an exceptionally bright and decent man. If, after careful consideration, he were to pursue a business he truly cared about—well, that would have been understandable—but reflexively hopping back on the carousel seemed like a waste. I could only hope that with a little more time, he would rethink things.

O
F COURSE
, I was in no position to criticize. If I knew anything about the Deferred Life Plan, it was because I, too, had spent years as a fully vested, card-carrying believer.

When I graduated from Brown in the mid-seventies, I had no idea what a career was or where I fit in. I tried the traditional routes and applied for internships and sent off résumés to New York. Perhaps banking or advertising, I thought. But when the bankers got a look at me, they knew I wasn't one of them and turned me down. The advertisers easily ignored my barrage of résumés. I applied to IBM—the old IBM that ran applicants through a battery of IQ and personality tests, I guess, before they even talked to you. You showed up in the morning for the tests and came back in the afternoon for interviews. When I returned after lunch, they suggested, cheerfully but firmly, that an interview wouldn't be necessary. I didn't fit the profile.

I didn't seem to fit anybody's profile. It was troublesome to me that I couldn't find a match; I had expected to settle into a career like everyone else.

In the meantime, needing a paycheck, I found a position with the city of Providence, in the Mayor's Office of Community Development. Working in city politics was fascinating. A parade of flamboyant characters marched through City Hall every day, like the back lot of some 1940s movie studio. I remember one old time politico, for instance, in charge of housing rehabilitation programs in a lower-income neighborhood, who carried a gun and sometimes brandished it at applicants whose looks he didn't like. Crazy.

Simultaneously, I also took a position teaching economics at Johnson and Wales College in the evening program. I wanted to stay in touch with economics, which was my major in college, and I liked the idea of teaching (even though home economics would probably have been a more appropriate subject matter; Johnson and Wales was best known as a cooking school). Most of my students turned out to be Vietnam vets on the GI Bill who were a good bit older than I was.

Also simultaneously, I continued to freelance for the Banzini Brothers, three music promoters, barely older than me, whom I'd met while I was on the Brown Concert Committee. Their operation delivered live performances to college campuses, small concert halls, outdoor festival grounds, and nightclubs throughout New England. After college, my role with the Brothers was hatched at a Weather Report concert. One of them pushed me out from behind stage in my tie and jacket to head off the ASCAP police who were looking for royalty fees for cover songs. I don't remember what shuck and jive I gave them, but the copyright cops relented. I became the straight guy, the one who dealt with the unions, city hall, or rival promoters, whoever the Brothers were trying to avoid.

At times, I'd review the financial plans for upcoming concerts in order to understand how and if there was any money to be made. My compensation included free tickets to all concerts, a good table at the clubs, and an open door to the old colonial the Brothers owned near Thayer Street, at the heart of Brown's freewheeling scene. I invested all my money, which wasn't very much, in their productions. I lost it, or the majority of it, I think.

After a full day at the mayor's office and a few hours teaching, I'd head over to the Banzini Brothers headquarters for my “duties.” The house attracted a constant flow of partyers, all trying to rub up against celebrity visitors and generally searching for a good time. Off to the bars or a concert until the wee hours, we kept up with our accounts—listening to bands, working the acts, recruiting fresh talent, and checking out new venues. I received an education in the way these productions were staged — how the numbers worked, the process for promoting and scheduling shows, the arrangements for talent and securing halls, all the logistics of producing concerts.

When I tell people about my experiences at that time, they often say, “It was the music, right? The other things — the mayor's office, the teaching—those paid your way, but your heart was in the rock concerts, right?”

No, I explain, my heart was in everything, in all of it together.

My Providence was this: What started as a way to fill time and pay my way while I figured out what career to pursue turned into something unexpectedly rich and fulfilling. But it wasn't any one single part of this life that excited me. It was the aggregate. All the pieces fitting together gave me satisfaction and energy. I was passionate about the whole: No one particular part attracted me to the exclusion of everything else. Each part excited me fully while I was doing it, for the moment I was doing it. My passion was for exploring everything.

I was beginning to see how creativity could thrive in the context of earning a living. With the Banzini Brothers, I helped produce concerts. They brought pleasure to people, and they were creative in the way they did it. These were kids learning the business on the fly. No one told them how to be concert promoters. They loved music, they loved events, they loved the ambience, and so they simply figured it out. Even in the mayor's office, where there was ordinarily a lot of structure, I worked on projects funded out of Washington and so new there were few precedents, little direction, and only limited guidelines. You had to start with a blank piece of paper and be creative. Even teaching turned out to be a highly creative experience. Without the benefit of formal training or guidance, I had to piece the job together in my own way.

Here was a talent, and a pleasure, I began to realize—the ability to put a blank piece of paper on the table and to create something in the context of work and business. I enjoyed sitting down, analyzing a problem, and then concocting a bunch of free-form solutions. I might have simply reinvented the wheel, made a hexagon instead of a circle, but I could get it rolling, and I wasn't afraid of venturing outside my realm of comfort and experience. A group of friends at that time, for example, started a community newspaper. I knew nothing about the newspaper business, startups, or finance. But I took a piece of accounting paper and began to work it out—what they needed to accomplish and what it would cost. I was not only comfortable doing that, I liked it. Years later, in various Silicon Valley businesses, as I sat down to find a solution without a shred of direct experience, the thrill of Providence, that blank piece of paper, came back to me.

D
ESPITE MY ENERGY
and passion in Providence, I held onto the notion that eventually I would need to focus my life on something “serious.” Providence, I told myself, was a lark, a way of sowing my oats before settling down. Get serious, I thought. Get a profession, build a career, establish yourself, and be successful. Then you can do what you want. I was living the Deferred Life Plan.

And what was going to be my second step in the Plan, when I had paid my dues and could do what I wanted? What was it I truly wanted to do? I couldn't have articulated it at that time. In the years that followed, though, as I did build a profession and career, the Providence experience was like a casual kiss that lingered in my memory. Somehow, I thought, I wanted to recapture the essence of that life—the creativity and unbounded nature of it all.

The “serious” life I chose was the law. In the fall of 1978 I trudged off to Harvard Law School after nearly two years working in Providence. I may not have been happy at law school, but I was going somewhere. After graduation, having found some affinity for trial work when I worked summers for the San Francisco DA's office and the FTC, I became a litigator for a large Boston law firm.

I thought litigation offered the possibility of making a genuine difference in people's lives and would give me a feeling of satisfaction and purpose. Unfortunately, I soon discovered, litigation was mostly sifting through reams of paper and squabbling. Cases generally were settled before they reached the courtroom.

But not all cases. When the chance finally came to argue my first case as lead counsel, I made the most of it. One rich and important client of the firm lived on a beautiful wooded lot, and someone had cut down nineteen of his trees without permission. The firm agreed to represent him for no charge, but they assigned a junior associate — me — figuring the outcome wasn't important enough for a partner. I treated it like it was
Roe v. Wade
, working up the case with a fervor. The day the trial began, I drove an hour south of Boston to a county courthouse. The attorney for the defense was the perfect model of a country lawyer. He enjoyed an easy rapport with the judge, no doubt developed over many weekends of golfing and bonding.

Trying the case without a jury, we each made our opening statements. I argued that the defendant, a recidivist tree poacher, had knowingly entered my client's private property and destroyed nineteen trees. Furthermore, I claimed, these nineteen trees were priceless; given the timetables of nature, they were gone forever from my client's life. In taking them the defendant had maliciously invaded my client's property, land that had been in his family for generations. I asked the court for a huge judgment, which, I argued, still would not compensate the true loss to my client.

Opposing counsel admitted nothing and claimed that even if his client did cut down the trees, the act had been inadvertent. Furthermore, he held that the value of the trees was a mere twelve cents a foot or some such arcane measure, because that would be their value as lumber. Getting nowhere, the judge suggested we three retire to his chambers to discuss matters. The two old friends lit up cigars and swapped stories, hardly acknowledging my presence. Finally, the country lawyer turned toward me, “You made a good argument, kid. But I can't bring those trees back to life. My client made an honest mistake. The best calculation I've got leads me to a sum of three thousand dollars.”

I was outraged. “Three thousand dollars! For what your client did!”

Unfazed, he asked whether I had visited the property.

“Yes,” I said.

“A lot of trees out there, aren't there?”

“Not these nineteen any longer,” I shot back.

“Who's going to miss those trees in that forest?”

“My client will. It's not a forest. It's a question of trees, and those nineteen trees were his, and now they're gone.”

“Three thousand dollars is my best and final offer,” he said. “We can avoid wasting your time and the judge's if you can convince your client to be reasonable.”

But I'd already conferred with my client and knew he wouldn't entertain a nominal gesture. “No,” I said. “My client won't accept that. It's a question of principle.”

So we tried the case, and I went all out, falling over myself to right the grievous wrong done my client. The country lawyer, bemused at my performance, conducted himself like an old pro. He even helped me out a bit. When I was unsure how to introduce a piece of evidence, he was ready with advice. When I committed a procedural gaffe, he'd tell the judge he had no objection.

As the trial neared its end, I was pleased. I'd made my case and had even extracted what I thought was a vital piece of testimony from the defendant, who all but admitted on the stand that he had known where the property line was and had taken my client's trees nonetheless.

The judge retired to chambers to deliberate. I sat motionless, studiously feigning calm for my client's sake. My adversary across the aisle, meanwhile, joshed with the stenographer and inquired in concerned tones after the bailiff's family.

The judge soon reentered the courtroom and announced his verdict: “I find in favor of the plaintiff.”

I won! I smiled warmly at my client, who slapped my back approvingly.

The judge continued: “I hereby order the defendant to pay to the plaintiff damages in the amount of three thousand dollars.”

My smile froze. The wise, old counsel thanked the judge, shook my hand, put his arm around his client, and walked down the aisle in pleasant conversation. My heart and soul spent winning some meaningless altercation, I was left wondering whether the law was ever going to take me where I wanted to go.

I
N
1983 I gravitated to a newly emerging specialty, technology law, after having transferred to my law firm's Palo Alto office. Technology law concentrates on identifying, protecting, and transacting in intellectual property—ideas. It is a product of the insuppressible inventiveness of Silicon Valley. It lacked the thrill of trial work, but it was far more stimulating than the tedious rounds of discovery that dominated litigation practice.

I traded the thrust and parry of litigation for ongoing relationships with byte-sized entrepreneurs, coders. They were creating the real value in the food chain of the PC revolution: software. I became engrossed in working with these inventors, who were assembling new businesses out of Silicon Valley garage shops. They turned out to be people I could easily relate to, more like the artists the Banzini Brothers had managed in the rock and roll promotion business than like my litigation colleagues and clients. They reminded me of my passionate, offbeat high school and college friends. They were talent. I understood them. I understood their art and their art's relationship to business. And I found myself able, by dint of both my eclectic experience and my training as a lawyer, to help them build viable enterprises around their brilliant ideas.