There are times in life when you’re given an assignment, and you’re completely comfortable with it. You wouldn’t give it another thought, you have no qualms or misgivings. Then there are times when you are asked to do something that makes you gulp, step back, and second guess any and all talent and skill that you think you might have. For this writing assignment, I was given the latter.
I may have been a bit nervous about tackling this assignment, but I was also honored, as I will be presenting our 2018 Employee of the Year, Conlan Spangler.
Conlan is our in-house copywriter, so of course, we couldn’t ask Conlan to write his own blog post. That would be like asking the president to swear himself in. Or the pope to bless himself. Or Meryl Streep to present herself an academy award. It’s just not how you do things.
In looking back at former Employee of the Year posts, I decided that a different approach might be a breath of fresh air, so this year I will be doing an interview with Conlan.
JE: Thanks for entertaining my interview format, Conlan. I appreciate you taking the time to sit down with me.
CS: Thanks for having me.
JE: I’d like to begin with a very basic question. How long have you been on staff at Windsong Productions?
CS: Five years, which is longer than most hamsters live. So that’s cool.
JE: Have you ever had a hamster?
CS: Yes. He’s dead now.
JE: In your job at Windsong, what was the weirdest thing you have been asked to write?
CS: There was this illustration of a giant jellyfish attacking a cruise ship, and I had to write an extended blurb about it, turning it into a metaphor for video production. The weird part was, the jellyfish was a bright pink color not found in nature.
JE: Carl Jung posited that colors are the mother tongue of the subconscious. I too find pinks that do not exist in nature to be weird. Do you think that this is because we are men, and that our society has told us that pink is a “girl color” so pinks, particularly pinks not found in nature make us feel as if everyone is looking at us and thinking “Why does he have a pink shirt in his closet? Doesn’t he know that’s a girl color?”
CS: No, I don’t think so.
JE: Neither do I. So Conlan, I’ve been very curious about one thing. What is your middle name?
CS: Jamal. It’s an acronym for “Just Ask Me Anything, Louisiana”.
JE: Is that the name of a town in Louisiana? Let me guess… you were conceived there.
CS: Well, I was conceived of there. My parents were vacationing there when they first decided to think about trying to possibly have a child, a boy, who they would name after the heroes of old, and also after a town in Louisiana. So that’s why I like to think of Just Ask Me Anything as my home away from actual things.
JE: As a writer, your creative talents are not something that you can touch or see in the physical plane. As someone whose talents tend to involve actual things—tools, wood, metal—I have always struggled with creativity when it comes to the written word. Has writing always been your creative expression of choice? And if so, has it always been something at which you excelled?
CS: I’ve been a writer since fourth grade, when my teacher recognized and encouraged my nascent talent. Since then I’ve always felt writing was the best way to express myself. I’ve dabbled in other art forms, like painting and tie-dye, but writing is where I feel most at home.
JE: Who is your favorite writer?
CS: Hard to choose just one, but I love Hemingway. I read Mariel’s Kitchen: Simple Ingredients for a Delicious and Satisfying Life in one sitting.
JE: Hemingway’s cookbook was decent, but I felt it lacked a certain je ne sais quoi. Personally, I felt that Finding My Balance: A Memoir With Yoga fulfilled a longing in my soul that recipes could not begin to satisfy.
CS: …
JE: OK, time to put you on the hot seat for a moment. If there was one thing about Windsong Productions that you would change, what would it be, and why?
CS: I would add more robots. The robots we have are pretty good, but there’s not enough of them. Yeah, we need more robots.
JE: But the why, Conlan… the why… and what kind would you add? More massage robots? More culinary robots?
CS: Why? Because they’re robots! Robots don’t need to do anything to be cool. Some of my favorite robots just stand around, or just say “Danger! Danger!” It doesn’t take much more than that.
JE: I tend to have conflicted emotions about robots. The name derives from the Czech robota meaning ‘forced labour’ or ‘slave’. So that’s some bad juju right out of the gate. And with the ever quickening speed with which our computers operate, it’s only a matter of time before artificial intelligence arises like a ghost in the machine. The next thing you know, the planet will be covered in gray goo… But at the same time, I want a robot housekeeper. Bad.
CS: …
JE: Last question: If you had your choice between a robot housekeeper, robot chef or robot driver, which would you choose?
CS: Robot housekeeper, obviously.
JE: OK.
CS: OK.
