For some reason the Beatles song Hey Bulldog is buzzing ‘round my brain. The track has a storied history, a throwaway recorded to fill out the soundtrack to the Yellow Submarine feature but then cut from the film for time. But in the process of filming a promo film for a different song, McCartney’s Lady Madonna, the outtakes formed the perfect studio record of the Beatles at work in both the writing and recording phases. Lennon started the song as Hey Bullfrog, but after he and McCartney built up overdubs behind the vocal tracks, the pair’s improvs included barking that morphed the song to its final state.
Lennon, who famously sloughed off many of his compositions as just riffs and word salad, nonetheless combined a rhythmic sophistication with multiliteral phrases that added way up to a sum greater than its parts. You think you know me, but you haven’t got a clue. Some kind of innocence is measured out in years. If you’re lonely you can talk to me. The words Hey Bulldog never appear until the end.
Over the last week or so, Elon Musk rattled the cage with his leap into the Twitter saga. It’s been a jumble of venture plays, Wall Street forceouts (not so sure am I), and mediocre jokes that blew up the media. I’ve somehow never been fascinated by the Musk story, but oh my god what a master of reality the guy is. Those synchronized returns to the launch pad by multiple rocket casings takes my breath away; I no longer am waiting for my flying car so 1999 it is. It makes a surreal sense that this 9-percent gambit comes to the Twitterverse — a goofy parlor trick that escalated as the realtime network expanded. Chastised by the investment community and the venture aristocracy, the company was borne out of a pivot from the podcast mirage and what Marc Andreessen called hippie morons in a Web3 birthing pain moment. I have always been slightly in awe of Jack Dorsey’s ability to stave off the Street, but regardless of whether he was pushed or shoved himself, it felt like that moment in a time travel movie where the writers basically turned the science into a Maguffin and gave you the opportunity to suspend disbelief in return for an extra free ride.
Substack and its ilk (if that’s a thing; not sure there are others yet), Substack has all the earmarks of a joke with extended punchlines that could get even better as they develop. As we build out the possibilities of the platform, like we did with @mentions and retweets, there’s a sense of serious play, of my 6 month old granddaughter turning low growls into words that begin to sound like catch phrases. Like John and Paul and Larry in the studio, the barks become memes and who cares what brought us here but whether we can keep the ball rolling. Months of tragedy and fear have done wonders for laying the groundwork for something to smile about, but ok, it’s time for some music.
Me, I’m on Elon’s side, Marc’s side, Dorsey’s side, anybody who steps up to the plate right now and takes a good cut at the right fastball. Those of us who’ve hit the long ball every once in a blue moon, know that when bat meets ball, it’s so much more than the swing or the hanging curve or the score at the bottom of the ninth. It’s just effortless, and you’re in the Big Show, laughing so hard it’s a good thing the ball ran out of playing field. Every time I hear someone knock social media, I think it’s how you play the game that counts. There will always be bad actors, but our job is to outnumber them. Much of this is above my pay grade, but every time I hear Kind of Blue I remember what is possible if we work together. Download the Substack Reader and make sure if they’re not on Substack, they need an RSS address to integrate.
Bonus paragraph: There’s a great spy drama on Apple TV+ called Slow Horses. It stars Gary Oldman who’s funny and addled at the same time, and I really could care less about the plot as long as they keep it going. The theme song is by Mick Jagger and someone who isn’t Keith Richards, and it just feels like the Rolling Stones with just a touch off the fastball. Like the ghost of Brian Jones sitting in but just for the atmosphere. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing that my mother threw out all my baseball cards.
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