On Being a Charlie

The obscene and joyous embodiment of a fool’s errand

Five men and a bag of cash on the day of Charlie and Neliswa’s lobola negotiation

I befriended an Englishman, Charlie Hare, at Glastonbury Festival in 2013. I was living in Cape Town, he was in London, and at the time we didn’t realise we’d both be in Johannesburg for the rest of the decade. Five years later, in the throes of his engagement to marry a beautiful South African, Neliswa, I ended up playing a role in the team that negotiated his lobola (and the celebrations that followed).

He and Neliswa now have two children, Amara and Theo, and live in the English countryside. Last Friday morning, I received a charming voice note from Charlie in response to an essay I wrote two weeks ago:

“Howzit Nic, and your amateurish ideals. I enjoyed that one. It made me think about the great pleasure that I've had in going back to play rugby at a vets level.  As you well know, I never played rugby at a decent level. But I probably always strived to make the first team of whatever club I was in. (With the) weight of commitment to go to training twice a week and everything else, I felt like I was letting people down. So what's been so good about going back to this is joining a vets team, where there are no expectations, and we are playing for one thing only: and that's total pleasure…”

The essence of that essay, is that we use the word ‘amateurish’ as a synonym for sloppy and incompetent behaviour, and ‘amateur hour’ to describe a time where a lack of skill, ability, or performance is displayed. In that being an amateur means doing something for the love of it, it should be a compliment.

The original Amateur Hour was an American radio talent show broadcast in the 1930s and 1940s. Before its time, the Major Bowes Amateur Hour was not dissimilar to the roaringly successful television talent shows launched in the 2000s, such as Idols, X-Factor and America’s Got Talent. 

You might think that Amateur Hour resembled the Idols (or American Idol) cringeworthy segment called The Wooden Mic. Not so. One blue eyed boy you may have heard of who got his break on Amateur Hour was The Chairman of the Board, Frank Sinatra.

One of my heroes, Nick Cave, endorsed an amateurish mindset in his Red Hand Files newsletter this week. Chris from Aurora, USA, wrote to Nick asking if it was a fool’s errand to learn to play the guitar at the age of 62 and Nick’s response was expectedly lovely:

“Yes, it is almost certainly a fool’s errand to learn the guitar at 62. However, personally, I have a lot of time for fool’s errands. Many things of genuine artistic value seem to start as such — needless and profitless ideas that find, in time and to our complete surprise, their value.”

Nick discussed his desire become a ceramicist at the age of 63, “It was by any measure a fool’s errand,” and how that led to him making seventeen figurines that are now sitting in a museum in Finland. This Red Hand Files edition ended surprisingly well for Chris from Aurora: Nick invited him to play on the next Grinderman record, if there is one:

“It also required some encouragement from my friends – and encouragement, Chris, is what I am giving you now. Get practising, dude – every day – pick up that guitar and learn that fucking E chord. It’s ‘the secret chord that pleased the Lord’ and it served me very well in Grinderman. Get your act together and if you do, and Warren, Marty, Jim and I ever get around to making a new Grinderman record, you can come and play on it. Grinderman, as a matter of policy, only work with the very old, the out of shape, and the extremely foolish. We are the obscene and joyous embodiment of a fool’s errand. And we are waiting. There is no time to waste!”

It makes sense that we’re wired to optimise for the best outcomes across the different facets of our lives. So when we feel like we can’t quantify the value of a ‘project’, it stresses us out. Perhaps calling it a fool’s errand (or amateurish ideal) is the first step to breaking away from being so endlessly logical about how we spend our time.

For many years I’ve known that I wanted to write: to write more, to write better and, dare I say it, to be a writer. But I only ever dabbled. And the problem with dabbling is that you don’t get that rush of knowing that you’re improving.

At the beginning of September I committed to writing a little bit every day. This led to me enrolling in an online writing course and posting a dozen essays. As much as I love the feeling of dipping my feet into the ocean, it doesn’t compete with the feeling of immersing myself in the icy waters.

Is there something that you love, that you’re only ever dabbling in? Stop dabbling and “Get practicing, dude.” And if you’re open to sharing, I’d love to hear about it in the comments of this post.