Work is constant: in front of the computer, meetings, emails, tea breaks, whiskey breaks, phone calls at midnight, texts seven in the morning, weekends, overtime, undermined. Everything here happens in mindnumbing Chinese speed -- from the nearby almost ready highrise apartments that were barely built just three months ago, to projects squeezed in an unmentionable amount of time. It's like the entire country is under the spell of Steve Job's reality distortion field, only unlike the pirates of the Silicon Valley, we're just not too sure exactly what we're working toward. I only know that while watching the Adventures of Tintin and seeing the amount of detail and craft and care given to every subtle movement, every scene, almost made me cry because, not yet, China will not be able to craft something like that. As for Steve Jobs and crying, there's been a lot of both. Somehow I managed to finish Walter Issacson's biography between subways, esculators, waiting at the bus stop, on the bus. For two weeks, I checked in with Steve at the Hujialou subway stop, glancing up from my book to his searing gaze from one of the many posters advertising the book in Beijing.
The biggest revelation on Steve Jobs, other than just how much of an asshole he was, is that he was a crier. He cried at meetings, cried during negotiations, cried when moved, cried because beyond the manipulation, the genius, the charisma, the guy just gave a damn.
Here's my favorite passage from the book from Jobs himself detailing Lee Clow's campaign for Apple after Job's restoration: This chokes me up, this really chokes me up. It was so clear that Lee loved Apple so much. Here was the best guy in advertising. And he hadn't pitched in ten years. Yet here he was, and he was pitching his hear out, because he loved Apple as much as we did. He and his team had come up with this brilliant idea, "Think Different." And it was ten times better than anything the other agencies showed. It choked me up, and it still makes me cry to think about it, both the fact that Lee cared so much and also how brilliant his "Think Different" idea was. Everyone in a while, I find myself in the presence of purity--purity of spirit and love--and I always cry. It always just reaches in and grabs me. That was one of those moments. There was a purity about that I will never forget. I cried in my office as he was showing me the idea, and I still cry when I think about it.
These days, when "I don't give a flying fuck" reaches out and grabs me by the gut and flips me over onto cold cement and smashes my face until I'm bleeding and bruised like a boxer champion, I remember that faces will heal and I remember to cry, because only when we cry do we realize that blood is still being pumped from head to toe, heart to soul, only when we cry do we know for sure that there's still something there that we care deeply about.
It's easy to lose it amidst all this haze, smog, people, cranes, but I feel a little better after I cry.