“Slow and steady wins the race”
We’ve all heard that one, right?!
I am not a running expert (!), but the thing is: in most races I’ve seen, it is usually the fastest and most uncompromising who win the race. Or, at least, who has the best equipment, car, physique etc.
Slow and steady never actually does win the race. The problem with the phrase is that it doesn’t really mean what it says. Which, deep down, we kind of know - but sometimes, I wonder if we get a little muddled.
A race is a contest, in which there can only be one winner; one victor; one champion.
A race can only be labelled as such if it has a fixed end point - participants know where they are going, and where it ends. They know where the finishing line is.
A race is only so if its participants know what the prize they are racing for is.
A race is only so if its participants agreed, willingly, to be part of it.
A race without an end point is just a never-ending treadmill. A race without a prize is just a jog for the sake of it. A race without willing participants is just a procession, and there is no fun in that (apart from those people who dress up and throw sweets at the crowds from the back of a lorry in a carnival…that’s fun).
Slow and steady never wins the contest/competition, but what if we were never “in it to win it” in the first place?
With this in mind, the last thing a discipline such as music needs - or anything creative, in truth - is for it to be competicised (no, it isn’t a word, but it works and it’s staying).
There is an insidiousness to the way music has so often been reduced to numerical comparisons, and with it, the competitiveness which flows directly from this statistical analysis. Who has however many billions of streams; who has the most Instagram followers; who sold more records this week; how many No. 1 records *this* artist had; how many sold-out arena shows so-and-so are doing this summer.
If you are the Big Boss at Universal or Station Controller at BBC Radio 2, I know why it would be tempting to focus on what the numbers say and what this tells us about listenership and audience behavioural habits.
The best always rise to the top, we’re told.
Apart from when they don’t. Or indeed the structures in place don’t allow it.
But for those of us who are creators; veering away from this understanding and obsession with valuing artistic work in such a binary way will always be such an important thing to do, even when trying to assess the impact our work has had.
How does one quantify that?!
"Winning has nothing to do with racing. Most days don't have races anyway. Winning is about struggle and effort and optimism, and never, ever, ever giving up."
- Amby Burfoot, American marathon runner
Whilst we might associate ‘winning’ with being victorious, the term can also refer to succeeding, and as we all know, success is a much more complicated and quantifiably-challenging thing than it might appear.
At its simplest, being victorious is finite, whereas success represents something more continuous and ongoing.
The word ‘win’ comes from winnen, a fusion of the Old English winnan "to labour, toil, struggle for, work at; contend, fight," and gewinnan "to gain or succeed by struggling, conquer, obtain." Both are from Proto-Germanic *wennanan "to seek to gain," which is reconstructed to be from *wen- "to desire, strive for".1
This resonates with me for many reasons, not least the aspect of labouring, working hard, toiling away at something, and, at times, finding it a big old struggle.
Speak to anyone in the music industry at the moment and these words are often what you will hear. At times, it does feel like we are in a really big fight, simply just to keep things going.
When we reframe ‘winning’ to be about success (present tense; ongoing) rather than having previously been or having ambition to be victorious (finite), I find myself feeling a sense of collectivism rather than individualism. I find myself thinking about what we gain, and who benefits.
When it comes to music and creativity, I find this is helpful. I don’t think I’ve ever thought about what it looks like to win at music. The very notion makes me laugh out loud!
Which is why numbers will only ever tell half the story, and why
I’m not trying to win.
It was never a race in the first place.
But I will keep going. I won’t give up.
In many ways, to have got to this point, I have already won.
This is what success is.
Here’s another way of looking at it:
My loss is your gain | Your gain is my loss.
My gain is your loss | Your loss is my gain.
— or —
My loss is your loss | Your loss is my loss.
My gain is your gain | Your gain is my gain.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/winning