Band Name of the Day

09/25/03’s illustrious band:

Shut Up & Sing

Brought to you by the American Society for Alacritous Performance (ASAP).

There's a good song on an album by one of my favorite a cappella groups, The Bobs, titled "Shut Up & Sing." The message the lyrics are trying to convey is "Do what you came to do. Then stop." It's excellent advice that I struggle to follow every day.

You know what I'm talking about. You want to holler "Shut up and sing!" at the singer who stands at the mike telling you all the steps in his composition process instead of just singing the song. Or at the coworker who has to recite the entire script of last night's episode of Seinfeld to get to the one funny line. Or at the seminar participant who recounts his life's story before making the one comment he stood up to make. Or at yourself when you spend five minutes explaining to your boss why you'd like to leave early when you could simply have said, "Can you spare me? OK, thanks," and gone.

It's the same with mail. Do you really read every line of a four-page message, either electronic or on paper? Do you even read the two-pagers? Do you stay tuned to a radio or TV station when a commercial comes on? Do you hang on every word of the Sunday sermon or the Monday staff meeting? Do you stay in the line that's not moving? Me neither.

I think there's a fine line between a reasonable expectation that someone deliver the promised goods, as in a performance or a Q&A session, and outright impatience. If I've paid to hear singing, it's reasonable to expect to hear singing. It's a point of professionalism for the performer/speaker/writer to get to the point and stay there.

But what if it's a friend telling me about Seinfeld? He doesn't owe me anything. Sure, it would be courteous of him to not take up too much of my time . . . but it would be courteous of me to allow him to tell his story, too. That's when the desire for hurry becomes impatience: when there's no reasonable expectation of brevity.

For a commentary on conciseness, this has gotten quite long. Time for me to shut up and sing. Or better yet, read a book. I'm almost done with The Da Vinci Code, a sterling example of a writer showing the soul of his wit through brevity.

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